When I read about the most recent NBC poll that finds Biden’s approval rating at the lowest level of his presidency, and most American voters not feeling “warm and fuzzy” toward the President.

The polls want to make me scream. In addition to the NYT poll, a mid-November poll conducted by The Economist/YouGov found that a quarter of American voters want Biden to run for reelection, and, then there’s the NYT/Siena College Poll showing the former guy leading Biden in five (Nevada, Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, and Pennsylvania) key battleground states.

I have to scratch my head at these polls. Unemployment is at a 50-year low, and 11 million jobs have been added since Biden moved into the Whitehouse. Americans have benefited greatly from the American Rescue Plan, a $1 trillion infrastructure bill to repair our roads, bridges, and railroads, and the Inflation Reduction Act to name a few. 

Compared to the nightmare of the Trump presidency, Biden is Superman.

So why the negative polls? As Washington Post journalist Philip Bump wrote, “Americans are fickle, and polling them is often like trying to take the temperature of a 4-year-old: You can get a useful result, but it will take some wrangling — and it may not be useful for long.”

I can’t agree more: Americans are fickle, but what concerns me most is that polls can directly influence individual support for candidates and policies. Psychologists have long shown that people conform to majority opinion, a phenomenon known as the “bandwagon effect.” Psychologists have also found that published polls with probabilities of candidates winning or losing also influence individual voters. 

The big lie of a stolen election has been a key part of the GOP/MAGA strategy, and it’s working. According to a 2022 poll, 80%of Americans have lost faith in the integrity of our elections, and this is directly related to Trump and his supporters continually pushing the outright lie of a broken system where the Democrats cheated to get Biden into office. This tiny seed of deceit has grown exponentially and has pushed many conservatives, independents, and undecided voters to question the system, and in turn question Biden. A lie told often enough….

If we take that to heart, then the recent polls can be a rallying cry for the MAGA crowd, as well as one for Democracy. We all know that a second Trump term would mean the end of our democracy as we know it, and our nation will just be another autocracy where right-wing plutocrats make the rules at the expense and suffering of the citizenry. 

Democrats, don’t lose heart. As Bloomberg columnist Jonathan Bernstein stated, “Until 300 days before the election, polls have no predictive value at all.” 

There are 350 days until Election Day. Forget the bandwagon and vote like our Democracy depends on it because it does.