We have his conversation every two years and it only gets worse so I can barely bother with it, but there is a good reason for the press to pay attention to polls and commission some themselves, there is an understandable one, and then there is a shitty one, and mostly they do the latter two.
The understandable one is there's an audience for it. Click click click. Can't fault them too much for feeding that demand.
The good one is it tells them which races to cover. Not much point for a national newspaper too spend time on a +27 race. That doesn't mean ignore them entirely - those places matter too! - but there are limits to what you say when the story is "most of the people of South Carolina love this asshole." Though there are still some other things! Like one segment of the population of South Carolina might not!
The bad one is political journalists themselves like nothing more than pretending to use polls (though in this cycle, they largely just seemed to ignore them even as they pretended to use them) to inform their savvy takes on What It All Means and Who Is Going To Win. And all of that is horseshit, especially as even the supposed data guys are just going for the vibes, full time. Polls let "objective observers of politics" spew their nonsense opinions, and pretend they're actually informed by anything. It's completely made up shit from prominent national reporters, who of course don't really know what's going on in Oregon's 6th district, or wherever.
Also, occasionally, just occasionally, they could talk about actual policy? Inform the voters? BORRRRRRIIIINNG.
