While decrying what he terms "poll literalism," Kevin Drum then engages in a curious bit of poll hypotheticalism:

First, withdrawal from Iraq. A recent New York Times poll showed that 65% of respondents want to withdraw either some or all of our troops from Iraq. Hooray! The country is with us! But then the Times asked a followup question: "What if removing troops meant Iraq would become more of a base of operations for terrorists, then would you still favor removing U.S. troops from Iraq, or not?" Guess what? Of that 65%, only 30% still favored removal. That's a huge drop based on a single hypothetical, and in a real campaign that hypothetical would practically blanket the airwarves. It wouldn't convince everyone, of course, but it would probably convince a sizable chunk. The odds are that in real life — i.e., during a campaign

It would probably convince a sizable chunk? How does Kevin know this? Excuse me, this is ridiculous use of polling. Can we do one with a Democratic hypothetical and see what the results would be? Of course not. What Kevin is pointing to is actually push polling. Push polling is not ACCURATE polling and it is impossible to draw any conclusions from it. But Kevin sees value in it, as he then defends the Biden push poll that Celinda Lake performed: