But I don’t work on that basis. People who focus on winning elections tend to end up chasing the other polls, trying to find the magic formula that gets them victory on that day.

I reject that. I argue issues based on my honest opinions and beliefs and knowledge and experience. If I lose the elections, so be it.

It’s all about what your focus is. If it’s about winning elections, then hell yeah, commission and listen to all the polls you want.

I’ll pass, thanks.

J.

It might not tell you anything about what you wish to believe, but it certainly is a crucial indicator of the prospect of electoral success.

Good for you, Jay Tea! You are a solid rock immune from the winds of polling. Who cares, though? In the end, persuading Jay Tea is pretty inconsequential in The Big Picture. I know of no national political Party based on the “Jay Tea vote”. That’s because, in order to win, a political Party has to win a majority (or at least a plurality)…so what the majority (or plurality) believes is pretty damn important. They win, shockingly, even if Jay Tea disagrees with them. And, to most political Parties, winning elections is more important than winning the approval of Jay Tea. Yes, it’s come to that.

“My objections to polls are when they are used in place of arguments.”

Well, if the “argument” is that pursuing a certain strategy is a very effective way to lose elections, then polls matter to that “argument”. If the “argument” is, however, that pursuing certain policies may alienate Jay Tea, then you are absolutely correct. In that unlikely eventuality, the nation will doubtlessly sonorously note how you weigh in, unburdened by polling data.

And, since you exhibit attenuated reading comprehension, I will repeat this statement from my comment:
“Wingnuts are always free to claim they are the correct ones and the majority is wrong, but when they claim that the majority agrees with them they are engaging in fantasy and must be called out on it.”

I am fervently hoping that the 25% of the nation who agrees with you continues to follow your stunted logic, however. You can be “right” in the same way that the Whigs were “right”, and earn your Party that historic place alongside them in the political dustbin.

“The polls say that most Americans like Obama, and support his plans.”

So? I’ve looked at several of them, and I see major problems with them — areas where I hold profound disagreements. And simply telling me what percentage of people don’t think so doesn’t mean a goddamned thing.

I back the president when I think he’s right, and I voice my dissent (which is, after all, the highest form of patriotism) when I think he is wrong. The volume of that dissent is conditional on how confident I am in his wrongness and the potential consequences of that policy or act.

Let others live and die by the polls. I cheerfully, willfully, and enthusiastically ignore them.

J.

You missed the point so hilariously, didn’t you?
It’s not that the polls “tell us what to think”, it’s that the polls tell us what other people think.

You see, wingnuts live in this artificial bubble world in which the vast majority of the nation agrees with them. Polls blast that bubble world to shreds. Wingnuts are always free to claim they are the correct ones and the majority is wrong, but when they claim that the majority agrees with them they are engaging in fantasy and must be called out on it.

So when this poll shows that 33% of Republicans give Obama a favourable job approval rating, something is seriously wrong with the wingnut notion that Obama is hated and feared. And when 51% of independents give a favourable rating, we see a Republican Party being pushed into the political margins.

And when 42% of Republicans say that their own Party does not have “a plan of their own for turning the economy around” it shows that the GOP basically just filed for ideological bankruptcy.

Obviously, more “ideological purity” is what is needed here, right? At this point, I don’t even think the GOP would benefit in a major way if Obama’s approval numbers ever tank. If you want the GOP to be the 21st century John Birch Society, go ahead and do it – but don’t pretend you can win elections in more than ten states that way.

You keep saying polls are things that determine opinion, and you’re wrong. You lack even the most rudimentary math skills and honestly, it’s funny as hell, like most of the inane babble you spew here. You have a child-like faith in thinking that if you say something over and over it becomes true.

Since you lack basic mental acuity, I’ll spell it out for you — all your talking-point scare words about “socialism” and “fascism” isn’t working with the American people. We’re in a financial crisis, and Americans _want_ the Federal government (and state governments for that matter) to step in and help, to do something to get the economy moving again. This is a re-alignment that fundamentally erases the Reagan era.

What polls are showing is that America has shifted significantly to the left since 2006. And you’re too dumb to see the obvious.

Delicious.

Not quite so sarcastically, Oliver… if you’re going to bring up my past association with a certain blog, you might want to also mention that in that entire time, I not only once never used polls to support my opinion, but semi-regularly mocked them and those who rely on them.

Nah… too honest by half.

J.

It is? But NOW they want us to believe them?

Well, as long as it’s telling you what you want to hear, I’m not suprised you’re buying it hook, line, and sinker…

J.

I expect a Jonestown mass-suicide event in about a month. Malkin will pour the Kool-Aid, Rush will spike it with lethal doses of Oxycontin from his personal stash.

Or maybe the Republican party as we know it will just collapse into an ineffective heap as more and more moderates realize they just can’t align themselves with the party of a racist like Limbaugh any longer.