Letter from the editor

Is it polling or pulling?

The election season brings out the worst in my obsessive compulsive news consumption. Even when there's nothing really going on, I'm nonetheless compelled to check the headlines every other hour and start my morning with a web-based round of half a dozen newspapers.

So it should come as no surprise, then, that I read the results of each new political poll with relish. Will the incumbent be unseated? What issues are swaying the American people? Does that strange man from Butte with huge eyebrows really have a shot?

And so it was that on Saturday, yours truly received a call from a pollster (oddly, on my cell phone). The woman asked me the usual "If today where election day…" questions and I gave my answers. She only asked about Montana races, and for a few I had to admit that I was undecided because I know next to nothing about one or both of the candidates.

Then things began to get weird. For the races in which I was undecided, the pollster read me a short paragraph about each candidate. The information she gave touted each candidates strong points - it sounded like a bit of campaign literature from each camp had been provided. Fine. Next, she told me she would read me a list of statements and I was to respond with how convincing I found the information.

For each Democratic candidate she read a series of sentences along the lines of "John Smith spends his weekends saving puppies from housefires. Do you find this information very convincing, somewhat convincing or not convincing?"

Again, fine. But then, for each Republican candidate, the pollster said she would read me a series of statements, that, assuming they are true, I should rate the level of doubt it gave me. "John Smith's opponent, James Smith, places puppies in housfires each weekend. Does this information give you serious doubts, minor doubts or no doubts?"

Umm, minor doubts?

It was insane. This went on for a few different races, each time the Democratic candidate was portrayed in rays of sunshine and the Republicans sounded as though they should be incarcerated. Some of the information she gave I knew to be true. Some of it was patently bogus and mean-spirited to boot.

If this is how all polls are conducted, I can only wonder what effect "predicting" election results has on creating them.

—Alex Strickland