Thank you for your patience during construction of The Broad Side of the Barn
This
past Saturday was a volunteer day at McCain headquarters in New Hampshire.
It was well attended and consisted of people calling voters, putting yard
signs together, preparing mailers, and other assorted tasks. More than
three times the targeted number of phone calls were placed. Having made
some of these calls what struck me was how few people have definitively
chosen a candidate. I had one definite McCain and one definite Giuliani
and a handful of people leaning towards one candidate or another; but overwhelmingly
people said they were undecided. This was similar for other callers too.
To me it questions the validity of the polls. Maybe polls are useful as
a guide to what people are thinking, but they are constantly reported on
as a conclusive evidence of how people will vote in the future. How accurate
could polls possibly be if more than half the electorate is undecided?
Maybe this isn’t the best time to question polling since Senator
McCain has pulled into second place nationally in an ABC poll, but it seems
that maybe the news should be more about content and less about trying
to predict the future.