| With a month to go before the election, we're finally starting to see Texas get its fair share of polling. As a traditionally underpolled state, our state's media (and bloggers) obsess over each morsel of polling information we get. Campaigns can go months trumpeting (or downplaying) whatever the most recent poll says. As a result campaigns and the media have never really had the opportunity to work an environment where polling is ubiquitous enough that polls get viewed in the aggregate and don't have to picked apart one by one.
The power of polls in an underpolled state makes this Politico story even more salient- "Polls become another spin weapon".
For an underpolled state like Texas, polls can be an especially powerful narrative weapon. When I was working on the Rick Noriega for US Senate campaign in 2008, there were multiple times where a poll would show a single digit race and the campaign had a good week of fundraising and momentum- all of which would be halted weeks, if not days later by another poll showing a gaping double digit deficit against Cornyn. It's just an example, one which many campaigns in Texas, even Bill White, have had to deal with.
Sure, it's useful to keep up with the polls to glean insight, but there are multiple sites which are aggregating those polls and smoothing out the individual problems in any given poll- the three major of which I've posted below for the Texas Governor's race (though these do not include today's Texas Lyceum poll which would improve all these charts for Bill White).
Pollster.com average (since August 1)
Real Clear Politics average
FiveThirtyEight Projected Election Results
Point being- we shouldn't get emotionally caught up with each poll that comes out in Texas in the next 30 days. There's not enough time to analyze each for varying degrees of validity, partisanship, or quality though bloggers and the traditional press will do their best to do so.
It's up to each individual activist to decide how much they want to pay attention to polls or how much they are going to let it affect their level of volunteering in the next 30 days.
My advice- stay informed, but stick to your gameplan just the same as if there were no polls at all. |
