But here I am, pumping up the polls when I still have great questions about them. Polls do intrude on elections. Polls showing a candidate ahead will encourage that candidate's workers and stimulate his supporters to contribute money. Such a poll at the time of the election will also encourage a candidate's backers to get out and vote. On the other hand, the vote will tend to fall off for a candidate who is shown by polls to be behind - particularly if he appears well behind.
Polls also can be wrong.
Their interviewers simply may be asking the wrong questions. Or voters may not be revealing how they really feel. During the Minnesota Democratic presidential primary of 1956, when Adlai Stevenson was supposed to demolish Estes Kefauver - according to the Minnesota poll, which had been in business for years and had never, repeat never, been wrong. Senator Kefauver did that sneaky deed in an upset that surprised the nation at the time. To Minnesota's farmers, Mr. Stevenson had looked and sounded like a city slicker.