Undecided on Big Bird? Probably not.

The Volokh Conspiracy has a post about a survey in Virginia that asked people their opinions about President Obama, Mitt Romney, and Big Bird.  Professor Volokh notes that more people have a favorable opinion about Big Bird than have a favorable opinion about either President Obama or Governor Romney. 

Public opinion, expert opinion, and judicial opinions

In an excellent post, Mr. Gillette raises the topic of whether the Supreme Court should be swayed by public opinion. He makes a convincing case that it shouldn't be.

But is it?

A poll to end all polls, Part Two

This poll is making the rounds, and causing pundits to express exasperation with the American people:



I will take this opportunity to remind everyone of something I said about a year ago:

The next time you find yourself shocked by the ignorance/stupidity/racism/perfidy of the American people, as revealed by the results of an opinion poll, remember this one, which purports to show that most Americans are unsure whether Donald Trump is a natural-born American citizen.

Republicans in the deep South do not "believe" in evolution.

It is a headline that writes itself.  As David Weigel points out in Slate, the folks at Public Policy Polling have published the results of surveys they did in Mississippi and Alabama.  The press release on the surveys is here. 

Most Democrats think the individual mandate is unconstitutional

Gallup has come out with some rather shocking results from a public opinion poll about the health insurance reform bill. Specifically, the poll finds that 72% of Americans—including an astonishing 56% of Democrats!—think that the individual mandate aspect of the bill is unconstitutional:

The obvious question is: what does the average American know about the constitutional arguments against the individual mandate? Answer: Absolutely nothing, huh, say it again! But it does show, I think, that this aspect of the bill is pretty unpopular.

Rick Santorum will never be President.

George Gallup, pride of Jefferson, Iowa, virtually invented modern political polling. So, perhaps one should take heed of the recent Gallup/USA Today poll, which found that former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum leads President Obama 49%-46% in a national poll and leads 50%-45% in a survey of the swing states of Michigan, Ohio, Virginia, Colorado, Iowa, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Despite this survey, I am going to go ahead and call it. Rick Santorum will never be president of the United States of America. There are 4 reasons why Senator Santorum’s campaign is doomed to failure.

A poll to end all polls

The next time you find yourself shocked by the ignorance/stupidity/racism/perfidy of the American people, as revealed by the results of an opinion poll, remember this one, which purports to show that most Americans are unsure whether Donald Trump is a natural-born American citizen.  You may have seen recent headlines trumpeting a poll showing that only 56% of Americans are sure that President Obama was born in America.  Well, by comparison, only 63% are sure that Trump was!

Possible conclusions:

1) These polls are worthless. All of them. They prove nothing about anything. Respondents have no incentive to answer honestly and every incentive to get off the phone ASAP.  Have you ever been chosen to take part in one of these polls? I have, several times. Each time, my number-one goal was to get back to my regularly scheduled life.

2) Americans have a healthy sense of skepticism -- they're unwilling to say they're "certain" or "sure" of much of anything.

3) Most Americans are bad at pop quizzes.

Yikes

Gallup speculates that there may be an unprecedented Republican rout in the House of Representatives:

[T]his year's 15-point gap in favor of the Republican candidates among likely voters is unprecedented in Gallup polling and could result in the largest Republican margin in House voting in several generations. This means that seat projections have moved into uncharted territory, in which past relationships between the national two-party vote and the number of seats won may not be maintained.