Those are good, meaty questions. In an election, the vote is the measure of popular support for a candidate/policy/platform. Democracy doesn't necessarily need

Those are good, meaty questions. In an election, the vote is the measure of popular support for a candidate/policy/platform. Democracy doesn't necessarily need polls. I've found interesting some related essays by Jill Lepore, an American historian, on the advent of polling earlier in the 20th century: - https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/11/16/politics-and-the-new-machine https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/11/16/politics-and-t... - https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/03/09/the-problems-inherent-in-political-polling https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/03/09/the-problems-i...