Polls Are Uncannily…Wrong

If Bob Dole were a stock, I would be buying the hell out of it. One big reason is that the experts have come to the unanimous conclusion that he can’t win.

In the stock market, and the political market, the experts are wrong with uncanny consistency. Right now, ignoring the trend that has been running in favor of conservatives since 1978, the pundits believe Dole is going to get clobbered. Just look at the polls!

Yes, just look. Polls a month and a half before an election are as useful in divining the future, as the entrails of frogs.

The latest example of deep polling failure came Saturday in Louisiana, when a hard-core Republican state legislator named Woody Jenkins shocked the analysts by winning the first round of the race to replace retiring Democratic Sen. Bennett Johnston.

Polls shortly before the vote showed Jenkins a poor fourth in a large field, with Mary Landrieu, the Democratic state treasurer, far ahead and another Democrat second.

A survey on Sept. 2 had Landrieu, an attractive candidate, with 33 percent of the vote. Jenkins, an in-your-face conservative whose platform includes abolishing the IRS, had just 10 percent.

But on Saturday, when the actual election occurred, Jenkins received 26 percent of the vote, Landrieu 21 percent.

The Jenkins case is no fluke. At a recent gathering of a dozen tax-cutting Republican governors at the Cato Institute, John Engler of Michigan recalled that two days before his successful 1990 election, polls showed him 14 points behind Democrat Jim Blanchard. In late September, he trailed 56 percent to 30 percent - worse than Dole’s deficit today.

The basic problem with polls is that they ask potential voters what they’ll do at a point in the future. But many of these people won’t even vote, and some of those who do change their minds.

It doesn’t take much mind-changing, either. A poll that shows Dole 15 points behind means that, if just eight points’ worth of Clinton voters switch, Dole can win.

The power of polls comes from the feedback loops they produce. Pundits take their cues from surveys, so, when they see Dole trailing by 18 points, they believe it’s their duty to work backward from this “fact” and give us the reasons - for example, that Dole’s economic plan isn’t playing well with soccer moms. Politicians often heed the views of these experts and change their strategies. Thus, polls, so inaccurate to begin with, become self-fulfilling prophecies.

Successful candidates, by contrast, steer a course and stick to it - despite storms, despite the advice of kibitzers to tack left or right.

Consistency is essential when a candidate is pushing a tax cut. That stands to reason because, while voters want tax cuts (believing they can spend and invest their own money better than the government can), they don’t believe that politicians will really deliver. Lately, they’ve seen George Bush renege on “read my lips” and Clinton on his middle-class cut.

In order to convince voters, candidates have to repeat their tax promises over and over - and sound like they mean it. The payoff often comes at the finish line. Witness Engler. Witness Christine Todd Whitman in New Jersey, who - in 1993, pledged to reduce taxes by 30 percent - was far back in the polls but won in a rush.

The other lesson of these races is that Dole faces certain defeat if he abandons the central message of his campaign - cutting taxes and reducing the size and intrusiveness of government. For many of us, the past few weeks, when Dole has gotten on a “cultural” kick, have been agonizing.

Yes, issues like crime, abortion, drugs are important, but they won’t win this election - mainly because Americans, appropriately, doubt that the federal government can do much about them.

There are hopeful signs, however, that Dole will get back to the economy and stay there. He and Jack Kemp (who personifies tax-cutting) have just published their campaign book, “Trusting the People,” which concentrates almost entirely on economic issues.

The appeal of the book - and of Dole’s acceptance speech last month in San Diego - is that it links a policy of tax cuts and spending restraint to broader themes like freedom and responsibility. Dole is saying that he has faith in the ability of individuals and businesses to make their own good choices, rather than having them imposed by Washington - and that those choices will boost the economy.

This is a powerful message. Set against it, Clinton has status-quo policies that have produced the most anemic recovery in modern history.

The polls may say Clinton, but logic and history still say Dole. As the opponents of Jenkins, Engler and Whitman learned to their chagrin, when it comes to elections, six weeks can be a long, long time.

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