I enjoy long walks through nuance and strong opinions politely debated. I like people who argue to understand, not just to win. Bring your curiosity and I’ll bring mine.
This argument persists because it is easier to believe that everything is rigged than to engage with the complexity of political institutions. It provides an emotionally satisfying shortcut, but it collapses under even a minimal amount of empirical scrutiny.
I’m one of the few who has had it at the top for as long as I can remember. It absolutely infuriated me to find out the feature had been removed.
Polls are not the mechanism parties use to “pick” candidates. That’s just not how the process works. Pollsters aren’t arms of the DNC or the RNC. They’re independent firms measuring name recognition and voter preference at a given moment, and the only way to do that is by giving respondents a fixed list of relevant, high visibility figures. It’s a methodological constraint, not a political command.
The real issue is subtler. Media ecosystems amplify a handful of names, donors flock to whoever looks viable, and voters often gravitate toward whoever they’ve heard of. That creates a feedback loop where the visible become even more visible. But polls are downstream from that loop, not upstream. They reflect the landscape; they don’t choose it.
If you want to critique the system, aim at the actual gatekeepers. Ballot access rules, debate thresholds, fundraising networks, and media exposure do far more to narrow the field than a Rasmussen questionnaire ever will. Blaming the poll is mistaking the thermometer for the weather.