Despite the fact that I'm a bit of a news junkie, I'm ashamed to admit that I know virtually nothing about the race for my state senate. I don't think I'm alone in saying that, what with all the exciting news about the upcoming national elections, I've decided to ignore local ones.
After all, It's local news. Just because it's election related doesn't mean it'll be any more exciting than the other local stuff, like, "Area Man Befriends Duck."
Fortunately, the pollsters realized that this would be the case for most respondents, and rather than asking me my opinion of the candidates directly, they asked me if various statements about the candidates made me more or less likely to vote for them.
It was stuff along the lines of "Candidate A says he will fight for the education of our children. Does this make you more or less likely to vote for him?"
Now, the important thing to note here is that the above statement isn't just a dumb example, it's indicative of how vapid all these statements were. Not one of them really told me anything about policy. "Candidate A is for fighting crime." "Candidate B wants to clean up the environment." "Candidate A will fight corruption in government." "Candidate B wants to hug all children, everywhere."
I'm about to trot out that old chestnut about how politicians will say anything to get elected. If you're generic enough, any feel good statement can apply to whatever policy you might have. The pro-toddler hunting politician can make it sound like he does it for the children if he has the right PR guy. Everybody knows this, so I only mention it to say that it was eye-rollingly obvious that the pollster was reading me statements that came directly from campaign headquarters.
After I got off the phone, I started to wonder: If I was being polled about meaningless feel-good statements rather than actual policy points, what exactly was the poll trying to measure? Does it really do a politician any good to hear that most Americans are for education? Or against corruption in the government? Of course not. But the fact remained, I had just taken a poll that was apparently testing for just that.
Then I realized, this poll wasn't about positions at all. It wasn't even some partisan hatchet job. The statements were about both candidates, and they described both with empty niceties. No, the only thing this poll was really measuring was which empty nicety was most effective. The candidates wanted to know how they could get the most votes without saying anything at all. That's kind of scary, if you think about it. My story may be anecdotal, but it does seem to me that the focus of politics in the States has shifted away from presenting the best platform, and moved toward manipulating the voters.
I said the statements didn't sway me in either direction. I wonder how many others answered that way. Anyone?
