Down with Opinion polls.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

While I know here and on the Internets it's popular to blame the media for people disagreeing with you for having in built "biases". Look at Jfern's 1235269 Rants against FOX news for example.

But apart from the sub-doltish I imagine these things are pretty irrelevant except for the Kool Aid crowd. Any Idiot can see that any media organisation is biased; not just obvious ones like FOX, etc but the BBC, RTE, any American network - most have an agenda of sorts everyone agrees; but what agenda that is depends on which side of the political fence you sit on (OMG LIEBRAL BIASES!!! OMG NEOCONZ PROPAGANDA LOLZ SHEEPLE!!!1111).

But this is irrelevant what's never pointed out except by some media theorists (and those who somehow think that Anne Nicole's Smith death is not news; it is news as people in charge, media corporations, goverments, Social structure, etc thinks it's deserving of being news therefore it's news. Whatever that is.) that how news, regardless of being television, Radio, Newspapers, etc is clearly just trivial news to create what theorists call "Pseudo-events" (ie. A media created event designed to create "news" and not shown within a "Cultural event". Something so meaningless and pointless and infantile it's only purpose is to fill TV and newspaper time.)

And the greatest example of this?

Opinion Polls. Especially political opinion polls. They do nothing; they are nothing; why does it matter whether John McCain is five points behind Hillary Clinton in the Election especiallly now in 2007. But they create news; they create the sense that McCain's campaign is sinking; that Clinton and Rudy are inevitable candidates (which means Bush is the winner as Eraserhead said) and because of that they can become true. As people don't think of this usually as bias then they filter it out; it's been commonly thought that the most dangerous types of bias are the ones you can't clearly see but think of "Common Sense" or "Just Facts". Fnord!

Opinion Polls also create a situation where political events are somewhat abstract from reality; as if politics can be judged by the poll ratings of candidate. This matters alot; especially those who are not politico junkies. Creating a situation where the message is clearly "This doesn't matter, this is just entertainment, But it's really, really important entertainment, so that shows your sophisication. Watching a version of American Idol with Politicians. You are smarter than the average television watcher because you're interested, but don't worry it's only a game, Politics doesn't really connect with real life, you just think it does."

So let me put this clearly: Polls. only. matter. if. you. think. they. do. Polls are not politics; just media events which can suit a certain media agendas (perhaps soon in 2012 we will get flooded with fake polls benefitting one candidate.. FOX will do this first?) So, to hell with polls.

[Gustaf]

No.

[afleitch]

Don't shoot the messenger Theres nothing wrong with opinion polls, it's just how they are used that is the problem. We had a summer of opinion polls in the UK telling us, Gordon Brown got a bounce, it's silly season, but here you go, here are the results of a poll we took. The media then took this, during their 'Gordgasm' period to mean 'Tories, dead, Cameron, gone, leadership contest? lololol.' Now the polls say, okay the bounce is over, normalcy resumes and the Tories had a good conference; all is to play for. Now the media say 'Oh no wait, it's Gordon who's in the sh-t.' Problem is, who commissions the polls? The media. If there's no news to be milked from politics, they don't commission a poll. If they do commission a poll and that poll shows something different from the last poll, they commission yet more polls to confirm or create a trend, and then make the news about that trend.

All that can be done is to take the 'power' of commissioning a poll out of the media's hands, have weekly polls by some state body. Then all we have us state control of polls, and polls have themselves a new master

[Hash]

Long live polls!

Most of the time they predict a winner, maybe not in exact %s, but it does give an idea who will win.