Chicken, egg

Recently I was called by representatives of a nationally known and famous political polling organization wanting to know if I was willing to share my thoughts and opinions on the upcoming presidential election. I was, in fact, not only willing, but anxious to do so and so we began the interview.

As I?ve thought about the situation since the end of that telephone call, however, I?ve become quite angry. Whenever I talk to newspaper editors and television program directors about why they don?t give more coverage to Libertarian Candidates, causes and activities, I always get an answer that is a variation on the same theme: ?All the polls show you have negligible support.? Yet, as this very incident clearly demonstrates, the people making media decisions are ?cooking the books", skewing the process to exclude the answers that they do not, apparently, wish to see. In those polls commissioned by Libertarians and aggressively neutral polling organizations, Libertarian Presidential Candidate Michael Badnarik polls between 1% and 3% regularly. In those polls where he is at first left off the polling list and then later included, his support often jumps to over 5%, indicating that when likely voters realize that they have alternative choices, they elect to take them.

Read the whole thing; it's worthwhile, and goes a long way towards explaining why Libertarian ideas don't get a lot of play.