By John Pierce
1-0. That was the result of my recent, unscientific poll about whether or not there is too much polling.
I only polled myself. It came after reading about polls, polls and more polls.
Most of the recent polling relates to the Republican presidential nomination process. Iowans were nearly polled to death. But that’s over for now. Mitt beat Rick (not the Texan, but the other one) by a touchdown and a two-point conversion.
I’m not sure if the polls predicted such a close contest. Now the political polling focuses more heavily on New Hampshire, South Carolina and elsewhere.
But news media like to poll readers/listeners/malcontents about all sorts of weird stuff. The Chattanooga Times-Free Press, for example, recently asked: “Should any means be used to save a soul?”
The question arose from news reports about a controversial church that seeks to reach urban youth through a raucous nightclub. According to the poll, respondents (by a 68 to 31 percent margin) said, “Yes.”
Really? Shall we bring back the Crusades?
Another daily poll of readers asked: “Do you think life will get better in 2012?” (I didn’t stick around to gauge the degree of fatalism.)
My guess is most respondents to such polls are the same persons who fill comment streams on various news sites with ignorance and inaccuracies. So while real surveys by Gallup and others provide very insightful and helpful information, these daily media polls tend to reveal only that the least thoughtful are often the most vocal.
And, therefore, I am uninterested in such results. By a clear margin of 1-0.
Director of the Jesus Worldview Initiative at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee and former executive editor and publisher at Good Faith Media.
