Commonwealth Magazine: Presidential Polling Largely Useless Right Now

[Godhumor]

So disclosure upfront, the author, Professor Josh Dyck, is a friend of mine from back in the days when we both lived in Western NY. He runs the Center of Public Opinion at UMass Lowell and is a frequent voice in media on New England politics. Really, the only negative thing I can say about him is that he is a Seattle Seahawks fan.

Anyway, onto the article:

The media use this early polling to drive perceptions so they can cover this story every day. They provide little more than grist for the mill of the 24-hour news cycle.

Polling primary races this early in the game is by and large harmless, but also by and large useless. The reason for this is that voters are simply not paying attention at this stage, and so illusory surges, such as the one Trump currently enjoys, merely reflect the impact of news coverage and name recognition, and not well-informed preferences.

...

As pollsters, we need to differentiate between asking questions that get at actual beliefs and preferences of those we survey, and questions that produce knee-jerk, get-me-off-this-phone-call responses. Early primary polling is all about knee-jerks, not preferences.

Understanding why this is requires some understanding of how voters think. The truth is that most people are not thinking about politics most of the time. Many may view it as their civic duty to pay attention (and some of the wonkiest of us even enjoy it at times), but for most voters, the political process and political debates are off-putting; something to be avoided at all costs, especially this early in the process.

http://commonwealthmagazine.org/politics/presidential-polling-largely-useless-now/
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I assume most of us fall into his wonkiest category, heh.

[Uncle Joe]

1. I disagree, doing well in the polls leads to more air time and even

if the masses aren't paying much conscious attention to the election at this point, they can't help but be bombarded by constant images and names of prospective candidates even if they just watch the news or late night comedy.

This saturation of name and image creates a subconscious connection to said candidate when they start consciously paying attention as the election cycle progresses.

Thanks for the thread, Godhumor.

[Godhumor]

2. Actually, one of the main reasons candidates tend to declare early is to get all the "scandals"

Out of the way before people begin paying attention. It is also the reason Clinton has yet to have her official campaign kick off.

Everything right now is about media driven narratives. If it's also the reason predictive markets and sites like 538 and PEC have barely moved their overall predictions despite Trump and Sanders doing well in early polling. Analytics says you don't start trusting numbers until primary season heats up.

[Uncle Joe]

3. I believe in the power of corporate media driven narratives to take hold.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/wp/2013/11/04/a-cautionary-tale-for-politicians-al-gore-and-the-invention-of-the-internet

It all started during a March 8, 1999, interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, as Gore was preparing to make a run for the Democratic nomination for president. The clip of Blitzer asking Gore about his vision is embedded below.

The election of 2000 was still about a year and nine months away when the false myth meme took off, and it stayed in the public conscious along with a host of other B.S. and in that span of time it never ceased, it was kept front and center.

However I also believe that with the growth of the Internet, corporate media narratives don't have quite the staying power as they did in 2000.

[frylock]

4. wait.. Clinton hasn't has yet to have her official campaign kick off?

[Uncle Joe]

5. Now the people that actually followed politics, knew what Gore was talking about but

they were overwhelmed by the brainwashed masses.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Gore_and_information_technology

(snip)

Of Gore's involvement in the then-developing Internet while in Congress, Internet pioneers Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn have also noted that,

As far back as the 1970s Congressman Gore promoted the idea of high-speed telecommunications as an engine for both economic growth and the improvement of our educational system. He was the first elected official to grasp the potential of computer communications to have a broader impact than just improving the conduct of science and scholarship [...] the Internet, as we know it today, was not deployed until 1993. When the Internet was still in the early stages of its deployment, Congressman Gore provided intellectual leadership by helping create the vision of the potential benefits of high speed computing and communication. As an example, he sponsored hearings on how advanced technologies might be put to use in areas like coordinating the response of government agencies to natural disasters and other crises.[3]

24 Jun 1986: Albert Gore introduced S 2594 Supercomputer Network Study Act of 1986[4]

As a Senator, Gore began to craft the High Performance Computing and Communication Act of 1991 (commonly referred to as "The Gore Bill"[5]) after hearing the 1988 report Toward a National Research Network[6] submitted to Congress by a group chaired by UCLA professor of computer science, Leonard Kleinrock, one of the central creators of the ARPANET (the ARPANET, first deployed by Kleinrock and others in 1969, is the predecessor of the Internet).[7]

Indeed, Kleinrock would later credit both Gore and the Gore Bill as a critical moment in Internet history:

A second development occurred around this time, namely, then-Senator Al Gore, a strong and knowledgeable proponent of the Internet, promoted legislation that resulted in President George H.W Bush signing the High Performance Computing and Communication Act of 1991. This Act allocated $600 million for high performance computing and for the creation of the National Research and Education Network [13–14]. The NREN brought together industry, academia and government in a joint effort to accelerate the development and deployment of gigabit/sec networking.[8]

The bill was passed on Dec. 9, 1991 and led to the National Information Infrastructure (NII)[9] which Gore referred to as the "information superhighway". President George H. W. Bush predicted that the bill would help "unlock the secrets of DNA," open up foreign markets to free trade, and a promise of cooperation between government, academia, and industry.[10]

Prior to its passage, Gore discussed the basics of the bill in an article for the September 1991 issue of Scientific American entitled Scientific American presents the September 1991 Single Copy Issue: Communications, Computers, and Networks. His essay, "Infrastructure for the Global Village", commented on the lack of network access described above and argued: "Rather than holding back, the U.S. should lead by building the information infrastructure, essential if all Americans are to gain access to this transforming technology"[11] [...] "high speed networks must be built that tie together millions of computers, providing capabilities that we cannot even imagine."[12]

The tragedy being that the Internet wasn't strong enough in 2000 to rebut those early corporate media driven narratives.