Elections just won’t be the same without polls
There’s an old joke that 82.6 percent of statistics are made up on the spot.
Toss that one out at a dinner party or a coffee klatch and see how many get it.
Truth is, stats have power. Talk about whether a corporation is doing well or poorly and it means little, but announce the latest quarterly numbers for earnings-before-interest-taxation-depreciation-and- amortization, and you’re well into MBA country.
Same thing for public opinion polls. Was a time when they gave us an honest-to-god snapshot of what people were thinking on a given day, especially during election campaigns.