Polls Serve Little Purpose

Recent polling show that Michigan voters think slightly more favorably of Governor Rick Snyder than the did a couple of months ago. It also shows that electors are slightly less disposed towards the job which Debbie Stabenow is doing as one of our senators. In each case, the numbers were down/up by around two to four percent.

These are hardly useful numbers, as they appear to be well within the range of acceptable fault. Indeed, it could be said that they are entirely meaningless. When opinions have shifted that little, if at all, then how excited are we supposed to get?

Yet even that doesn't really get to the crux of the matter. Why should we care at all what pools say, especially as they generally don't reflect anything particularly worthwhile, or when elections are so far away? In the case of the Governor, outside of the highly unlikely chance that recall efforts will succeed, he won't face voters before 2014. The junior Senator at least is up for election next year, but still, her numbers in July 2011 are surely irrelevant.

The electorate cannot reasonably be expected to become gaga over these figures at this point. They probably don't mean squat among the bulk of them anyway; Democrats will certainly vote for her no matter what, while Republicans vote against her despite circumstances. That only leaves the amorphous middle. Yet even they, within reason, won't actually make up their minds until much closer to November 2012.

We are left to believe that the pools are really only for the pollsters, the political wonks and talking heads who need fodder during slow times in the cycle, and their brethren who live and die on minute and trivial changes in the political atmospheric pressure. We will leave you with the question, then, what's the point?