Pollsters Love Asking "What If?"

senior, cast, sling, bone, break, fracture, elderly, man, osteoporosis, stock, 4x3 / istockphoto

By Kathy Frankovic, CBS News director of surveys

---

George Gallup, who did so much to develop and popularize polling from the 1930's until his death in 1984, certainly loved his job. He once said that pollsters have the best job on earth. As he put it, "We can try out any idea in the world!"

He certainly got to try out many ideas. As early as 1958, he started asking whether Americans would support an African-American candidate for president. He invented many of the questions that have become familiar: Do you approve or disapprove of the way the President is handling his job? What do you think is the most important problem facing the country? And so on.

His enthusiasm for explaining how the polling mechanism could be used for democracy made him the discipline's greatest salesman, both in the U.S. and abroad. But sometimes trying out those ideas may put us just outside of the real world and into what might be called Pollsterland.

It's not just that we can ask questions about Iraq, or health care, or immigration, or baseball's Barry Bonds, all of which are aspects of current reality. But we also can ask questions about an invented reality, such as: What would happen if . . .?

The most famous "if" question is about what someone might do "if the presidential election were held today." Today, that means asking voters about what they will be doing nearly 500 days in the future. But at least the election is a real event, with a real scheduled date. Who the candidates will be, of course, is a different matter. All the questions about how someone might vote "if" Republican candidate X ran against Democratic candidate Y are hypothetical; they can't (and don't) predict what public opinion would be even on the day after X and Y (whomever they are) become their party's nominees.

These days pollsters are looking ahead to the start of the nomination process; after all, the first caucuses in Iowa are closer — only a little over 200 days away. There is no national primary. So while some pollsters ask respondents in national surveys whom they would vote for in their home state's event, others ask simply which candidate people want nominated.

Pollsters control the choices. With eight active Democratic and 10 active Republican candidates, the full list is long to begin with. Some pollsters, including CBS News, limit the list. But others make it even longer. Fred Thompson, the actor and former Republican Senator from Tennessee, has been on many pollsters' lists since March. Thompson is likely to announce very soon. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich also is included on some lists. Gingrich has expressed interest, but he still seems a long way from announcing. On the Democratic side, former Vice President Al Gore often appears on candidate horserace lists, even though he has said frequently that he is not a candidate.

---

Listen To This Week's Poll Positions

---

Those additions make long lists even longer. Adding identifying information, like a candidate's current or most recent job title, makes them longer yet. To ask about the full Democratic list (with Gore) takes 67 words, while the full Republican is 83 words long!

Test runs with hypothetical candidates happen most often when there's a significant level of dissatisfaction with the actual choices. This year, however, there isn't much dissatisfaction on the Democratic side. In the May CBS News/New York Times Poll, 63 percent of registered Democratic primary voters said they were satisfied with their already announced candidates. On the Republican side, however, most primary voters are looking for other choices: only 38 percent of registered Republican primary voters said they were satisfied.

There have been other elections where dissatisfaction with actual candidates was high, and a candidate who's not running becomes part of the polling landscape. Remember Ross Perot? Pollsters starting asking about him in March 1992, just as the rumors began about his possible candidacy. But they did more than ask about Perot as a third party candidate. In June, for the last primaries, pollsters ran a hypothetical election. Both of the two (then-existing) exit polls included a question that pitted Perot against the Democratic and Republican candidates who were actually on the ballot.

Perot won the Republican primaries that day – at least in Pollsterland – and ran even with Bill Clinton in the Democratic ones. And the voters really were dissatisfied. At the time, a Times Mirror Center poll found only 6 percent of Americans who were very satisfied with the presidential candidates. Only 31 percent said they were even fairly satisfied. Sixty-one percent were not.

But pollsters' search for someone else can happen even on Election Day, when it can't matter. In polls conducted right before the 1996 election, barely half of registered voters were satisfied with the choices. So pollsters gave them another. According to the VNS exit poll, if Colin Powell had replaced Bob Dole as the Republican candidate in the 1996 presidential election, he would have defeated Bill Clinton by 12 points. If not necessarily in the real world, at least in Pollsterland!
By Kathy Frankovic

[guysdigdirt]

Someone asked Hillary "If you won the election adn were now the President of the US, what would you do first?" She answered that she "would pull the troops out of Iraq". If any of you saw this yesterday you would see that the Democrats in attendance went wild with clapping and merry making. No one seemed to ask her why she would do as her husband did and lie to the American People.

She said she would pull the troops out and you and I might think she meant all of them. But she deliberatly did not say she would pull them all out. Recently she told another, smaller, group of VIPs that she sees a need to have US troops in Iraq. In fact her words were "if I am elected President for two consecutive terms, I see a need to have US troops in Iraq even after I am no longer President". She sees a need to have US troops in Iraq for another 10 years and still she lead the US people to believe she would pull them all out as her first act as President.

She is just like her husband. A liar who will do anything to get the power and then once she has it will do anything she wants with it and the American people be darned!!

[guysdigdirt]

Dirt,

I think most people know what I am saying.
You seem to be the only one that has trouble with it.
Posted by sjc_1
-------------------

You are so quick, calling me dirt, wow, your mom must be so proud of the steps you are making.

I guess if you think that most people understand what you are saying you must be right then. Oh, and that is what you get for thinking.

[sjc_1]

"You need to let the rest of us know what the voices are saying to you so we can make sense of what you write."

Dirt,

I think most people know what I am saying.
You seem to be the only one that has trouble with it.

[guysdigdirt]

Someone asked Hillary "If you won the election adn were now the President of the US, what would you do first?" She answered that she "would pull the troops out of Iraq". If any of you saw this yesterday you would see that the Democrats in attendance went wild with clapping and merry making. No one seemed to ask her why she would do as her husband did and lie to the American People.

She said she would pull the troops out and you and I might think she meant all of them. But she deliberatly did not say she would pull them all out. Recently she told another, smaller, group of VIPs that she sees a need to have US troops in Iraq. In fact her words were "if I am elected President for two consecutive terms, I see a need to have US troops in Iraq even after I am no longer President". She sees a need to have US troops in Iraq for another 10 years and still she lead the US people to believe she would pull them all out as her first act as President.

She is just like her husband. A liar who will do anything to get the power and then once she has it will do anything she wants with it and the American people be darned!!

[guysdigdirt]

After years of tax cuts, how many people can say they've seen more tangible income in their paychecks?

Posted by hypnotoad72
---------------------

Most people do see it. But another way people see it is by having a paycheck. Smaller tax bite = more to spend = more jobs to supply things to spend it on.

[guysdigdirt]

Pollsters could have asked Bush "what if you had a brain?" in 2000. I think the answer would have been, "I will just get good people". This is a code phrase for, I do not need a brain, my daddy and his friends have money and power.
Posted by sjc_1
----------------------

You need to let the rest of us know what the voices are saying to you so we can make sense of what you write.

[sjc_1]

Pollsters could have asked Bush "what if you had a brain?" in 2000. I think the answer would have been, "I will just get good people". This is a code phrase for, I do not need a brain, my daddy and his friends have money and power.

[donnie900]

I don't know why they call it a debate. Its not a debate. At least not like the ones I had in highschool. Candidates got their exclusive appeals. Something unique about each one of them, that the public can read as good or bad, relevant or irrelevant. And they should be given that opportunity to articulate, sponsor free, what they're going to do when they get elected. So we can hold them to it.

[miketa2]

It's nice to hear people are waking up to the reality of truth. As the age old saying goes: "Don't believe everything you hear and only half of what you read" If the election were today a Republican would win. When the election is next year I still feel the same. Why? Simple. Clinton is one of the biggest liars there is and I'm sorry to say Obama is not qualified. Neither characteristics will change in 10 months. I vote for Guiliani or Thompson.

[guysdigdirt]

Truth is, every politician who has a chance to get into office lies. If they do not the sheep will follow whatever they like that they hear even if it is impossible to come true. The money donators have the politicians in their pocket too.

it is a sad situation.