So Snyder's sinking....

Polls are funny.

I remember the weekend before Michigan's gubernatorial election back in 1990. My boss, Jim Blanchard, the incumbent, was 20 points ahead of his challenger, John Engler, the frumpy, dumpy right wing Senate Majority Leader.

Jim Blanchard

I woke up the following Wednesday morning in a hotel in Detroit to a hangover and the jarring news that Mr. Unpleasant from Mt. Pleasant had beaten my boss by fewer than 20,000 votes. My wife at the time was six months pregnant, Christmas was in a few weeks, and I was suddenly in the job hunt along with hundreds of others.

That was when I learned that polls don’t necessarily mean sh*t. It’s all about GOTV, “Get Out the Vote,” and Blanchard hadn’t done it. So while he headed to a lucrative post at a high-falutin’ law firm, then a presidential appointment as U.S. Ambassador to Canada, scores of mid-level staffers like me scrambled and lamented the fact that we hadn’t burrowed into holes in state government like some had recommended. (We refused to acknowledge the Blanchard Fatigue that existed in the field, choosing instead, unwisely, to hang our hats on the results of a single poll.)

John Engler

It’s because of that experience that I find most polls worth less than the paper on which they would be printed if things were still printed on paper. They’re a tool for the media to use to inflate its own importance, suppress voter turnout and shape the outcome of races. Sometimes candidates can use favorable results to fundraise and motivate and energize, but polls can also give false hope to the doomed. And an unfavorable poll can decide who wins before voters get the chance, which just seems wrong.

So I can’t decide how I feel about yesterday’s news that 62 percent of those polled by the Lansing firm EPIC-MRA disapprove of Republican Rick Snyder’s performance as governor, up from 57 percent in July. (Back in January, Snyder’s favorable to unfavorable spread was 59 percent to 8 percent.)

Rick Snyder

EPIC-MRA pollster Bernie Porn said voters are skeptical that business tax cuts will improve the state's economy and don't care for either the 2012 cuts in state aid to education or the increased taxes on retirement income that take effect January 1.

When asked about his poll numbers, Snyder insisted that the personal meetings he has with residents suggest the public is more supportive than the surveys say. This is the equivalent of sticking one’s fingers in one’s ears and singing, “La la la” really loudly.

I want to hang my hat on these numbers because I strongly dislike the Nasally Nerd and believe his “Rob from the Poor to Give to the Rich” policies are as bad for Michigan as John Engler’s were two decades ago. (At least with John Engler, Lansing observers knew what we were in for. Snyder is more of an enigma, a secret that proves uglier and worse as more is revealed.) But the next election is still more than 56 weeks away; a lot can change in that amount of time.

Let’s see what happens on Election Day.