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Opinion polls: Often misused but essential tool for democracy

As we hurtle down to the 2022 presidential election, be prepared to be inundated with all sorts of opinion polls, from the interesting to the preposterous.

Indeed, if you took a public opinion poll about polls, odds are that a majority would offer some rather unfavourable views of pollsters and the uses to which their work is put. Yet if you asked whether politicians, business leaders, and journalists should pay attention to the people’s voices, almost everyone would say yes. And if you then asked whether polls are, at least, one tool through which the wishes of the people can be discerned, a reluctant majority would probably say yes to that too.

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