I think bad polls might degrade people’s confidence in social science, but I doubt it has much effect on how people vote.
Zorn points out one potential problem:
The problem with polls, such as it is, is the way public often interprets and then acts upon results.
A candidate who polls poorly in the early stages of a race, particularly a primary, often then has a very hard time raising campaign money ? who wants to throw his hard-earned down the rat hole of a loser’s coffers? ? which in turn makes it hard for him or her to show well in the polls or the Only Poll That Matters on Election Day.
It’s not clear to me that people act on the polls. I’m probably guilty of saying that a poll might deter turnout in such cases as the Keyes craziness, but even I’m not sure that is accurate. Even if there wasn’t a polling telling us that Keyes was screwed, isn’t the stench of death around the Keyes campaign and everything it touches pretty obvious? Even without showing a 45 point gap would anyone think differently?
I had a friend just run against a very connected incumbent for the 3rd District in Missouri. The polling for Jeff was horrible and even not that great on the last week from what I hear. Jeff lost by just over 1 percent of the vote–1700 votes. He ran a truly insurgent campaign and came so close to winning, but didn’t even though every conventional measure said he coudln’t do it. And he raised a lot of money despite having no poll standing and all of the establishment lined up against him. Polling hurt on some fundraising, but not much. Russ Carnahan’s connections hurt far more than any polling and that is something that can’t really be fixed.
Obama was unknown and not exactly tearing up the polls until close to the election. Yet he was one of those candidates where you knew once you saw him that he was “the one,” whereas the other candidates were “same old, same old.” Dean, too, although instead of surging ahead at the end, he blew it. But the fact is people believed in Dean and he went from being an unknown to leading the polls and raking in the most cash.