Another Dubious Poll--Now It's Gallup Wasting Its Time

Last week we pointed out evidence from psychologists suggesting that asking people whether they would vote for a generic candidate of a given gender, race, or religion is useless. (A Washington Post/ABC News poll did just this in late February.)

This time the culprit is Gallup, which released a poll this morning that asked many of the same questions. Pollsters asked respondents whether they would be "completely comfortable" voting for a candidate with a given trait, would vote "with reservations," or would simply not vote for that candidate.

Like the previous poll, the "72 years old" category won the biggest negative response, with 41 percent of respondents saying it was a disqualifier. (Forty-two percent said it didn't matter.)

While these polls do not portend actual votes, as the author of the Post/ABC poll stressed to News Desk, the naysayers believe that abstract questions like these just don't apply all that well to living, breathing candidates. A better method, they say, would be to test prejudices experimentally in a research setting.