A Place in the Polls

"Unless something happens to shake the process and skew turnout, George Bush is our nominee. It's going to be real difficult for Bob Dole to overcome some of these numbers." That statement, by an uncommitted Republican strategist in last week's Washington Post, is a common appraisal of how the 1988 presidential election has unfolded.

First, a field of six candidates is narrowed down to a two-man race. Then a front-runner is chosen by widespread media acclamation before even a single vote is cast. The remaining candidates are forced to campaign less against the favorite than against the polls which dominate the nominating procedures of both parties.

The presidential preference poll, once a curious way of measuring public opinion, has in recent years become so essential to the electoral process that it now exerts a harmful influence upon how we choose our nation's leaders. Rather than reflecting public opinion, polls--by narrowing our choices--have begun to shape it.

Months ago media pollsters declared the Republican race to be a contest between Vice President Bush and Senate minority leader Dole, pushing the lesserknown candidates out of the spotlight. Following former frontrunner Gary Hart's withdrawal last May, the Democratic race became a desperate search for a clear leader, extending even to non-candidates such as New York Governor Mario Cuomo. With none of the remaining seven candidates commanding a broad national following, they were soon referred to as "The Seven Dwarfs."

The most obvious danger in the media's use of polls lies in the tendency to classify candidates into two tiers: the front-runners and the dark horses. Early in a campaign, the media categorizes certain candidates as electable because they are well-known or receive favorable ratings from early polling data. The remaining candidates are categorized as unelectable also-rans.

Strategists at several "second-tier" campaigns claim that most media polls are limited and misleading. The surveys are targeted toward "likely" voters or caucus-goers--an unscientific designation based on party affiliation and previous voting history. According to Diane Weiland, press secretary to Rev. Jesse Jackson's campaign, "A lot of people are new and will not have voted before and therefore won't show up on traditional polls." Jackson considers registering new voters an important objective in his campaign.

Instead of accurately depicting the course of a campaign, media polls merely register a snapshot of constantly fluctuating popularity. Media polls fail to gauge more important factors, such as the willingness of a supporter to switch to another candidate or the organizational strength of a campaign. The more cautious and probing surveys conducted by the campaigns themselves take into consideration these factors, which are often key to the voters' final decision.

Katie Boyle, deputy press secretary for the Dole campaign, admits that their latest in-house poll shows as little as a 3 percent difference between the two candidates--although most Iowa polls show Dole to be enjoying a wide margin of support over Bush. Media polls in caucus states, she says, "should all be taken with a grain of salt. They don't measure organization. Smart campaigns don't pay much attention to them."

And commanding a clear lead in the media polls can carry as many disadvantages as benefits. A failure to meet high expectations means defeat even when a candidate has finished first. Gov. Michael S. Dukakis is expected to win handily in the neighboring New Hampshire primary, but nevertheless cannot risk a strong second place showing by any other candidate.

In 1968 and 1972 the campaigns of underdogs Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern were given enormous boosts by their New Hampshire performances. Both candidates lost the primaries, but won the public relations battle when they finished better than expected. Walter Mondale won the Iowa caucuses by a large margin in 1984, but Gary Hart emerged instantly into the spotlight by beating the odds with a second place. Hart then became the media-appointed alternative to Mondale, shoving John Glenn, the previous number two candidate, out of the race.

ALTHOUGH campaigns would prefer to sit on the upper part of the polling spectrum, the campaign of former Arizona Gov. Bruce Babbitt has found some strategic advantages at the bottom. Mike Muir, Babbitt's campaign manager for New Hampshire, claims his candidate has gained "tremendous recognition" speaking his mind on controversial issues since he does not have to worry about his place in the polls (mainly, because he barely has one), while other candidates are restricted by the fear of jeopardizing their rank. "The governor's stand on the deficit has received more play simply because of the contrast offered by other candidates," he said.

Media polling can play a positive role, however. It can show the effectiveness of a campaign's advertising or a candidate's thematic approaches, and it can sense how trends are developing throughout the course of a campaign. But in presenting the polls, the media, more often than not, clouds its insight into campaign issues with a barrage of hard numbers. Gerry Chervinsky of Cambridge-based KRC Research, a national polling organization, says, "the way the media looks at polls is confusing. Comparing different polls up and down, day to day is nonsense."

More crucial is the effect of polls on our roles in the electoral process. By relying on polls we sacrifice our most important right as voters--the right to choose the candidates. Excessive polling inevitably creates the illusion that certain candidates are electable while others are not. By election day, most candidates are not regarded as acceptable alternatives. Our votes are reduced to nothing more than a referendum on the popularity of front-runners chosen by the newspapers and television stations.

Jesse Jackson, a victim of the electability debate, explains the problem: People need to move from saying "Jackson is good, but he can't win," to saying "Jackson is good, therefore he should win."