posted 2007/08/06 at 14:52
Survey of public attitudes makes Kucinich the frontrunner (kucinich.us)
Now, Web polls like this always need to be taken with a healthy dose of salt. Not only don't they really count as surveying (since the participants are self-selecting), but they can be easily influenced by campaigns or third parties who direct people to fill these things out and tilt the vote for or against a particular candidate. I get enough stuff from the Kucinich campaign that I think I would know if they themselves tried to influence this particular poll, but they never sent me anything about it, and I only know of the poll because I went to the Kucinich for President Website a few days ago. On the other hand, I've followed the poll's real-time statistics regularly since then, and it's been hard not to notice Gravel's showing in the poll leap way up in that time; given how many pro-Gravel comments seem to get posted on the Kucinich campaign's YouTube videos, it kind of seems like the Gravel campaign may be targeting Kucinich supporters for whatever reason.
Still, I think that on the balance this poll does shed a reasonable degree of light on just how much political campaigns these days get judged more on flash and style and money than on the actual issues themselves. (Note that the top Republican vote-getter in the poll is Ron Paul.) This isn't to say that the person who is elected doesn't matter any -- there could be someone out there with whom I agree 100% on every issue, but if that person seems either incapable of making the tough decisions required of a president or unable to successfully complete some of the tasks of the position (such as dealing with other world leaders on issues of global policy), then s/he is unlikely to get my vote. However, a poll like this, as problematic as its methods may be, still shows just to what extent image and money have overtaken the actual issues as reasons for voting and/or campaigning for a given politician.
For the reasons I listed in the above paragraph, I don't think I could support an actual election system where people are voted into office solely based on their stance on issues in the kind of "blind taste test" that this poll purports to portray. I still can't help but think, though, of how different this campaign season might be if the press hadn't turned things into the Clinton and Obama Show (with John Edwards in a small supporting role) so early, and if they actually gave candidates like Kucinich and Gravel a fair shake. Don't even get me started on the media's portrayal of third party candidates. The fact that Kucinich may not be getting a fair shake just because corporate media doesn't like him or people want to rag on him for his physical appearance just irks me to no end, and I'd like to see a big-media outlet like CNN try doing a poll like this just to see what kinds of results their more formal research methods produce. (Knowing them, of course, they'd probably just do results for the "big candidates.")
copyright © 2008 Sean Shannon