Cal Winter
Jefferson City
Dear Editor:
Word is going around that hidden in the liberal-progressive crowd is a sizeable minority of likely voters who secretly plan to vote for Trump. Conservative radio hosts have called these secret Trump voters The Silent Majority. The idea is that these people do not answer political poll questions truthfully because they don't want to suffer disapproval from the pollster, but on election day, in the secrecy of the voting booth, they will be truthful and Trump will win. This idea is consistent with what I believe to be true of human nature. Whether or not it's relevant in this case is unknown.
People are polled about many issues, including abortion, attitudes about race relations and whether or not they believe in God. All of these issues and many others are likely to elicit untruthful responses to poll questions because of the perceived risk of disapproval.
When the desired conclusion can be drawn from an obviously questionable set of poll responses, that conclusion will be used freely as hard evidence by politicians, abortion activists, clergy and others. This is just another form of lying. That's all it is.