Polling has a strong allure in an election for many reasons.  It appears to make it possible to call the “horse race” before the steeds come through the home stretch.  It also has the appearance of objectivity, since it is supposedly based on a dark science that few people know enough to question.  Polls are a story that falls into the laps of reporters, allowing them to write a piece on an election without any more work than reading a column of numbers.

Yet polls are nowhere near adequate for describing an election, even without getting into the difficulties of the math.  Like so many things in our world today, polling fails because of a flawed assumption at the heart of it long before the technical stuff that jazzes it into what appears to be irrefutable facts.  It’s not simply a matter of who is included in the poll, either – it’s the simple fact that democracy belongs to those who show up, not a percentage of a population.

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A political campaign is tricky.  You have to get your message out and keep control of the situation, but at the same time you have to let it go and roll with the punches.  It’s a lot like any other advertising campaign in a mixed old/new media world, but with a strong deadline and high stakes that fire passions.  More importantly, the conduct of that campaign itself is often more important than the candidate because, like new media, you’re not just selling a product but a relationship.

The Governor’s race in Minnesota is crackling with a very good example of what not to do right now.  The Emmer campaign is so consistently far over the top in their efforts to control their message that they are clearly doing great harm to their candidate – and calling into question their philosophy, policy, and identity.

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Imagine a mob descending on the capitol.  They aren’t armed with pitchforks and torches – no, many of them are holding the cotton candy they bought to keep the kids from getting too bored and whiny.  They aren’t angry, except maybe at the sitter who canceled at the last minute to go play disk golf with her boyfriend.  This is a concerned mob, a group of people who aren’t shouting slogans mostly because they find “Hey, Hey” chants to be a bit embarrassing.  Their list of demands is not long – all they want is for people to think for a change.

This is the Rally to Restore Sanity.  30 October 2010.  Be there – if it’s not too much trouble.

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