Guardian: Polls, Propaganda & Poppycock

Conservative demands that David Cameron tack right and return to traditional Tory values will be emboldened by a Guardian/ICM poll which finds the public overwhelmingly believes a hard line on Europe, immigration and traditional families would make the party more appealing...

In what the right may seize on as a rejection of gay marriage, voters judge by 69%-24% that the Tories' appeal could be boosted by keeping "themselves on the side of traditional families".

The Guardian.

This is absolute nonsense.
Note that people weren't asked anything about the Conservatives and gay marriage.
They were asked a leading and misleading question about whether the party should support "traditional families".
But this is so banal, it's practically meaningless.
Does anyone think the Tories should not keep "themselves on the side of traditional families"?

Anything that's totally vacuous and diverts, after all what does it mean to be in favor of... suppose somebody asks, do you support the people in Iowa, can you say I support them or no I don't support them? 
It's not even a question, it doesn't even mean anything. And that's the point of public relations slogans like 'support our troops' is that they don't mean anything, they mean as much as whether you support the people in Iowa.
Of course there was an issue - the issue was do you support our policy, but you don't want people to think about the issue, that's the whole point of good propaganda, you want to create a slogan that nobody is gonna be against and I suppose everybody will be for because nobody knows what it means, because it doesn't mean anything, but it's crucial value is it diverts your attention from a question that does mean something, do you support our policy, and that's the one you're not allowed to talk about.

Noam Chomsky, 1992.