| > what is the point of it? Great question, and I share some of your concern, though I can imagine some positive framings in addition to what you wrote. For example, to use an analogy, what’s the point of trying to predict the weather, or trying to predict the stock market? There are lots of reasons including planning ahead for likely outcomes, the ability to protect against losses, and last but not least making money. I can also imagine that the desire to talk about the potential outcomes is valuable as a social activity, and doesn’t necessarily need to meet a standard of influencing the vote, or adding to our democracy. > My concern is that these things are distracting and may actually dissuade some people from voting because they think they “don’t have to.” Of course if your concern is founded, this can go both ways... if the polls show the candidate you favor starting to lose, it could be a call to vote. If polls are distracting and dissuade voters, then unfortunately election results might do exactly the same or worse. When a state has been solidly red or blue and not purple for 50 years in a row, people do (perhaps rightly so) jump to conclusions about the outcome in advance. One question we could ask is whether, if voting were made mandatory, would election predictions go away? I’d speculate no. |