Are Polls Showing How You’ll Vote? Or How You Think Others Will?

Are Polls Showing How You’ll Vote? Or How You Think Others Will?

One of the things which makes the media’s bias in favor of President Obama so influential is the natural human tendency to want to belong, and the fear being out of the mainstream.

As a professor, I cannot count the number of classes in which students were reluctant to ask a question for fear that everyone else already knew the answer. And yet when some “brave soul” actually asks, at least half the class heaves an audible sigh of relief – they all have the same question.

The “grownups” behave this way as well. A few years ago,...