Polls and Their Uses

Political polls are highly dependent upon the reputation for probity of those who run them. To a surprisingly lesser extent they depend upon the technical competence of how they are sampled, weighted, and their questioning is worded, ordered, and organised - all those anoraky things. 

This is because, bluntly, polls are nothing more than rough and ready quick reference for how all manner of events are being interpreted politically by the population at large.  Any reasonably aware observer can do as well, and does.  Which leads to the politically unperceptive, and politically desperate in their commitment to their 'team', dumping the jiggery pokery of data collection and analysis and denouncing pollsters as self-seekers after political reward, or incompetent at their technical undertakings, or both, if their own desires, and clumsy perceptions,  are contrasted.

 People who can't be bothered to think about politics really, or are unable to assimilate and process the diverse inputs of political outcomes, take their lead from polling and their reassurance from polling's spurious 'academicity'.  And if the polls don't say what their inadequate political understanding and lack of attention to detail tells them, then the pollster gets it.