Tanner Stening of Northeastern Global News asked me Friday whether we could still trust the polls. I talked instead about why the media should move on from its obsession with polling and horse-race coverage. As Jay Rosen says, “Not the odds, but the stakes.”
Northeastern journalism professor Dan Kennedy said the media has become too attached to polling and the political “horse race” it attempts to forecast — often at the expense of reporting on the issues and the candidates themselves….
“We should be reporting on the genuine desires of the public and which candidate is speaking best to those desires — or, rather than making that value judgment, how candidates are responding to those desires,” Kennedy said.
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Normally I would agree with you about the “horse race” aspect. But this year, the stakes are so high and the issues so clear at hand that the horse race actually outweighs the issues in importance.