I have to profess that ever since watching The West Wing I have been fascinated with the US political process. This is strange in that (1) I am not in the US and (2) where I am I do not get to vote either.

As such, the twists and turns in this 2008 election cycle so far have been interesting and exasperating. The one thing that is universally disheartening is the tone of the discourse on all the blogs that I read in this matter. Not so much the blog posts themselves as the comment threads attached to them. Talk about extremes from both sides of the aisle.

Especially the best place to keep up to date with raw polling data seems to have both sides alternately cheering and booing identically depending on how the numbers fall.

What is particularly funny (to watch) and annoying (from the perspective of an intelligent and mostly impartial observer) is how both sides almost universally try to read the numbers like every change in them has a deep and hidden meaning... talk about reading tea leaves!

In this election as all presidential elections there are very few absolute givens:

  • California will go into the Dem column
  • Most of the north-west and east coast will also be Dem
  • Texas will go into the Rep column
  • Most of the heartland will also be Rep

And this doesn't even take polls to divine.

What most seem to forget is that poll numbers only reflect what the people that were called are prepared to admit on the phone to a pollster.

Was a representative sample called? That cannot really be conclusively answered because that depends on the relative turn-out of democratic and republican sympathisers in November.

Did they tell the truth? Well, talking to a person (or for automated polls, which in the moment on some psychological level still feel like talking to a human) and anonymously voting in the privacy of a voting booth are two entirely different things.

On the one hand many professing support for Obama over the phone may very well end up having some latent reservations about a black president in that moment they have to ultimately choose in the booth. You can argue about that being racist, but that doesn't change the fact that people are free to vote on any basis they personally see fit.

On the other hand many professing support for McCain to a pollster could just as easily find themselves in the booth with a sudden doubt about whether the future would really be any different from the past in a way that is meaningful to them.

In the end the polls are just numbers with relatively little meaning that implicitly translates to a national level, and short of either side really polling well outside the margin of a possible opposite outcome I'll just sit back and enjoy the fireworks in the blogs.