Who Benefits From The Polls?

A post by David Talbot this morning in Salon.com says that Zogby just released a poll of cell phone users. The cell set voted for Kerry by a landslide--55 to 40 percent. The polls have ignored cell phone users which means all the people who have opted out of landline phones have never been contacted. But even granting that many voters are out of the loop where the polls are concerned (and for many reasons), who benefits from the polls anyway? It has long been my contention that undecided voters are a tiny group. And that many people call themselves undecided because they get so much media attention. The vast majority of people made up their minds months ago. The polls aren’t going to change anyone’s mind. They’ve been 50/50 for months. So who benefits from this poll mania? Mainstream Media advertisers. Ever since the party conventions, people have been glued to their TV sets and newspapers to find out if their candidate of choice may be getting an edge in the polls. That’s money in the bank to advertisers. It’s in the best interest of media advertisers for poll takers either to fudge their poll results or to couch their questions so that the election polls wind up neck and neck. If the polls edged up to 60/40 for either candidate, people would lose interest in the horserace. And if some polls have to interview people of a certain party more than the other party to maintain the 50/50 ratio...well hey! The guy footing the bill gets what he wants. Back in August when I took a gander at Gallup’s FAQ web site , it said they need the responses of only 1000 people to get an accurate result. That number agrees with the number of responders used in other polls. But Gallup’s site included another bit of information that is telling. Getting the response of more than 1000 people is “very expensive”, the FAQ said. Zogby says his group has to call 10,000 people to get 1,000 responses. There aren’t a lot of sponsors of polls who would be willing to pony up the bucks for 4,000 responders, let alone 10,000 responders. Particularly if the poll isn’t going to get the right result. So...we have advertisers wanting people to keep tuning in and keep reading and we have the Bush administration putting the squeeze on the MSM to be nice to George Bush and it all adds up to MSM polls that aren’t worth a pile of horseshit in the Texas sun.