Karl Rove's Advice on Polls: Ignore Them

Karl Rove, writing at the Wall Street Journal ("Don't Let the Polls Affect Your Vote"), says polls (the kind that predict the vote) are not nearly as precise as most people think. Also, polls can depress the vote and did so in the election of 2000. That's when CNN, based on exit polls, falsely declared that Al Gore had won Florida and voting there was now closed, but the voting booths in the panhandle (a Republican stronghold) were still open for another hour.

Many Republicans, thinking that (1) voting was closed and (2) that Gore had already won, didn't bother to show up to vote. Why would they? Had this erroneous information not been released, perhaps the close Florida vote would not have been such a cliff-hanger.

Read it all here.

However, since the opinion polls are moving in our direction, let's not completely ignore them!