Truth Matters When I was a congressional candidate I had access in presidential years to the Republican Party’s weekly presidential polls. The results were for internal use, and not released to the public. At the same time I saw the various public polls (usually commissioned by the news media). The differences between the private poll and the public ones was striking. To begin with, the private results were fairly constant (never varying by more than one or two percent). The public results were much more volatile and generally showed the Republican far behind the Democrat. As election day approached, however, the public ...