Polls Quotes

I think I will always have a connection to young people, to try to bring their voices to the polls, bring their voices wherever they can make a difference. ~ Russell Simmons

Our own State Department polls say that 80 percent of Iraqis view the United States as an unpopular occupier. ~ Marty Meehan

Baseball is a game that shouts, 'Slow Down' to America. Stop tweeting, texting, blogging, watching cable news, and obsessing about polls, lost planes, and focus-group-driven politicians. ~ Mike Barnicle

I think we have a fascinating new and quite dominant input into politics - and it wont go away. From time to time, people articulate a view that we should ban opinion polls, but that's nonsense. ~ Jim Bolger

On the other track I got to talk with Jon Poll, my editor, and we go into more detail about the decisions we made in both the production and the post-production. So I hope the combination becomes something worth collecting. ~ Jay Roach

Electoral contests have nothing but polls, which is why people have grown so obsessed with them; we're desperate for an objective rendering of what is happening and what may happen. ~ John Podhoretz

Columbia was a wonderful label for me. Wonderful. The records I made there garnered me an audience. I won a number of polls during the years that I was at Columbia. The Downbeat Jazz Poll. Leonard Feather, who was a huge critic back in the day, different polls that he had. The Playboy poll, a number of polls. So the music was great. ~ Aretha Franklin

The Washington establishment think Republicans win elections by you don't stand for anything, you keep your head down, you don't rock the boat. You know what? Every time we do that, we get clobbered in the polls. ~ Ted Cruz

I think you can not be blown off course by the fluctuations in the public opinion polls. ~ Dick Cheney

Nobody looks at opinion polls with more attention than politicians, but of course you've got to remember that a single poll is a snapshot in time. ~ Malcolm Turnbull

Percentages! Those are for economists, polls, and politicians. Percentages can't define your identity. ~ Mary E. Pearson

The American people, Neil, are sick and tired of excuses. They are sick and tired of the blame game. And they're sick and tired of the deception coming from this president and this administration. This is why I believe that I am doing so well in the polls. ~ Herman Cain

Abraham Lincoln did not go to Gettysburg having commissioned a poll to find out what would sell in Gettysburg. There were no people with percentages for him, cautioning him about this group or that group or what they found in exit polls a year earlier. When will we have the courage of Lincoln? ~ Robert Coles

I figured out Karl Rove's political strategy
make gas so expensive, no Democrats can afford to go to the polls. ~ John F. Kerry

If Hillary Clinton wants to win the White House, she's gonna have to convince Americans they can trust her and if you seen the polls, they don't. There's one American who has faith in her, her husband Bill. ~ Eric Bolling

I think our message,the Clinton campaign was very strong. Remember, this is their fourth campaign in South Carolina. Two for Bill Clinton. Two for Hillary Clinton. They had it well organized. They did well. And Icongratulate them. We came into that state at something like 7 or 8 percent in the polls. It was a tough road for us to hoe. But I want to thank all of our supporters, the members of the South Carolina state legislature. ~ Bernie Sanders

I always lose the election in the polls, and I always win it on election day. ~ Benjamin Netanyahu

The polls show that concern over inequality among the general public rose pretty sharply after the Occupy movement started, very probably as a consequence. And there are other policy issues that came to the fore, which are significant. ~ Noam Chomsky

I don't consult polls to tell me what my principles are or what our policies should be. ~ Paul Ryan

I don't care what the polls say. ~ Roger Ailes

The only poll obviously that matters is the last one, the one that's counted after all the votes are cast. ~ Mario Diaz-Balart

But as I say, if you look to the state of their souls you'll find the situation nowhere near as grave as polls suggest. There's more to being a servant of The Adversary than signing up. ~ Geoffrey Wood

Liberty, the very opposite of ownership and control, cannot, then, result from political action, either at the polls or the barricades, but rather evolves out of attitude. If it results from anything, it may be levity. ~ Tom Robbins

[The poll tax] was a classic case of a good idea being entrusted to Chris Patten and becoming a terrible failure. ~ Norman Tebbit

The latest polls show that Arnold Schwarzenegger is trailing Lieutenant Governor Cruz Bustamante in the polls. That's insane. I mean, think about it, this guy Cruz Bustamante has never even been in a movie. ~ David Letterman

Because of the spin-meisters and the focus groups and the way politics is run now. It's run by polls and focus groups. So it's even more true today, I think, than it was some 40 years ago. ~ Bob Newhart

BJP is a political party with a difference that aims at good governance. This is proved by the fact that three of the five Chief Ministers according to a recent NDTV survey/poll are from BJP-ruled states. ~ Narendra Modi

It's not opinion polls that determine the outcome of elections, it's votes in ballot boxes. ~ Nicola Sturgeon

Polls? Nah ... they're for strippers and cross country skiers. ~ Sarah Palin

Cat, this is America, they let anybody vote. Crooks, wigs, even cookies like us. Dogs and cats, probably. Don't take Fido to the polls, he might cancel you out. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

I don't think everyone should vote. If you have to be dragged into the polls, carried into the polls and smelling salts have to be used, you probably shouldn't be voting. However, we shouldn't be putting up barriers to voting that target certain groups. ~ Mo Rocca

It so happens that America, according to all the polls that are out there, is pretty progressive. So you're not going to see messages that support Ayn Randian individualism at the cost of the whole, because most people don't agree with that. ~ Adam McKay

In a sense the U.S. is climate illiterate. If you look at global polls about what the public knows about climate change even in Brazil, China you have more people who know about the problem and think deep cuts in emission are needed. ~ Hans Joachim Schellnhuber

On issue after issue, the polls - and these are not snapshot polls; these are polls over a consistent period of time - show that most Americans share what one could call core liberal or progressive values: investment in health care and education over tax cuts; fair trade over free trade; corporate accountability over deregulation; environmental protection over laissez-faire policies; defending Social Security and Medicare over privatizing them; raising the minimum wage over eliminating it. The country prefers progressive alternatives to the failed policies of the conservative right. ~ Katrina Vanden Heuvel

Noble again chose Larry McCarthy, the veteran media consultant who was known for his ability to distill a complicated subject into a simple, potent, and usually negative symbol. McCarthy had a reputation for being a particularly shrewd consumer of O, or opposition research on the rival candidates he was targeting. He often honed his ads using polls, focus groups, micro-targeting data, and "perception analyzers" - meters that evaluated viewers' split-second reactions to demo tapes. McCarthy ~ Jane Mayer

We cannot, of course, expect every leader to possess the wisdom of Lincoln or Mandela's largeness of soul. But when we think about what questions might be most useful to ask, perhaps we should begin by discerning what our prospective leaders believe it worthwhile for us to hear.

Do they cater to our prejudices by suggesting that we treat people outside our ethnicity, race, creed or party as unworthy of dignity and respect?

Do they want us to nurture our anger toward those who we believe have done us wrong, rub raw our grievances and set our sights on revenge?

Do they encourage us to have contempt for our governing institutions and the electoral process?

Do they seek to destroy our faith in essential contributors to democracy, such as an independent press, and a professional judiciary?

Do they exploit the symbols of patriotism, the flag, the pledge in a conscious effort to turn us against one another?

If defeated at the polls, will they accept the verdict, or insist without evidence they have won?

Do they go beyond asking about our votes to brag about their ability to solve all problems put to rest all anxieties and satisfy every desire?

Do they solicit our cheers by speaking casually and with pumped up machismo about using violence to blow enemies away?

Do they echo the attitude of Musolini: "The crowd doesn't have to know, all they have to do is believe and submit to being shap ~ Madeleine K. Albright

In spite of the polls, the fact is that American Muslims are very happy and they thrive in this country. ~ Feisal Abdul Rauf

If Christians should vote their duty to God at the polls, they would carry every election, and do it with ease. They would elect every clean candidate in the United States, and defeat every soiled one. Their prodigious power would be quickly realized and recognized, and afterward there would be no unclean candidates upon any ticket, and graft would cease. ~ Mark Twain

Whether wisely or not, one of the first priorities of the incoming Obama administration was to present a package of healthcare benefits, which, to no one's surprise, produced an uproar in Congress and an assortment of polls declaring that the majority of Americans were opposed to it. ~ Sherwin B. Nuland

If you're running far behind in the polls and you decide to use comparative advertising, you have to be able to explain to the people why the incumbent shouldn't have then ob. ~ Roger Ailes

Unequal access to money and media plus bias, external and internalized, and male-dominant religions and illegality at the polls - all those are reasons for women's wildly unequal political power. ~ Gloria Steinem

Although few people will remember 3 June 1993, it was a landmark in South African history. On that day, after months of negotiations at the World Trade Centre, the multiparty forum voted to set a date for the country's first national, nonracial, one-person-one-vote election: 27 April 1994. For the first time in South African history, the black majority would go to the polls to elect their own leaders. ~ Nelson Mandela

Second, recent polls over there show that the majority of Iraqis want us to leave precipitously. ~ William Odom

If the Democrats have their way, African Americans will continue to feel oppressed, despised and handicapped into the indefinite future. All progress will be downplayed and every setback amplified. In this way, Democrats can continue to rely on lopsided black support at the polls. ~ Mona Charen

Although we've been authoritatively informed that a majority of Americans support a "pathway to citizenship," approximately five hundred times in the last two years alone, according to a quick Nexis search,18 that is a lie. This is part of the media's campaign to convince Americans they're nuts for preferring not to turn America into Mexico. Polls are irrelevant if you lie to the people being polled. Poll: Do you support commonsense gun safety or are you against it? Headline: MAJORITY OF AMERICANS SUPPORT GUN CONTROL. But I hate gun control! Too late! You agreed to "commonsense gun safety" - that means gun control. ~ Ann Coulter

The leading non-establishment Republican candidate for president, Donald Trump, is just sailing past [establishment Republican candidates] in the polls. He is still surging. He is basically killing them all. ~ Melissa Harris-Perry

In fact - statistically, as you know - people have done polls, research, and at least 80 percent or more or working media are liberal Democrats if they are involved with any party and certainly liberal in their philosophy. ~ Pat Boone

One poll shows that by 61 percent to 29 percent Americans under 40 say that Social Security needs to be fixed. ~ Virginia Foxx

I will continue my involvement in politics through Lord Ashcroft Polls and my political publishing interests: Conservative Home, Biteback Publishing and Dods. ~ Michael Ashcroft

A 1940 Gallup poll showed 83 percent of the public was against intervention. A good pretext was needed to gain support from an intransigent public. ~ Jim Marrs

Reality has a well-known liberal bias. ~ S. Colbert

The people of a city blessed with all the good things nature has can grow smug about who they are, can find complacency in livability polls, as if we did a lot to deserve it. ~ Robin Cody

Of course I base all my election promises and policies on opinion polls ~ Kevin Rudd

I have great relationships with the Mexican people. You've been seeing I'm winning every single poll in these primaries when they go out, when the polls come back in with the Hispanics. I have thousands of Hispanics that work for me and over the years tens of thousands that have worked for me over the years. I will tell you that the problem our country has is that our leaders are so weak - we have so many ways of getting the money to build the wall. ~ Donald Trump

There are so many things the people who take polls never get around to asking. ~ Gore Vidal

They may then be willing to cast principled votes based on an educated understanding of the public interest in the face of polls suggesting that the public itself may have quite a different understanding of where its interest lies. ~ James L. Buckley

I have never been over-concerned or obsessed with opinion polls or popularity polls. I think a leader who is, is a weak leader. If you are concerned with whether your rating will go up or down, then you are not a leader. You are just catching the wind ... you will go where the wind is blowing. And that's not what I am in this for. ~ Lee Kuan Yew

Various polls have indicated that approximately 10% of Americans (25 million people) have seen them at close range so that details of the structure of the object can be discerned. ~ Steven M. Greer

A recent poll shows that a majority of blacks, whites, Asians and Hispanics do not think the Census should be classifying people as black, white, Asian and Hispanic. ~ Thomas Sowell

The media, the polls and our legislatures fortunately have short attention spans. ~ John Gutfreund

Remember one thing as South Africa prepares to go to the polls this week and the world grapples with the ascendancy of the African National Congress leader Jacob Zuma: South Africa is not Zimbabwe.
In South Africa, no one doubts that Wednesday's elections will be free and fair. While there is an unacceptable degree of government corruption, there is no evidence of the wholesale kleptocracy of Robert Mugabe's elite. While there has been the abuse of the organs of state by the ruling ANC, there is not the state terror of Mugabe's Zanu-PF. And while there is a clear left bias to Zuma's ANC, there is no suggestion of the kind of voluntarist experimentation that has brought Zimbabwe to its knees. ~ Mark Gevisser

The hack is like the politician who consults the polls before he takes a position. He's a demagogue. He panders. It can pay off, being a hack. Given the depraved state of American culture, a slick dude can make millions being a hack. But even if you succeed, you lose, because you've sold out your Muse, and your Muse is you, the best part of yourself, where your finest and only true work comes from. I ~ Steven Pressfield

When church leaders make decisions driven by fear of man, the true church disappears. The truth is frequently unpopular, and standing up for God's word and against sin will sometimes make people angry. We need church leaders who aren't directed by popularity polls, but whose decision-making is dominated by what is right. ~ Mike McKinley

Though Americans have tremendous respect for the ability of engineers and scientists to solve important problems and answer important questions, polls indicate many of us worry that technology moves too fast, and that its benefits blind us to important spiritual concerns. ~ Cornelia Dean

The polls are just being used as another tool of voter suppression. The polls are an attempt to not reflect public opinion, but to shape it. Yours. They want to depress the heck out of you. ~ Rush Limbaugh

People feel that European institutions are remote and bureaucratic, run by shady cosmopolitan elites. Britain is not absolutely exceptional because if you look at the opinion polls, those sentiments are now quite widespread also in continental Europe. ~ Timothy Garton Ash

The British press ... [claimed that Tony] Blair was simply Bush's poodle - a favorite phrase, bewilderingly popular, although it made no sense - and that he was ignoring the will of the British people. Considering the hacks had spent Blair's first six years in office condemning him for relying on focus groups and opinion polls for his policies - in other words, paying attention to nothing but the will of the people, or at least their whims - that seemed a little rich to me, but as I said, logical consistency has never figured highly in the British media's scale of values. ~ Larry King

A poll earlier this year showed that 42 per cent of Americans believe we're in the End Times. ~ Andrew Denton

Identity politics is killings free speech on campus, silencing Muslim women struggle, boosting both Islamism and the far Right and pushing reconciled Muslim voices to the fringes. It makes implicit assumptions about Islam - from an Islamist, Left or Right- perspective - and insists all Muslims must adhere to that definition or be regarded not truly Muslim. It ignores the fact that most ordinary Muslims are not in favour of a violent and that in surveys and polls they support British values more than the general UK population. Yet the myth persists that the ideology of Islamism is the true expression of what it means to be Muslim. ~ Tony McMahon, Sara Khan

What do you seek--God? you ask with a smile.

I hesitate to answer, since all other Americans have settled the matter for themselves and to give such an answer would amount to setting myself a goal which everyone else has reached--and therefore raising a question in which no one has the slightest interest. Who wants to be dead last among one hundred and eighty million Americans? For, as everyone knows, the polls report that 98% of Americans believe in God and the remaining 2% are atheists and agnostics--which leaves not a single percentage point for a seeker. For myself, I enjoy answering polls as much as anyone and take pleasure in giving intelligent replies to all questions.

Truthfully, it is the fear of exposing my own ignorance which constrains me from mentioning the object of my search. For, to begin with, I cannot even answer this, the simplest and most basic of all questions: Am I, in my search, a hundred miles ahead of my fellow Americans or a hundred miles behind them? That is to say: Have 98% of Americans already found what I seek or are they so sunk in everydayness that not even the possibility of a search has occurred to them?

On my honor, I do not know the answer. ~ Walker Percy

In the polls, over 80% support the right to die and have done for the last 25 years. Even 80% of practising Catholics and Protestants support it, plus 76% of Church Times readers. ~ Polly Toynbee

It's important to know that the vast majority of people who were excited in 2008 are still really enthusiastic. We've got more volunteers now than ever, and they're engaged, they're motivated, they're not paying attention to the ups and downs of polls or Washington. ~ Barack Obama

Sure, it is apparent that presidents are looking at polls, but they are also stepping up on issues. President Clinton stepped up on tobacco. He shaped the polls on the tobacco issue. ~ Donna Shalala

Like every thoughtful parent in every age of history, Neil consoled himself, My generation failed, but this new one is going to change the entire world, and go piously to the polls even on rainy election-days, and never drink more than one cocktail, and end all war. ~ Sinclair Lewis

In the Tea Party narrative, victory at the polls means a new American revolution, one that will 'take our country back' from everyone they disapprove of. But what they don't realize is, there's a catch: This is America, and we have an entrenched oligarchical system in place that insulates us all from any meaningful political change. ~ Matt Taibbi

According to the recent polls, Bush has a slight lead over John Kerry. So today, Bush hung a banner over the White House saying, 'Mission Accomplished.' ~ David Letterman

What's true or right is NEVER determined by popularity or polls. The right thing is often unpopular since it's harder to do. ~ Rick Warren

Polls show that Americans significantly overestimate the percentage of the federal budget allocated to foreign aid. In November 2013, a Kaiser Family Foundation survey found that, on average, Americans believe that 28 percent of the federal budget is spent on foreign assistance, and more than 60 percent of people say that's too much. But in reality we spend less than 1 percent of the budget on foreign aid. ~ Hillary Rodham Clinton

The polls undoubtedly help to decide what people think, but their most important long-term influence may be on how people think. The interrogative process is very distinctly weighted against the asking of an intelligent question or the recording of a thoughtful answer. ~ Christopher Hitchens

So nearly everyone had an opinion. Polls showed that most supported the Russell program, an informal name for Sax's plans to terraform the planet by all means possible, as fast as they could. ~ Kim Stanley Robinson

One poll showed that Americans have a higher opinion of witches, the IRS and hemorrhoids than Congress ~ Tom Coburn

We have a duty to our country to participate in the political process. See, if you believe in freedom, you have a duty to exercise your right to vote to begin with. I'm [here] to encourage people to do their duty, to go to the polls. I want all people, no matter what their political party is or whether they even like a political party, to exercise their obligation to vote. ~ George W. Bush

But I was amazed at how organized the Palestinian election authority was, how competent they were in setting up their polling places and the poll workers they had. ~ Joe Biden

Normally when we think about politics, we think about issues, policies, programs - the stuff of day-to-day government. Or we think of the contest of politics - the parties, the polls, the candidates, the strategies.

These are all important questions, of course, but they are only surface manifestations of deeper political issues, issues which are moral, psychological, and ultimately, spiritual. Politics is all about how we live together as human beings, and all spiritual practices point to one profound truth about human life - that only love leads to peace, hatred never does. This is as true for nations as it is for individuals. ~ Melvin McLeod

So much love, too much love, it is our madness, it is rotting us out, exploding us like dandelion polls. ~ John Updike

Half the population hold that the government is run by a few big interests looking out for themselves, as polls regularly show. ~ Noam Chomsky

Opinion polls are not worth the paper they are written on, in my view, through the conference season. They don't settle down again until November. ~ Norman Tebbit

You can't depend on polls. ~ Michael Bloomberg

Totalitarian movements are possible wherever there are masses who for one reason or another have acquired the appetite for political organization. Masses are not held together by a consciousness of common interest and they lack that specific class articulateness which is expressed in determined, limited, and obtainable goals. The term masses applies only where we deal with people who either because of sheer numbers, or indifference, or a combination of both, cannot be integrated into any organization based on common interest, into political parties or municipal governments or professional organizations or trade unions. Potentially, they exist in every country and form the majority of those large numbers of neutral, politically indifferent people who never join a party and hardly ever go to the polls. ~ Hannah Arendt

The possibility of my presidential candidacy emerged spontaneously in public opinion polls. For my part, I noticed people's affection when I was doing work on the ground. I think the important thing is that my candidacy was born from citizens themselves, driven by the people and which the parties picked up favorably. ~ Michelle Bachelet

The power to make people laugh is also a power, so women have been kept out of comedy. Polls ~ Gloria Steinem

J&K, why refugees can vote in the Lok Sabha but not in state polls, ~ Anonymous

Polls could be self-fulfilling prophecies, shaping reality as much as they described it. ~ Rick Perlstein

According to the latest L.A. Times poll, 75% of Californians believe the country is headed in the wrong direction. And 60% of Californians are so disillusioned, they're thinking about moving back to Mexico. ~ Jay Leno

Democracy is a proposal (rarely realized) about decision making; it has little to do with election campaigns. Its promise is that political decisions be made after, and in the light of, consultation with the governed. This is dependent upon the governed being adequately informed about the issues in question, and upon the decision-makers having the capacity and will to listen and take account of what they have heard. Democracy should not be confused with the 'freedom' of binary choices, the publication of opinion polls or the crowding of people into statistics. These are its pretences. Today the fundamental decisions, which effect the unnecessary pain increasingly suffered across the planet, have been and are taken unilaterally without any open consultation or participation. Both ~ John Berger

According to various polls conducted, the single most important issue in last week's election was not the Iraq War, not the War on Terror, not even the economy. It was the cultural war. ~ John Doolittle

Are you attracted by his new ideas or his new poll ratings? ~ Pat Buchanan

Talk is cheap, voting is free; take it to the polls... ~ Nanette L. Avery

You know, the polls show that 70 percent of the people are for stem-cell research. ~ Nancy Reagan

I think this is the first time I've altered a book based on what you guys told me. So it's an occasion! Soon I'll be putting up polls to choose between plots, and then it's a short stop to accepting anonymous contributions and stapling them together while I sip margaritas on the deck of a Pacific cruise ship. ~ Max Barry