At this point, it would be unrealistic to expect polling on the 2012 presidential race to be predictive. The elections are nineteen months away, give or take a few weeks, and anything could happen between now and then. If you looked at a poll now and said, "This is definitely who's going to win," being right would be as much a matter of luck as anything. It would barely be a better informed choice than using the numbers in your mother's birthday to play the lottery.But one cliche about polling that's inarguably true is that they're snapshots of a moment in time. It shows you where people's heads are at; what they think is important, what they seem to want, what misconceptions they hold, etc. If not predictive, polls can still be informative.
So looking at a New York Times/CBS News poll out today can tell us a lot about Republican primary voters, even if it doesn't tell us much about who will win that primary. This poll, like a recent CNN poll, finds Republican voters unimpressed with their choices. The NYT poll finds that "nearly 60 percent of Republicans cannot point to a single candidate about whom they are enthusiastic," while CNN's showed "No opinion/No one" in the lead, with 45% of respondents...[CLICK TO READ FULL POST]
