Quotes & Sayings About Polling

The act of smelling something, anything, is remarkably like the act of thinking. Immediately at the moment of perception, you can feel the mind going to work, sending the odor around from place to place, setting off complex repertories through the brain, polling one center after another for signs of re recognition, for old memories and old connection. — Lewis Thomas

In the polling booth narrow self interest wins out over lofty principles. — James Cook

Is there any body of citizens in the country who actually welcome and enjoy a General Election?..YES. Those citizens are schoolchildren ... attending national schools. It may be very cynical, but on the appointed day those Lyceums of lower learning are turned into polling stations, the homes of innocence temporarily become part of the grim apparatus of politics and the scheming of sundry chancers. — Flann O'Brien

New Hampshire polling data are unreliable because, when you call the Granite State's registered Republicans and independents in the middle of dinner and ask them who they're going to vote for, they have a mouth full of mashed potatoes and you can't understand what they say. — P. J. O'Rourke

I know the polling data shows people have a negative view but if you listen to everything out there, you think, my God. We're in such deep trouble. We created more jobs than every other industrial country in the world combined. — Joe Biden

Crazy old people are our entire source of polling information. — P. J. O'Rourke

Congress as a whole is less popular than it's been since polling was invented. — Jim Cooper

The polling of Internet users shows that friends recommendations are the most reliable driver behind purchasing decisions. Right now that market is largely untapped. Facebook and other social networks can allow that to happen. — Yuri Milner

Someone cold, politically calculating with no moral compass who can't be trusted. That's what polling and discussions with voters indicate [about Hillary Clinton]. — Tamara Keith

While it's very hard to know exactly how to measure public opinion there, because there's no really good polling, the fact of the matter is that in all the polls I've seen the vast majority of the Iraqis prefer to be free and are pleased that the coalition freed them. — Paul Bremer

[Boyfriend #8] He left for an internship in Guatamala, a step towards his future career in international affairs. They both cried at the airport. He returned 6 months later and, didn't call. Last year, Jane heard that Bobby, 'Robert' now, was running for Congress. At a recent polling, he wasn't doing so hot in the 30-something-jilted-female demographic. — Shannon Hale

The royalists of the economic order have conceded that political freedom was the business of the government, but they have maintained that economic slavery was nobody's business. They granted that the government could protect the citizen in his right to vote, but they denied that the government could do anything to protect the citizen in his right to work and his right to live. Today we stand committed to the proposition that freedom is no half-and-half affair. If the average citizen is guaranteed equal opportunity in the polling place, he must have equal opportunity in the market place. — Franklin D. Roosevelt

[Donald] Trump is not going to win ... He's losing to Hillary [Clinton] in the latest polling. — Erick Erickson

When considering a candidate for office, almost right up until they enter the polling booth and sometimes even in the booth itself, most voters rely more on what they see and hear themselves in real time than on facts, history, logic, or learned experience. — Quin Hillyer

We now have some years of very reliable polling by Western firms in the Islamic world, in multiple Islamic countries. And invariably, the question that asks, "Do you view U.S. foreign policy as an attack on Islam and Muslims?" is maxed out. Whether it's Jordan or Indonesia or Egypt, you get 80,85 percent of people saying "Yes." — Michael Scheuer

Lucy's polls were sometimes kind of violent. — Charles M. Schulz

Since the topic is science, the non scientists don't get a vote. We shouldn't decide everything by polling the masses. This is the fallacy called Argumentum Ad Numerum, the idea that something is true because great number believe it, as in EAT SHIT, twenty trillions flies can't be wrong! — Bill Maher

I will say we now, in the polling in Wisconsin, much different than many other races, the public didn't perceive that we were getting a fair shake from the media. — Scott McCallum

What most people didn't realize in the Western countries is that here its not a question of having supporters, its a question of getting these votes to the polling stations. — Imran Khan

I think most polling shows that most Americans agree that when it comes to employment that, you know, people should be really judged by, you know, their competency and not, you know, who it is they choose to love or who they're in a relationship with. — Mark Takano

Interestingly, a lot of the polling that I see is not along racial lines, but along generational lines. We are doing better and better among younger people, not so well among older people, whether they're African-American, whether they're white or whether they're Latino. — Bernie Sanders

Ted Cruz has struggled, and Donald Trump, of course, has been the big winner the last two outings. And the polling that we have, some of it is a week old. In fact, I think that's the latest poll suggests that he has a strong lead here. And therefore should be expected to win. — Brit Hume

There's a problem with political polling in that you have so much pressure to do what your client wants you to do and say what your client wants you to say. I've never felt that pressure. I am independent of the political parties. — Frank Luntz

Are people who want this kind of progressive change not turning up at polling stations? Are they not voting for progressive representatives? It's hard to put your finger on why we are where we are. — Scarlett Johansson

Stories come and go. The challenge is to frame the questions that voters will be asking on polling day, such as who has avoided a global depression and worked here to deliver jobs. — Douglas Alexander

Polling is merely an instrument for gauging public opinion. When a president or any other leader pays attention to poll results, he is, in effect, paying attention to the views of the people. Any other interpretation is nonsense. — George Gallup

Even before President [Barack] Obama announced actions aimed at tightening controls on gun purchases, sales were up, partly in reaction to terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino. Gun dealers say the president's initiatives have spurred sales. At the same time, polling shows more than two thirds of Americans support the president's proposals, including a majority of gun owners. — Rachel Martin

Public opinion should not be confused with popular sentiment. Popular sentiment is what people say to one another around their dinner tables. Popular opinion is what they say to callers from polling organizations. — Richard Brookhiser

In Latin America, specialists and polling organisations have, for some time, observed that the extension of formal democracy was accompanied by an increasing disillusionment about democracy and a lack of faith in democratic institutions. — Noam Chomsky

I was the guy that told Bill Clinton he was going to win. I had gotten the final polling numbers. He had a comfortable lead. He was not going to lose. — Paul Begala

If we have abdicated our birthright to scientific progress, we have done so by moving the debate into the realm of political and cultural argument, where we all feel more confident, because it is there that the Gut rules. Held to the standards of that context, any scientific theory is turned into mere opinion. Scientific fact is no more immutable than a polling sample. — Charles P. Pierce

I think there's space in the market for a half-dozen kind of polling analysts. — Nate Silver

also get why people aren't beating down the doors of the polling places. For one, we can't keep track of whether we're supposed to bring a DNA sample or a urine sample this time to prove our identity and residency. It keeps changing. For another, the hours and polling locations in poorer neighborhoods keep getting cut for some reason. It is definitely not at all a conscious effort to repress the poor (read likely Democrat) vote. At all. Ever. (Dear GOP: You guys might want to police your people. They keep openly saying that your goal is to repress the vote of the poor.) Additionally, — Linda Tirado

Maryland first allowed early voting during the 2010 primary elections. In November 2012, more than 16 percent of registered voters in Maryland cast their ballots during the early voting period, and some polling places, particularly in our larger jurisdictions, witnessed early voting lines that were hours long. — Martin O'Malley

Can you picture Ghandi or Buddha storming into the polling place of a local election, shouting, overturning tables, sending the participants fleeing? Now throw a small carnival into the mix, which they also need rout. Impossible. Whoever did this would have to be really committed to clear the building. Fierce and intentional.
This is a breathtaking quality - especially when compared to our present age where doubt masquerades as humility, passivity cloaks as rest, and emasculated indecision poses as laid-back enlightenment. — John Eldredge

o prayer, the alternative is penicillin; to family roots, the alternative is mobility; to reading, the alternative is television; to restraint, the alternative is immediate gratification; to sin, the alternative is psychotherapy; to political ideology, the alternative is popular appeal established through scientific polling. — Neil Postman

The concern in polling is to present the issue in the way it is likely to emerge in a campaign so the candidate has reasonably accurate information about how the public feels about the issue. The difficulty is that it is often not clear how an issue will emerge. — Jeffrey M. Stonecash

People wanted to vote for us but the mechanics of getting the voters to the polling stations we didnt have. We did not have the money most of all . — Imran Khan

I mean you really can target your answers to get the instant response and I think that is a very manipulative type of polling. I really have no time for that worm at all. — Jim Bolger

We can't disrupt polling places anymore, ... It doesn't serve any purpose. It just makes people mad. — John McCain

Strategic Failure: The ill-will caused by drone strikes are not reducing the threat of terrorism but increasing it. While there were many individuals who once had positive views of the United States, new polling shows the anti-American sentiment effect of drone strikes. Such sentiments discredit diplomatic and NGO efforts to address the civilian and political issues in sveral countries, and potentially drive people into the ranks of militant organizations. Finally, in the very long run, they share our concern about the danger of setting precedent. They envision a future where not only do countries have the ability to indiscriminately attack people, but that dangerous and radical non-state actors can do so as well. — Harry Jones

On February 7, 2.2 million Haitians went to the polls and exercised their constitutional right to select a leader. They went by foot, by tap tap and other forms of transportation, traveling hours and standing in line for almost a day to get to their polling places. — Mark Foley

The men and women of our armed forces played an instrumental role in the election process - securing polling sites and providing security - that allowed so many Iraqis the opportunity to vote freely for the first time ever. — John M. McHugh

A man cannot live intensely except at the cost of the self. Now the bourgeois treasures nothing more highly than the self (rudimentary as his may be). And so at the cost of intensity he achieves his own preservation and security. His harvest is a quiet mind which he prefers to being possessed by God, as he does comfort to pleasure, convenience to liberty, and a pleasant temperature to that deathly inner consuming fire. The bourgeois is consequently by nature a creature of weak impulses, anxious, fearful of giving himself away and easy to rule. Therefore, he has substituted majority for power, law for force, and the polling booth for responsibility. — Hermann Hesse

Well, it all began with Democracy. Before we had the vote all the power was in the hands of rich people. If you had money you could get health care, education, look after yourself when you were old, and what democracy did was to give the poor the vote and it moved power from the marketplace to the polling station, from the wallet ... to the ballot. — Tony Benn

Just as it would be madness to settle on medical treatment for the body of a person by taking an opinion poll of the neighbors, so it is irrational to prescribe for the body politic by polling the opinions of the people at large. — Plato

Polling only works in a country without a depressed, frightened populace. Where the public trusts authorities enough to tell them the truth without fear of retribution. — Rick Perlstein

Instead, the polling business gives the patricians an idea of what the mob is thinking, and of how that thinking might be changed or, shall we say, "shaped." It is the essential weapon in the mastery of populism by the elite. — Christopher Hitchens

In a polling conducted by the Wall Street Journal, 11 out of 12 Americans said they oppose the taking of private property, even if it is for public economic good. — Jim Ryun

Just as women fought for the vote, and that very achievement compels us to the polling stations, so women have fought for the right to exercise and participate in sport, and we cannot throw that away. From the women of ancient Greece putting their lives on the line just by watching sport, and the women in Iran who continue to risk imprisonment today by doing the same, to the likes of Kathrine Switzer who campaigned for women to be allowed to run any distance they liked, or Caster Semenya and Dutee Chand who demand the right to participate in sport as women, without being told what their labia should look like. We — Anna Kessel

I think any good government will target on the finishing date, that is, the polling day and make sure that their strategy is strong and in place to get them successfully re-elected. — Alexander Downer

A contrarian approach is just as foolish as a follow-the-crowd strategy. What's required is thinking rather than polling. — Warren Buffett

According to a 2009 Public Policy Polling survey, 39% of people in the United States believe that the United States government should stay out of Medicare (a government-run program). Ten percent of people are not certain or do not believe that Hawaii is a state, and 7% believe that Barack Obama is from France.[51] — Clay A. Johnson

It is true that power corrupts. The hope at the polling stations and the actions of the elected representatives, unfortunately, often turn to be opposite. The power of ballot turns into the power of wallet. Some law-makers become law-breakers. — Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj

I'm one of those goobers who comes out of the polling place actually wearing the 'I VOTED' sticker on my jacket. — Mary Roach

Twenty minutes later, just as Stella thought she was going to collapse with worry and anticipation, her father, the pastor, and Mr. Spencer emerged from the polling station, smiles lighting their faces. And now she saw what she'd expected to see earlier in Mr. Spencer's eyes. They were on fire. — Sharon M. Draper

Inside the polling booth every American man and woman stands as the equal of every other American man and woman. There they have no superiors. There they have no masters save their own minds and consciences. — Franklin D. Roosevelt

Outlets are turning away from phone polling, which can be problematic. For example, we did a poll for NBC around the Ebola crisis; we provided results in 24 hours. Their traditional phone poll would have taken a week to turn around. We're showing people we can do high-quality work: we've proved that with the work we do with the media. — Dave Goldberg

With all of the talk about polling and demographics, I think too many people have lost touch with the human and moral crisis of deportations. Every day, roughly 1,000 people are deported because the Republican leadership of the House of Representatives is denying the majority of the US Congress a chance to vote on citizenship. I will be arrested today because the labor movement stands with the families tragically ripped apart by John Boehner and the House Republicans' embrace of a broken immigration system. — Arlene Holt Baker

However we resolve the issue in our individual homes, the moral challenge is, put simply, to make work visible again: not only the scrubbing and vacuuming, but all the hoeing, stacking, hammering, drilling, bending, and lifting that goes into creating and maintaining a livable habitat. In an ever more economically unequal world, where so many of the affluent devote their lives to ghostly pursuits like stock trading, image making, and opinion polling, real work, in the old-fashioned sense of labor that engages hand as well as eye, that tires the body and directly alters the physical world tends to vanish from sight. The feminists of my generation tried to bring some of it into the light of day, but, like busy professional women fleeing the house in the morning, they left the project unfinished, the debate broken off in mid-sentence, the noble intentions unfulfilled. Sooner or later, someone else will have to finish the job. — Barbara Ehrenreich

Tens of millions of dollars spent, all meant to get Jeb Bush elected president. He currently is polling on average at around 5%. — Chris Hayes

Maintain your rage and enthusiasm for the campaign for the election now to be held and until polling day. — Gough Whitlam

When we start polling people, it's often because we don't trust our own knowing. It feels too shaky and too uncertain. — Brene Brown

Polls could be self-fulfilling prophecies, shaping reality as much as they described it. — Rick Perlstein

Americans now considered the danger of surveillance of greater concern than the danger of terrorism: Overall, 47% say their greater concern about government anti-terrorism policies is that they have gone too far in restricting the average person's civil liberties, while 35% say they are more concerned that policies have not gone far enough to protect the country. This is the first time in Pew Research polling that more have expressed concern over civil liberties than protection from terrorism since the question was first asked in 2004. — Glenn Greenwald

It only takes around 60 seconds to cast your vote in the polling station. 60 seconds to protect the economy, 60 seconds to protect your jobs, 60 seconds to protect the services your family relies on. A lot is at stake during those 60 seconds. — Ross Kemp

We had a few calls saying election precincts had closed early. But it turned out that the callers were in the wrong places. Some people went to the old locations of a church, rather than the new one. We called the polling locations as well as the church pastor and they verified they were still open. — Jane Anderson

Like many of my friends and colleagues, I can't get enough of Obama news; latest polling, speeches, visits, reaction of world leaders. — Lucy Powell

In politics, the connection between what you pay for and what you actually get is problematic at best ...
This is another way of asserting that your vote in the marketplace counts for so much more than your vote in the polling booth. Cast your dollars for the washing machine of your choice and that is what you get
nothing more and nothing less. Pull the lever for the politician of your choice and, most of the time (if you're lucky), you will get some of what you do want and much of what you don't. The votes of a special interest lobby may ultimately cancel out yours. As someone much wiser than me once said, "[P]olitics may not be the oldest profession, but the results are often the same."
— Lawrence W. Reed

Herman Cain is probably well-liked by some of the Republicans because it hides the racist elements of the Republican Party, conservative movement and tea party movement. People like Karl Rove like to keep the racism very covert and so Herman Cain provides this great opportunity so he can say, 'Look: This is not a racist anti-immigrant, anti-female, anti-gay movement. Look: We have a black man.' And look he's polling well and he won a straw poll. — Janeane Garofalo

Surveying American scientists as a whole, Pew Research showed that 33 percent admitted belief in God, while 41 percent were atheists (the rest either didn't answer, didn't know, or believed in a "universal spirit or higher power"). In contrast, belief in God among the general public ran at 83 percent and atheism at only 4 percent. In other words, scientists are ten times more likely to be atheists than are other Americans. This disparity has persisted for over eighty years of polling. — Jerry A. Coyne

But I was amazed at how organized the Palestinian election authority was, how competent they were in setting up their polling places and the poll workers they had. — Joe Biden

The technological landscape of the present day has enfranchised its own electorates the inhabitants of the marketing zones in the consumer society, television audiences and news magazine readerships, who vote with money at the cash counter rather than with ballot paper at the polling boot. These huge and passive electorates are wide open to any opportunist using the psychological weaponry of fear and anxiety, elements that are carefully blanched out of the world of domestic products and consumer software. — J.G. Ballard

My mom was always active. She was always an active voter, whether it was local, state, or federal elections. My mom would take us to polling locations when we were kids. — Scarlett Johansson

A Conference Board survey released in January of 2010 found that only 45 percent of workers surveyed were happy at their jobs, the lowest in 22 years of polling.2 Depression rates today are ten times higher than they were in 1960.3 Every year the age threshold of unhappiness sinks lower, not just at universities but across the nation. Fifty years ago, the mean onset age of depression was 29.5 years old. Today, it is almost exactly half that: 14.5 years old. — Shawn Achor

Let me be the first to admit that the naked truth about me is to the naked truth about Salvador Dali as an old ukulele in the attic is to a piano in a tree, and I mean a piano with breasts. Senor Dali has the jump on me from the beginning. He remembers and describes in detail what it was like in the womb. My own earliest memory is of accompanying my father to a polling booth in Columbus, Ohio, where he voted for William McKinley. — James Thurber

They walked, some of them for miles, from rural villages deep in the bush. They came in wheelbarrows, in wheelchairs. They came with babies on their back. They came the night before, some of them sleeping on the hard ground outside the polling booths so they could vote when morning came. The — Helene Cooper

The notion of carefully wrought bullshit involves, then, a certain inner
strain. Thoughtful attention to detail requires discipline and objectivity. It entails accepting standards and limitations that forbid the indulgence of impulse or whim. It is this selflessness that, in connection with bullshit, strikes us as inapposite. But in fact it is not out of the question at all. The realms of advertising and of public relations, and the nowadays closely related realm of politics, are replete with instances of bullshit so unmitigated that they can serve among the most indisputable and classic paradigms of the concept. And in these realms there are exquisitely sophisticated craftsmen who - with the help of advanced and demanding techniques of market research, of public opinion polling, of psychological testing, and so forth - dedicate themselves tirelessly to getting every word and image they produce exactly right. — Harry G. Frankfurt

When it comes to voting rights, Democrats push voter protection while Republicans shout voter fraud in a crowded polling place. Democrats think anyone who can vote should vote; Republicans think everyone who should vote can vote. — Christine Pelosi

To every Old World belief, habit, or tradition, there was and still is a technological alternative. To prayer, the alternative is penicillin; to family roots, the alternative is mobility; to reading, the alternative is television; to restraint, the alternative is immediate gratification; to sin, the alternative is psychotherapy; to political ideology, the alternative is popular appeal established through scientific polling. There is even an alternative to the painful riddle of death, as Freud called it. The riddle may be postponed through longer life, and then perhaps solved altogether by cryogenics. — Neil Postman

Polling in a general election is pretty accurate, because turnout is usually high. — Ken Livingstone

You know, others keep saying that there are too many candidates in the race, and once it gets down to a two-person race that Trump can't get above that 30 to 35 percent that he's gotten both in the polling and in the elections and that the others will start pulling out that 65 the 70 percent not voting for Tromp. But there's absolutely no evidence that all of that vote will go to another candidate. — Cokie Roberts

We obviously talk about immigration, but that's not the number one priority for - at least that I've seen with the Latino demographic. And we have not seen that as polling as the number one issue either. — Lucy Flores

The purely random sample is the only kind that can be examined with confidence by means of statistical theory, but there is one things wrong with it. It is so difficult and expensive to obtain for many uses that sheer cost eliminates it. A more economical substitute, which is almost universally used in such fields as opinion polling and market research, is called stratified random sampling. — Darrell Huff

In that moment, I understand the way that the noblest yearning for duty and sacrifice can be mixed up with all that is savage and shameful, like in the Bible, where a just and merciful God tells you to kill everyone, kill the children, kill the livestock, kill John Polling, leave nothing alive to sully this pure and just world. Except when it's all done you find out that wasn't really God after all, just some politician, or maybe it was God, but he taps you on the shoulder and says, 'No, dude, that isn't what I meant,' and leaves you sitting in a Dairy Queen in Bothell with blood on your hands and no further orders ... — Stuart Archer Cohen

At daybreak on the first day, thousands of Cambodians are already calmly waiting outside my polling station. They squat on the ground, silent and patient. We didn't expect this at all. We thought they would fail to understand how democracy works. We thought they would be afraid of the Khmer Rouge. We thought they would passively accept their fate. We were wrong. — Heidi Postlewait

Because it is a very elegant feeling to wake up in the morning and go down to your neighborhood polling place and come away feeling proud of the way you voted. — Hunter S. Thompson

The U.S has acquired reservoirs of goodwill around the globe over many years. But it is clear - from polling data and ample anecdotal evidence - that America is losing its allure in much of the world. — Lee H. Hamilton

The point is that television does not reveal who the best man is. In fact, television makes impossible the determination of who is better than whom, if we mean by 'better' such things as more capable in negotiation, more imaginative in executive skill, more knowledgeable about international affairs, more understanding of the interrelations of economic systems, and so on. The reason has, almost entirely, to do with 'image.' But not because politicians are preoccupied with presenting themselves in the best possible light. After all, who isn't? It is a rare and deeply disturbed person who does not wish to project a favorable image. But television gives image a bad name. For on television the politician does not so much offer the audience an image of himself, as offer himself as an image of the audience. And therein lies one of the most powerful influences of the television commercial on political discourse. — Neil Postman

By the time Mann's scientific research was upheld, underscoring his integrity as well as the genuine danger posed by climate change, it hardly mattered. By then, the percentage of Americans who believed the world was warming had dropped a precipitous fourteen points from 2008. Almost half of those polled by Gallup in 2010 - 48 percent - believed that fears of global warming were "generally exaggerated," the highest numbers since the polling firm first posed the question more than a decade before. Watching from afar, Mann could see no cause for the United States to move in the opposite direction from science other than money. "In the scientific community, the degree of confidence in climate change is rising," he said. "In the public, it's either steady or falling. There's a divergence. That wedge is what the industry has bought. — Jane Mayer

The potential for manipulation here is enormous. Here's one example. During the 2012 election, Facebook users had the opportunity to post an "I Voted" icon, much like the real stickers many of us get at polling places after voting. There is a documented bandwagon effect with respect to voting; you are more likely to vote if you believe your friends are voting, too. This manipulation had the effect of increasing voter turnout 0.4% nationwide. So far, so good. But now imagine if Facebook manipulated the visibility of the "I Voted" icon on the basis of either party affiliation or some decent proxy of it: ZIP code of residence, blogs linked to, URLs liked, and so on. It didn't, but if it had, it would have had the effect of increasing voter turnout in one direction. It would be hard to detect, and it wouldn't even be illegal. Facebook could easily tilt a close election by selectively manipulating what posts its users see. Google might do something similar with its search results. — Bruce Schneier

According to a Public Policy Polling survey, most Americans find lice and colonoscopies more appealing than Capitol Hill. — Ron Fournier

So I think that we're in a very heightened and somewhat unusual period of politics and polling around the countries that New Zealanders take close interest in. — Jim Bolger

The United States of America is logically the least magical place in the world. Planned by committee, not even a country, just a legal umbrella for fifty associated provinces, an elaborate polling system for creating other larger and more permanent committees. No mysteries; no demons; one God at the most. Sure, it had its own folklore and tall tales, but it wasn't the same. Its rulers weren't descended from men and women who spoke with birds and rode dragons. Johnny Appleseed and Paul Bunyan were hayseeds, folksy also-rans compared to the madness in the ancient royal blood going back to the Druids, to Byzantium, to Mithraic cults. — Austin Grossman