Opinion Polls: good or evil?...

every month we hear data from some poll or the other about how the president and his men are doing...

are polls the real indicators of how well someone is doing?...are they reliable?..

i think polls are good in some ways...they give us an idea of the general mood of the country when it comes to various issues.

but polls cannot be used as a report card...

whether we like it or not, the general population is not really qualified to rate a person when it comes to real specifics...people respond to these polls through a window of their own life experience and situations...they may respond not objectively but passionately...

hence polls can be detrimental...

with a favorable poll number, politicians can advance their agenda with minimal opposition even though the agenda may be flawed...

on the other hand when polls are adverse, politicians may modify the policies so as to achieve higher poll numbers in the short term, even if the said policies may be bad for the country as a whole in the long run.

one may argue that polls are one way of keeping a finger on the nation's pulse...a democratic process....wrong!

we have a democratic process already in place to do that: Elections

there is no person born yet nor there will be one in the future who will not make a mistake or two in office....we have elected the president for 4 years..lets see what he does...if we dont like what he does he won't win the next elections..simple as that...

i am not saying not to have polls at all...but to have them every month i think is a bit too much and short sighted...how about once in 6 months or once a year?