Cecelia Holland, "Staying Ahead of the Curve," Communication Arts, Dec 2001

The irony is that the more the politicians heed the polls, the less they really understand the country. Because the polls are lies. There’s a difference between asking people how they like Coke and asking people for more abstract judgments, like whether they support capital punishment. In a poll, how the question is asked often predetermines the answer. And many people answer moral or political questions according to how they want to see themselves, not by who they really are. Such factors combine with the natural lag time between the appearance of an issue and the popular response to reduce most political polling to garbage.