Eugene McCarthy Quotes

I've learned a long time ago not to take polls too seriously.

I have never seen a poll elect anyone

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.

Don't worry about polls, but if you do, don't admit it.

It is not through any combinations of politicians that the outcome of an electoral campaign is decided.

If the critics are right that I've made all my decisions based on polls, then I must not be very good at reading them.

What is the primary purpose of a political leader? To build a majority. If voters care about parking lots, then talk about parking lots.

If I worried about pollsters, I wouldn't be president.

Early polls mean nothing.

By choice, polls validate the media’s filtered view of the world.

I think you have to be careful. You have to know exactly what is going to resonate with voters. And you can't get ahead of that. You have to be very careful with your approach.

I'll be glad to reply to or dodge your questions, depending on what I think will help our election most.

I never felt comfortable with making political decisions based on whether, you know, it was the right thing to do in terms of a poll.

There's a basic law, Klein's second, or third, or fourth law of politics in the TV age, which is warm always beats cold, with the exception of Richard Nixon. The nicer guy usually wins.

Frankly, I thought we would have lost the House by now.

No one in this world, so far as I know - and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me - has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.

Voters are looking for credibility and are wary of polish. At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter which candidate can more deftly read a teleprompter.

The last thing you want to do is read the latest poll and then make policy.

When politicians try to govern by raising a wet finger to the wind or on the basis of public opinion polling, the public gets to think that all leaders are interchangeable.

Before some things can be politically expedient, they must first become popular.

Polls are only good for dogs.

A 30 second negative ad can matter more to a candidate's career than a lifetime voting record.

In polling, truth is what people perceive.

No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.

Politicians livelihoods depend on what people think.