A majority of people could want an anti-establishment candidate as president and we would never know it because the public is never asked who they actually want.
Pollsters are in effect limiting the choices of the public. Polls — which should be a method by which the public, rather than the parties or the pundits, articulates its desires — are crafted in such a way as to solidify the status of the “major candidates.” Then those polls are reported on over and over again, further canonizing the position of those candidates in the name of public opinion.
Citizens who might want to support an independent effort then hold back. A self-fulfilling prophecy comes to pass as the “major party” candidates tighten their grip on people who are often drawn to them by little more than their fear of the other “major party.” Breaking into the system is virtually impossible largely because pollsters have — consciously or not — incorporated the “greater evil” fear into the polls. A significant number of people may want an independent or “third party” candidate and we wouldn’t know it because the public isn’t asked.
I’d also suggested that polling could be done using other forms of voting.
Well, I was just on a zoom presentation with “A Time To Break Silence” and one of the other speakers was Hayden Sasswood of the Equal Vote Coalition.
He highlighted polling data from 2012 I’d never seen before from New York City using various voting systems. Sure enough, Stein and other non-duopoly candidates had their numbers spike using Approval (you can “approve” of more than one candidate) and Score (rate each candidate from 1 to 10) voting.
This indicates that half of all voters would support Stein, up from less than 5 percent with “Choose One” polling.
Now, this is in New York City, but I think the underlying point is there: Imagine that this polling was done regularly and then reported on. People seeking change from the duopoly would not feel isolated and the numbers for such candidates would swell.
This is what VotePact.org gets at. Because the pollsters aren’t doing it and the establishment (or even most “alternative”) media are not going to get this out there, it’s up to people to do so.
People are hungry for something else.
Along similar lines, this morning I was listening to C-Span in the car and phoned in (around 23:30; it was remarkably easy). I challenged the pollster Michael O’Neil on the points above — or tried to, but I was cut off before completing my argument.
O’Neil was long-winded, but like most pollsters I’ve come across, he ultimately expressed typical dismissal for what the public wants — just talked about polling “predicting” outcomes. He didn’t deal with the crux of my argument.
Indeed, his response was basically the same as I’ve gotten in years past from establishment pollsters. “Polling” is a fraud. It pretends it’s out to gather info on public opinion but it’s actually putting the public in a straitjacket in service of the establishment duopoly. And then it congratulates itself on its alleged predictive powers (which even then don’t always materialize) after they have molded the public “will”.
This is all central to my VotePact.org voting strategy.
Also see this piece of mine which features an RCV poll, I’d be interested in online polls using Score, Approval and other systems: “How Polling Should Be Done: • Voter as Tiebreaker • Ranked Choice Voting“.