The honest politician isn't going to change their position based on polls. Mr. Rabinowitz says polling can be used to find out what segments of the public support what issues, and to decide which of those specific demographic segments the candidate should make an appeal to. But political scientist Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution in Washington sees another, more dubious use for polling. You see efforts to use focus groups combined with polls not as a way to find out what people want, but as a way to sell people what you want to sell them. Mr. Rabinowitz doesn't necessarily see the downside to that approach.
People think it's conflicting, giving a different speech to different groups.
But it's really finding the nuances that an individual group will respond to. You say tomato, I say focus group. You always have to shred your trash. You can't use cell phones because people drive around with scanners. When campaigns cost millions and personal skeletons in a candidate's past can ruin them, it's no wonder consultants resort to such methods.