The presidential election is off to a roaring start, with Democratic candidates roaring at each other and the Republican president roaring at everyone.
As for issues such as the economy, health care and climate change, they are often lost in the uproar. It's not that they are silent, but the noise about the personalities and their fitness for office is nearing the level that many voters find deafening, so they mentally turn off their hearing as well as their TV sets.
That does not, however, lessen their importance. Sadly, they are relegated to a side room in the chamber of horrors that the election season has become.
TV commentators now spend much -- if not most -- of their time dissecting the results of the polls that are announced daily -- several polls each day.
Lost in the scramble for a brief mention on the daily news programs is the underlying truth that poll results are little more than snapshots -- a single frame in the moving picture of an election campaign.
Pollsters try to point out that their results show only what a small number of people believe for a brief time on a single day. An hour later, and for a myriad of reasons, these beliefs can change, and often do.
Nevertheless, as they struggle for material to fill time on their news programs, broadcast journalists display an enthusiasm for the veracity of poll results that is not supported or warranted by the stability of the results.
Unless a collection of poll results gathered by responsible, politically neutral independent pollsters show a pattern or a trend.
But even that can change the next day.
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