how much of an effect do you guys think the polls are having on how people will vote in the upcoming primaries?

 

here's an interesting article i found that tries to describe the effect on dean's poor showing.

 

from newhouse news service:

 

Polls Not Only Predict Vote, but Affect It, Some Argue

 

BY JOHN FARMER

c.2004 Newhouse News Service

 

Pollster John Zogby was not a candidate in the Iowa Democratic presidential ballot and he didn't endorse any of those who were, but he appears to have played a role in the outcome. How big a role is the subject of some debate following Monday's caucuses.

 

Zogby's nightly tracking polls in the final days and hours of the campaign -- especially their detection of the late surge by Sen. John Kerry, the ultimate winner, and Sen. John Edwards, the surprise runner-up -- dominated the news headlines and television coverage. A race that only a week before seemed a cakewalk for Howard Dean was more likely a tossup with Kerry and Edwards the leaders, according to Zogby's final survey.

 

Are such polls purely neutral pulse-takings of the electorate with no significant impact on the outcome? Or are they increasingly self-fulfilling prophesies?

 

Pollsters, politicians and academics offer different answers. But Zogby, in an interview Tuesday, said late-breaking polls can have an impact on electoral decisions, though not to the extent that they affect outcomes.

 

Steffen Schmidt, a political scientist at Iowa State University, agreed, saying "the polls always have an impact." In Monday's test, he said, they appear to have "confirmed" the leanings of the already committed and "influenced the undecided." But they did not dictate the outcome, he said.

 

Dennis Goldford, chairman of the political science department at Drake University in Des Moines, had a different view. He said he believes polls can have a dramatic effect on an election outcome.

 

"Absolutely," Goldford said when asked if the eleventh-hour polling had a real impact across Iowa Monday night.

 

Whether accurate, he said, a poll can not only "reflect reality but create its own reality." In the case of the caucuses, he said, the polls that showed a surprising surge for Kerry and Edwards -- after weeks in which both had trailed badly -- "revved" up their staffs and followers with the idea that "we've got a shot" and probably boosted turnout.

 

Goldford said it was the political manifestation of the scientific theory that "the act of observing something can actually change what you're observing." Something akin to that may have happened with the polls in Iowa, he said.

 

With the polls pointing to an Edwards surge in the final days, Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio agreed that his backers in any caucus where he failed to meet the so-called 15 percent "viability" test in the first round of voting would throw their support to the Edwards camp. It helped swell the North Carolina senator's total.

 

How do the pollsters themselves see their role in elections they survey? As a group they are increasingly sensitive to any suggestion that their published findings can tilt the result to one candidate or another. It's a topic that has been discussed at professional gatherings of pollsters, according to Michael Dimock, research director for the Washington, D.C.-based Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.

 

There's a "chicken or egg" aspect to all polls, he said. But which comes first, voter sentiments reflected in the poll, or poll findings that influence voter sentiment? That's a hard question to answer, he said.

 

In Iowa, Dimock said, the polls could have been used to promote "strategic voting" like the Edwards-Kucinich deal. One poll number that more likely influenced the outcome, he said, was Dean's high "unfavorability" rating, a factor that could have figured in voter judgments about his electability.

 

But, for the most part, Dimock said, poll results are only "influential at the margins." That's pretty much the way Zogby, the president of Zogby International, saw it, too.

 

"It's hard to measure their (the polls) effect," he said in a telephone interview. In Iowa, he said, "the polls framed it as a close race" and that may well have affected turnout.

 

The large turnout that resulted played a major role in swamping the strong organizations that Dean and Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri counted on for victory.

 

In the end, Zogby's final poll for MSNBC and Reuters last weekend underestimated the surge for Kerry and Edwards. Kerry won with 38 percent; the Zogby poll had him at 25 percent. Edwards finished second with 32 percent. Zogby had him at 21 percent, 1 percentage point below Dean, who finished third with 18 percent.

 

"Polls," Zogby said, "can't lead people around by the nose. The best we can do is measure trends. I'm not going to argue that polls don't affect an election. But do they decide outcomes? No."

 

Dave Nagle, a Dean supporter and former Iowa congressman and state Democratic chairman, had a different take. Zogby's poll did influence the result, Nagle said, but he gave Zogby a pass on responsibility for Dean's defeat. The Vermont governor was slipping, he said, and the polls caught that and accelerated his slide.

 

"Did the polls affect the outcome? Sure they did," Nagle said. "They fed into the result. They influenced independents and people who hadn't made up their minds. Many of them saw the polls and wanted to be with a winner.

 

"But you can't say John Zogby brought down Dean," Nagle added, suggesting the brash Vermonter's wounds were self-inflicted.

 

Jan. 22, 2004

http://www.newhousenews.com/archive/farmer012204.html

People are followers, so I can see some on the fence voters being taken in by the popular candidate from the polls.