Week 5, Blog Entry #1
Zain Nensey
4. Polls help determine public opinion on a subject. Our obsession with polls is to help us go with the flow, since the general consensus today is to go with the flow as to seem more normal. For example, look at the public opinion polls that our President goes through seemingly every week. People on TV analyze this to see where the public stands so they can make themselves look good, because when they make a correct prediction about something, it raises their expertise in, once again, the eyes of the public. It works similarly with sports polls. Often, at the start of a season, the football analysts will pick a certain team to make it to the Super Bowl, because they made what seemed like the best moves in the off-season (i.e. picked up a top-tier free agent, made draft picks that improved the team, and did a few other things.) Then if the team does well, they will shout their picks to the world, and try to make themselves look good. If not, then the analysts will essentially disavow themselves of their picks and jump onto a bandwagon. People obsess over these polls and use them to help prove their point. Opinion polls, such as Gallup, do have a good purpose because it can be used to help sway politicians, since they seem to have a tendency to want to please their voters around election time. However, opinion polls really are not good for anything else.