Stop the presses: a meaningless poll!

"Voters Want Less Pork, Even in Their Own District": Color me skeptical. Extremely skeptical, actually. It's very easy to say, in response to a poll question, that you would prefer a "candidate who wants to cut overall federal spending, even if that includes cutting some money that would come to your district" to a more spendthrift, porky candidate. That is, after all, the "right" answer; who's going to openly admit that they like pork, particularly when the organization asking the question is the Club for Growth?

But what does the answer mean? In a word, nothing. The concept of "cutting some money that would come to your district" is just that -- a concept, and an incredibly vague one, at that. How much money? For which projects? Nobody thinks their favorite federally-funded project is "pork"; surely the cuts would come from some other, less worthy project. And besides, they'll think: while reducing pork might entail cutting "some money" from my district, there will be more cuts in other districts, right? Because really, the spending in my district isn't that wasteful. We've only got a little bit of pork here. Now, Alaska, that's where the pork is, am I right people?

If you could show me micro-targeted polling that shows voters rejecting specific local pork projects in service of an anti-pork mindset, then I'll be interested. This poll, however, is almost worthless.

(Hat tip: InstaPundit, who is a bit too credulous in this instance.)