Washington Post poll shows Cuccinelli ahead, but political polls are far from being destiny

If political polls have taught Americans anything, it’s not to put more than a grain of salt into the results when the actual election in question is months away. And so it is with a recent Washington Post poll that shows Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli ahead of Democratic Party candidate Terry McAuliffe, 46 to 41 percent.

The Post goes on to make the earth-shaking revelation that “those numbers may change before then…” Wise conclusion, indeed.

Never mind the ludicrousness of our country’s poll-crazed obsessions that make as much sense as worrying about whether or not we’ll do good at our upcoming job interview. That is, we don’t know how future events will shape out, so what’s the use in worrying?

So to with political polls, so much can happen between now and tomorrow, let alone now and 2 months from now, that political polling so far out shouldn’t make the headlines of even third-rate news outlets.

But as rational, scientifically-inclined Westerners, we tend to believe (or want to believe) that our efforts at understanding the social and physical world in the present will help us understand our social and physical world in the future. The social world in particular is, however, something that even the most repressive governments in human history could not completely control, and therefore know.

This isn’t to say that political polls don’t have their place, that political polls are not helpful at all to the political candidates or their prospective voters. It is to argue that the importance that our society (or at least the tame-stream media) has put on political polls months out from upcoming elections has oversized their importance when looked at more thoughtfully.

The sports motto “That’s why the game is played” is applicable to most things in life, including politics and political campaigns. Political polls are not destiny nor are they even always a good quasi-predictor of election results. They are a tool to get a broad sense of where each political candidate and their campaign stands.

The problem is that more than a few Americans (and Virginians) see political polls as destiny. They’re not, they are imperfect tools made by imperfect individuals to predict an imperfect contest between at least two imperfect candidates and their campaigns. That’s a lot of imperfection and a lot of space for unforeseen events to reshape a political race in the blink of an eye.