|
|
Despite claims by almost every poll that Senator Obama would win the New Hampshire primary, first place instead went to Senator Clinton. Not only are election polls sometimes inaccurate, they also have a negative influence upon voters in general and discourage many of them from voting for candidates they genuinely support. In each election, polls begin long before there is any voting, and are used by media "pundits" to decide which candidates are "viable" and "electable", although they actually represent only a small number of people. Before long, candidates are excluded from the debates for having insufficiently high percentages in the polls. Candidates who poll poorly are rarely interviewed or even mentioned on the television or radio, although "mainstream" candidates favored by the media are sometimes given exceptions to this rule; a factor which seems to have benefited John McCain greatly. The media "pundits" claim that candidates with poor poll results are "unpopular", thus not worth talking about or allowing to express their views. On the other hand, how can such candidates (Gravel, Kucinich, Richardson, Paul, Hunter, etc) ever gain support if the media never informs the public about them from the beginning? At the same time, massive amounts of news coverage are devoted to how well the "front-runners" are doing in the polls, with less attention to their qualifications, positions on issues, or the validity of their claims. Candidates make all sorts of accusations about each other, and the mainstream media responds by merely reporting the accusations, rather than investigating their truthfulness. What purpose do these polls really serve in an election? Voters should be selecting the candidate they feel is most trustworthy, is right about major political and economic issues, and has appropriate experience to become president; not choosing the "lesser evil" among two often-similar candidates, because everyone else "can't win" according to the "pundits" and polls. |