Polls Are Useless: A Continuing Series

 

 That’s the chart; this is the text:

Here's the one chart you need to see:

- Abrego Garcia deported
- SCOTUS ruling gets press
- News coverage shot up
- Google search traffic shot up
- Trump approval fell down

and then

- News media moved on
- Trump immigration approval went back up

Exactly as predicted by the survey experiment.

First: who is surprised.? “News” is what is “new information.” It eventually, isn’t, which is when it stops being news. Abrego Garcia is “old news,” which is an oxymoron more than a noun. What is meant is that it is no longer “new,” therefore no longer “news.” The error is in our use of the word “news.”

“Faith” is a similar case. Faith is a synonym for “trust.” “Trust” can be a legal arrangement, and in that case it’s a noun. Usually, though, it’s a verb; it’s something you do. So should faith be: an activity, not an object. But people want to say they “have faith,” the way I have this phone I’m typing on, in my hand. I can say, rather archaically, that I have trust in my friends, but if I said I had faith in them, my meaning might be taken differently. If I say I have faith in God, and trust in God, I’m taken to mean two very different things. To me, the sentences are interchangeable. But to most people, “faith” is a synonym for “belief.” Likewise, especially on social media, “news” is understood as a synonym for “most important information.” But really it just means “newest information.” Which is mostly just gossip.

So the “news media” moved on from Abrego Garcia. Yes, and? Polls reflect this? How? Ask a different group of people the same question, get a different answer, and…you’re surprised? Pollsters never ask the same question of different cohorts back to back to back. They ask the question, publish the results, and declare they voice the vox populi. Oh, there may be multiple polls about who’s winning the horse race in campaign season. That’s where their money is. But polls about public sentiment? That just to provide fodder for news stories. Once the question is answered, it’s no longer news, it’s “settled fact.” Or, ask the same questions later to a different group and: hey, presto! Public sentiment has changed! New settled fact!

They might as well be reading chicken entrails and tea leaves. And that might be news: that everything old is new again.