Every five minutes, some new poll pops up showing a candidate three or four points ahead of or behind where we thought they were. OR how likeable or unlikeable they are. Or their popularity as a second choice. Or their chances of beating other world leaders in a poker match.
Seriously folks? They don't matter. People get so excited about every little percentage point. Campaigns aren't about numbers until the very end, and even that's occasionally uncertain (cough cough 2000).
I remember Election Day 2004, sitting at the folding table that served as my desk in the Kerry Campaign headquarters. Pre-Election Day polls were promising for us. But at the end of the day, you know how it went down.
Prior to the 2004 General Election, Howard Dean went into Iowa a hands-down favorite. You know how that went down.
By design, polls give an indication of opinion at a specific moment in time. By the time half of the polls out there have been published, we are three to five days from the time the poll was actually taken. How many times do you change your mind in a given week?
There's the reliability of polling samples, of pollsters, margins of error. Virtually the only thing certain about polls is that they will not predict an exact outcome.
The Des Moines Register released the Iowa Poll a few days ago which indicated that Barack Obama had surged ahead of Hillary Clinton. A few hours later, more polls emerged indicating that the race was still as tight as ever. Then the candidates fought about which poll was more reliable. The answer? None of them.
Polls do keep things exciting, but they have a tendency to set up false hope. By tomorrow, who knows what they'll look like?
My advice: pay attention to what the candidates are actually saying in these last few hours. The fever pitch of the Iowa Caucuses gives you insight into what we can expect from our nominee in the last hours of the General Election.