Election Polls Quotes & Sayings

If there is to be responsible party government, the party label must be something more than a mere device for securing office. Unless those who are elected under the same party designation are willing to assume sufficient responsibility and exhibit sufficient loyalty and coherence, so that they can cooperate with each other in the support of the broad general principles, of the party platform, the election is merely a mockery, no decision is made at the polls, and there is no representation of the popular will. — Calvin Coolidge

Although few people will remember 3 June 1993, it was a landmark in South African history. On that day, after months of negotiations at the World Trade Centre, the multiparty forum voted to set a date for the country's first national, nonracial, one-person-one-vote election: 27 April 1994. For the first time in South African history, the black majority would go to the polls to elect their own leaders. — Nelson Mandela

There is only one opinion poll that I am interested in and that is the one that will take place on election day. — Michael Howard

A Christian's first duty is to God. It then follows, as a matter of course, that it is his duty to carry his Christian code to the polls and vote them ... If Christians should vote their duty to God at the polls, they would carry every election, and do it with ease ... it would bring about a moral revolution that would be incalculably beneficent. It would save the country. — Mark Twain

Any poll is a picture of an unfinished horse race except the Election Day polls. — William J. Clinton

Remember one thing as South Africa prepares to go to the polls this week and the world grapples with the ascendancy of the African National Congress leader Jacob Zuma: South Africa is not Zimbabwe.
In South Africa, no one doubts that Wednesday's elections will be free and fair. While there is an unacceptable degree of government corruption, there is no evidence of the wholesale kleptocracy of Robert Mugabe's elite. While there has been the abuse of the organs of state by the ruling ANC, there is not the state terror of Mugabe's Zanu-PF. And while there is a clear left bias to Zuma's ANC, there is no suggestion of the kind of voluntarist experimentation that has brought Zimbabwe to its knees. — Mark Gevisser

Word is sort of spreading by itself, largely among young people. And if word gets out that young people can actually come out to the polls and, in fact, take over this election in order to liberate themselves from life-long debts, we could actually win. — Jill Stein

My start in politics was watching my parents go to the polls on election day. It reminded me that being an active, engaged citizen and voter is critical to the success of our democracy. — Josh Earnest

According to various polls conducted, the single most important issue in last week's election was not the Iraq War, not the War on Terror, not even the economy. It was the cultural war. — John Doolittle

A lot of people want me to run for things, for a lot of high offices. The polls always show that I win any election that I'm in. But I don't have any real interest in running for office. I'm more interested in supporting people. — Donald Trump

In Washington, politicians worry about their 'base.' About polls. About ideology. About raising money. About re-election. They measure their future in two- or six-year increments. — Mike Barnicle

Democracy is a proposal (rarely realized) about decision making; it has little to do with election campaigns. Its promise is that political decisions be made after, and in the light of, consultation with the governed. This is dependent upon the governed being adequately informed about the issues in question, and upon the decision-makers having the capacity and will to listen and take account of what they have heard. Democracy should not be confused with the 'freedom' of binary choices, the publication of opinion polls or the crowding of people into statistics. These are its pretences. Today the fundamental decisions, which effect the unnecessary pain increasingly suffered across the planet, have been and are taken unilaterally without any open consultation or participation. Both — John Berger

If there were an election today, Netanyahu would win. Yet, his standing in the polls is also a reflection of the weakness of Ehud Olmert, the current prime minister - who stands at 2 percent in a recent poll - and the enduring weaknesses of the Labor Party. — Dennis Ross

Of course I base all my election promises and policies on opinion polls — Kevin Rudd

Let me tell you the polls that count, and those are the polls a couple of weeks before the election. That's when the pollsters worry about holding onto their credibility. Those are the polls that everybody remembers. — Rush Limbaugh

Perhaps election fever is developing into something more like sleeping sickness, as the utter boredom of a contest in which almost all the attention seems to be on personalities and polls wears us all down. I just wish they would get on with it. — Norman Tebbit

I always lose the election in the polls, and I always win it on election day. — Benjamin Netanyahu

This intelligence, or what I'll call "the wisdom of crowds," is at work in the world in many different guises. It's the reason the Internet search engine Google can scan a billion Web pages and find the one page that has the exact piece of information you were looking for. It's the reason it's so hard to make money betting on NFL games, and it helps explain why, for the past fifteen years, a few hundred amateur traders in the middle of Iowa have done a better job of predicting election results than Gallup polls have. — James Surowiecki

Journalism is one of the devices whereby industrial autocracy keeps its control over political democracy; it is the day-by-day, between-elections propaganda, whereby the minds of the people are kept in a state of acquiescence, so that when the crisis of an election comes, they go to the polls and cast their ballots for either one of the two candidates of their exploiters. — Upton Sinclair

The U.S. alleges it wants to democratize [the Middle East] whilst it seeks to reverse election results not legally or through polls, but by force, fostering chaos and supporting, financing and arming the corrupt. — Khaled Mashal

Like every thoughtful parent in every age of history, Neil consoled himself, My generation failed, but this new one is going to change the entire world, and go piously to the polls even on rainy election-days, and never drink more than one cocktail, and end all war. — Sinclair Lewis

Last month, the Iraqi people went to the polls, voting in their first free election in more than 50 years. — John M. McHugh

And on election night I'd go down to city hall in El Paso, Texas and cover the election. In those days, of course, we didn't have exit polls. You didn't know who had won the election until they actually counted the votes. I thought that was exciting too. — Sam Donaldson

If Christians should vote their duty to God at the polls, they would carry every election, and do it with ease. They would elect every clean candidate in the United States, and defeat every soiled one. Their prodigious power would be quickly realized and recognized, and afterward there would be no unclean candidates upon any ticket, and graft would cease. — Mark Twain

If I were afraid of polls, I never would've been elected in two landslide elections, leading a highest percentage in our state's last election for governor. If I were afraid of polls, we wouldn't have privatized our charity hospital system, we wouldn't cut our state budget 26%, wouldn't have cut over 30,000 state government bureaucrats, wouldn't have done statewide school choice. Here's the real record. — Bobby Jindal

There is some good news for John McCain. According to the latest polls, which came out today, John McCain has started to open up a lead over Barack Obama. This is true. Yeah. The USA Today poll has McCain ahead by ten points. The 'CBS News' poll has the two tied. And the MSNBC poll says that Obama won the election last week. — Conan O'Brien

You'd think experienced political professionals would know better than to place their trust in exit polls, notoriously inaccurate surveys that had John Kerry winning the 2004 election by five points when he actually lost by three. — John Podhoretz