David Hill

Sunday’s Super Bowl audience, the largest in TV history, was more than a giant canvas for ad-makers to paint on. It was also the world’s largest focus group and test-bed for advertising research. As always, the ads suggested something about the gestalt of the national zeitgeist. So there ought to be something useful in there for political strategists and pollsters.

What is the real meaning of the truly remarkable turn of events that we have witnessed in the past 15 to 16 months?

Before we get carried away with the momentum created by Scott Brown’s win in Massachusetts, it’s worth recalling that John Kerry’s 2004 Iowa caucus victory gave him the “big mo” that propelled him into a general-election loss to George W. Bush. As has been observed by sportswriters, if momentum were tantamount to victory, the Dallas Cowboys or San Diego Chargers would be headed for the Super Bowl. No teams were hotter when the playoffs began. But when the pads started popping, the better teams won, not the teams on a win streak. Feel-good momentum is often reversed by the harshness of reality. The power of the “big mo” is grossly exaggerated.

It’s not exactly a referendum on the state of the states, but I am not surprised to see that less than a majority of Americans recently polled by the Rasmussen organization believe that states should have the right to opt out of the proposed healthcare plan. States’ rights and even states’ relevance are fading concepts.

The big NBC mess involving Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien has some angles that political strategists should be paying attention to.

It would have been an interesting engagement to poll for Nelson Mandela when he first exercised power as president of South Africa.

Pity the scholar who studies elections from a practical-research perspective. His or her colleagues in the academy — devoted to extravagant theoretical studies — fail to appreciate the value of simple descriptive inquiries. Meanwhile, pollsters and other working political consultants may dismiss the scholar as an ivory-tower dweller whose explorations cannot possibly be of real-world value. Caught in this crevice between town and gown is where Professor Christopher Borick of Muhlenberg College finds himself with a recently published article, “Where have all the Republicans gone?” It should have a wider audience.

Enjoy yourselves, Tea Partyers. You are one-third of the way through your 15 months of fame and there are still reasons to party like it’s 1996.

Pollsters and other public opinion researchers must be careful when employing anecdotal “evidence” drawn from a single person to make a point about the attitudes of mass publics. No matter how convincing and compelling one evidentiary tale may be, it is dangerous to project that singular anecdote to an understanding of the opinions of a larger population. It is even more dangerous for the professional researcher to use personal or family anecdotal evidence. So I am aware of the liabilities associated with the anecdote I am about to share, but it makes the point better than any other way I know of.

Suppose that Barack Obama is a stock on the New York Stock Exchange. Do you buy, sell or hold? The book value of his stock, his job approval rating, hovers just above 50 percent these days and is in a long, slow slide. Unfortunately, approval ratings, like a stock’s book value, don’t tell the whole story. Other factors, from management to anticipated future earnings, figure into stock valuations. So how do we value the president?