My Poll Is Bigger Than Your Poll

As Americans, we are obsessed with public opinion polls. Gallup, Zogby, Pew, Quinnipiac, Harris, and on and on and on. We love being told what we think and why we think it. Personally, I think their value is limited and questionable. Stay with me. There’s a point. It might take a while to get there. But there’s a point.

Someone told me, a long time ago, that to understand what is really important to people, you have to read the Letters To The Editor.

He’s right. Here’s why.

Reading the Letters, you’ll find that what pisses people off is government lying, letting down their communities and failing to make tough decisions. People hate wimps. They’ll argue with anything, but they will always respect strong decision making skills. People care about what’s happening on their streets, in their schools and on their jobs. They care far less about what people are doing in their bedrooms or where celebrities are adopting their children.

If you read the Letters, you’ll find people care a great deal about the war in Iraq but not so much about the war between the Lohans. They care about gas prices, house prices, potholes, pollution, traffic, taxes, honest car mechanics, finding a plumber on a holiday and sending their kids to college. The most interesting thing about reading the Letters is the difference between the things that really matter in people’s lives and what the polls and politicians are talking about on a daily basis.

Remembering that people who are writing the letters actually have to stop what they’re doing and take the time to sit down, lay out their thoughts and then send them off shows how important they are to them. It’s one thing to be ambushed on a street corner by a pollster or to be called on the phone at random. It’s another to go out of your way to be heard.

Here’s the point.

The political season is in overdrive. The candidates are clear. The clichés are off and running. In the next few months, politicians and evangelists from every mountain, valley, plain and seashore will be coming out of the woodwork quoting every well known and obscure poll, claiming to be experts on what we all want and believe. In my opinion, 98% of them will be full of crap. They’ll quote the numbers, but the numbers fail to tell a complete story.

Polls are a dangerous and limited commodity. They ask limited questions of limited interest to a captive audience. They ask people to rank their interests and concerns from a menu that almost prevents a free exchange of ideas.

I love analogies, so here’s the analogy. You are invited to dinner with friends at an Italian restaurant of someone else’s choosing. You are presented with a menu of pasta and so forth. Now tonight, you really wanted crab cakes for dinner. But they're not an option. So, you choose the manicotti. The manicotti is tasty enough and when asked you say it was fine and everyone assumes you are full and happy. But you still would have been far happier with crab cakes.

Such is what can happen with polls. You are asked to rank education, gas prices, taxes and trans fats as the issues that most concern you. You dutifully answer the question and your opinion is registered. Unfortunately it might not reflect your true number one concern which might have been about job security, and was not included in the survey. If you try to volunteer that issue “off the menu”, you’re told it isn’t an option.

Not an option? Not an option for whom? Your true concerns are not an option? This is the problem with polls. They are designed to address political needs, not truen concerns.

I am sick and tired of being told what to think and what is important by people who can’t even ask the right questions. Don’t tell me my favorite color is green when the only choices you’ve given me are on a traffic light.

Personally, I like blue. Lapis, to be exact.

I recognize the reality of the world in which we live and the process to address large sections of public opinion. The realist in me knows this will not change and is what it is for a reason and forever. But please at least let's acknowledge that our lives are neither based on nor centered around whatever happens to be coming out of the latest Washington focus group or think tank survey. Our lives are both far more complex and far more simple. We deserve a little respect and a basic understanding of what makes lives tick outside the beltway and west of the Hudson.

By the way, with the exception of my civil rights soapbox, I try very hard to avoid writing about politics. There are no winners in a political pissing match. But I think it's time to recognize that, as a people, our concerns this year are far more complex that red state/blue state. We want to know what the vision is. We don't even need a promise of an immediate solution. Just a vision to show us that our new administration, whoever it is, will take off the blinders. I'm hopeful, but not confident.

Oh... and as for the title of this post...
My, you have a dirty little mind, don't you.