The Insanity of National Polls

Thanks to Jordon Cooper for a link to Steve Berlin Johnson's blog. Link.

Steve makes an important point. We can disregard the national polls. They don't matter. It is only the swing states that are too close to call where the polls matter.

I remember George W. Bush being interviewed after he was declared the winner of the 2000 election. I thought his statement was very telliing. The Democrats kept making statements that Bush "stole" the election and wasn't the rightful winner because he didn't win the popular vote. I kow that I'm paraphrasing, but Bush said something like "You're right, I didn't win the popular vote. But my goal wasn't to win the popular vote, but to win the electoral vote. We don't elect our President from the popular vote. If we did, I would have run my campaign to target more popular votes."

How many of us forget what happened in 2000. Maybe electing our President by the electoral college isn't the best way to run an election, and I would support a switch to electing the President using popular vote. But right now we still use the electoral college system, and s long as it remains the system we use polls taken in states where the outcome is already assured is meaningless.