Written by: Tom Sawyer

Here are the results of the latest poll:

• Obama, 53%.
• McCain, 42%.

Now these results are from a Gallup poll and this was part of an article on USA Today’s website.  I forgot one thing: this poll consisted of a whopping 2,472 people!  With that many people participating in the poll Obama has it in the bag.

Of course, that was some of my sarcasm.

This election has allegedly caused several people to vote for the first time or exercise their right to vote after failing to do so previously.  That is understandable when we look at all the dynamics involved – we are hurting financially, a woman is on the ticket for vice-president and a (half) black man is running for president.

It seems like nobody really knows how many people have voted up to this point – via early voting and absentee ballots – or who will go and vote tomorrow.  That being the case, can someone tell me how Gallup, or anyone else for that matter, can accurately conduct a poll?  Of course they can’t since they had less than 3,000 participants!

I’m kind of surprised USA Today would even put something like this on their site since the number of participants is so small.  ESPN holds polls with a better sampling and those polls ask important questions like who will win the NBA championship, who should start for the Dallas Cowboys at quarterback, etc.  Shouldn’t a reputable news outlet keep their mouths shut when they only have such a small percentage of voters to go by?

Sometimes I think polls are just put out their to be smoke screens or cause some people to relax.  If the wrong people read those polls, don’t you think they would figure they shouldn’t waste their time and would just stay at home instead of voting?  This way of thinking does happen and it could hurt either candidate.  Uh, the possibility of 2008′s version of hanging chads doesn’t give voters confidence either, but that is another story altogether.  

One of the most positive things to come out of this election is the serious push for people to get out their to register and vote.  It seems like some polls do nothing to help, but could ultimately have a negative impact on the number of people who actually vote.

How about one more day with no more polls?

Tags: 2008 Presidential Election, polls

This entry was posted on Monday, November 3rd, 2008 at 12:01 am and is filed under Political Buzz. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.