On the topic of polls - which was a subject in this thread -
Just so happens that there's a
Weekly Standard opinion piece today that talks about polls and how poorly they fare in the light of history. Money quote:
Quote:
Consider: In the fall of 1939 Adolf Hitler had already started the Second World War. Austria and Czechoslovakia had been conquered. Poland was falling to German armies. Britain and France had just declared war.
Against this, Gallup measured American public opinion on the European war. Perhaps unsurprisingly, 96 percent of Americans opposed joining the war against Hitler. But when asked if the United States should stay out of the war, even if that meant fascist Germany would conquer the democracies of England and France, 79 percent of Americans still said America should avoid the war.
European public opinion was no wiser. Shortly after Chamberlain won peace in our time at Munich, only 39 percent of British public opinion opposed his policies.
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