The Last Straw Poll: Seven things from Campaign 2000 to eliminate

National Review, Nov 20, 2000 by Kate O'Beirne

Before the reform-minded spirit of this year's campaign gives way to the practical realities of governing, the most irritating features of the 2000 presidential race should be noted and reformed out of existence. Any "not to do" list for the next slate of White House contenders should include the Iowa straw poll, the New Hampshire primary along with open primaries in other states, the Commission on Presidential Debates, focus groups of "undecided" voters, tracking polls, and "ad watches" by media referees.

Iowa's greedy GOP takes two big bites of the nomination apple by conducting a straw poll that candidates typically dare not ignore. Because the media join the hype, this fundraising stunt can shrink the field of candidates a full year before the party's convention. Happily, John McCain's atypical campaign benefited by ignoring this season's straw poll, as well as the state's January caucus. Conventional hindsight holds that Bill Bradley should also have headed straight to New Hampshire. If Iowa's loss in the political marketplace prompts future candidates to follow McCain's strategy, the caucuses will no longer test the field, and reporters will be spared spending January in Des Moines-and August in Ames.

This year, New Hampshire again failed its own political marketplace test. John McCain enjoyed a huge win in New Hampshire that bore no relation to how he fared in later primaries. Four years ago, Pat Buchanan was unable to duplicate his success in the Granite State. Why should New Hampshire continue to enjoy its preeminent status when the state has become the "Worst in the Nation" at picking GOP nominees? The disproportionate attention paid to New Hampshire voters-demonstrated by the tiresome quadrennial jokes about locals being undecided because they had only met a certain candidate five times-has made them too obnoxiously self-aware to provide a valid test of candidates. With independents free to vote in the GOP primary in numbers that outstrip registered Republicans, the state's voters now just seem to enjoy letting challengers without broad party appeal rough up the GOP frontrunner.

All of the other state parties ought to restrict their primaries to party members. When independents and Democrats vote in open primaries (like those in Michigan), the results don't represent the nominee party members favor. Agnostics who reject the creed shouldn't dilute the will of the party faithful. The media fawns over "thoughtful" nonaligned voters, but political partisans who are informed and engaged on the issues are the most responsible members of the electorate, and the parties should be doing everything possible to encourage party membership.

This year it became clear that the Commission on Presidential Debates has gotten too big for its bipartisan britches. The Commission has been hosting the face-offs since 1988, when its bossy predecessor, the League of Women Voters, refused to modify its debate demands to suit Vice President Bush. In January, the Commission announced the number, dates, sites, and times for the fall debates. In June, it dictated the lengths and the single-moderator format. When George W. Bush had the temerity to suggest alternative debate forums, he found that the private bipartisan group had achieved some weirdly official status that had the unprecedented effect of preventing any modifications by the candidates. (As recently as 1996, Bill Clinton got away with debating only twice.) So, in the high-stakes debates, Jim Lehrer alone decided every question posed, even screening those offered by the "undecided" Missouri voters the Commission had rounded up. Since 1976, the leading presidential candidates have taken part in nationally televised general-election debates, and voter expectations will ensure that candidates debate in 2004-without the Commission.

The tiresome, predictable undecided voters at the Missouri town-hall debate did fairly represent the ill-informed, detached voters whose views the media examined ad nauseam this season. Basking in the TV lights, these debate watchers invariably told Wolf that they were still torn between candidates who hadn't yet matched their own precise positions on education, health care, or the environment. Maybe if they weren't so busy being interviewed, they could watch the news, read a newspaper, or check a website to find out everything they'd care to know about candidates who broadly reflect the philosophical positions their parties have represented for the past 40 years.

With so many of this year's polls embarrassingly inaccurate, let's hope the media and their pollsters enter a trial separation. Over one recent four-day period, Gallup's tracking poll found a 15 point swing in the presidential candidates' support, which commentators gamely tried to attribute to some development or other on the campaign trail. Of course, there had been no such wild fluctuation, but the four frequently contradictory national polls that were in the field during October drove media coverage in the campaigns' final weeks. Polling expert Karlyn Bowman of the American Enterprise Institute is dismayed with the attention paid to every purported blip in polls; it makes the poll numbers appear much more precise than they really are. She notes that one study found that about 25 percent of voters don't firmly make up their minds until the last two weeks of the campaign. "These polls are often probing opinions that are nonexistent," Bowman explains. She recalls that the first question about the 2000 race was asked in 1995, attempting to measure the support Colin Powell would enjoy should he elect to run. Before the Iowa caucuses this year, there had been 1,000 polling questions on the presidential race. And the daily bombardment won't end because the campaigns are over. Rasmussen Research has announced that "for the first time in history, the new president will have his approval ratings measured every day." Stop them before they poll again.