I think you have described their real motivation, but how would they know? Politicians don’t have a secret database of polling data unavailable to the rest of us, or a deep expertise in reading the ones which are available.
The problem is both the voters and the politicians are drawing on the journalists for information. The journalists are writing for clicks, which means a national focus for the widest audience. The politicians then spend their time sounding good to their local constituents about these national trends, which is why they all sound insane to everyone else.
There is local variation in the perception of the national trends, which leads to everyone having a different conversation.
Politicians these days do pay pollsters to optimize their messaging. They let their pollsters run focus groups to find out what the public wants to hear.
Politicians raise money from lobbyists to be able to pay for their pollsters to know what to say, to get the public to like them. For better or worse it’s not the problem of US politics that politicians have to depend on the media to understand what the public thinks.
I think you have described their real motivation, but how would they know? Politicians don’t have a secret database of polling data unavailable to the rest of us, or a deep expertise in reading the ones which are available.
The problem is both the voters and the politicians are drawing on the journalists for information. The journalists are writing for clicks, which means a national focus for the widest audience. The politicians then spend their time sounding good to their local constituents about these national trends, which is why they all sound insane to everyone else.
There is local variation in the perception of the national trends, which leads to everyone having a different conversation.
No, we live in the 21st century.
Politicians these days do pay pollsters to optimize their messaging. They let their pollsters run focus groups to find out what the public wants to hear.
Politicians raise money from lobbyists to be able to pay for their pollsters to know what to say, to get the public to like them. For better or worse it’s not the problem of US politics that politicians have to depend on the media to understand what the public thinks.