Absolutely, assuming they ever count for anything at all.
Yep. Thinking about that, in the grand scheme of things, how do polls matter at all? If we had no polls and only elections, would the final result change?
But thinking a bit more about this, polls do make differences sometimes. I remember in 1998 when Jesse Ventura was running for Minnesota governor as a third-party (Independence Party of MN) candidate. He was widely dismissed as a joke candidate by many voters and the media. But then news came that he was polling over 20% in a three-way race.
Instantly, the media accepted that he was a contender, and that made a difference in the coverage and exposure he received. When he went from little support to that level of support in the polls, it was a game changer. Public opinion snowballed, and Ventura went on to win the election. When Ventura polled over 20%, the idea of a wasted vote for a third-party candidate disappeared. When people realized their vote could be used to defeat both the Democrat and Republican candidates for governor, that's exactly what they did. When the media realized he was a contender, they shifted off the misfit former wrestler theme to treating him as a serious and viable candidate whose public policy views had merit.
Also, these polls are crucially important to those who pay to do them. News organizations pay to have polls conducted all the time. I suppose that's because that makes news and it gives them something interesting (to them at least) to report. Horse-race polling is an ongoing thing with the press. They wouldn't do it if it did not benefit them in one way or another.
In addition to the media polls and the occasional polls run by academic institutions, a ton of private polling goes on. Political parties, candidates and potential candidates pay to have such polls done all the time. They do this because they want to know what the people are thinking, so they can develop strategies to win their elections or public policy initiatives.
Outside of politics, businesses conduct polls all the time. Even in the small business Diane and I run, our franchisor runs a continuous poll of our gym members to determine their customer satisfaction level and to encourage and collect customer feedback. Our gym members are continuously polled because the feedback the polls produce is extremely valuable to the business owners and the franchisor.
So, I guess it is fair to say polls have their place. Poll results do indeed influence public opinion and they are extremely useful to those who pay to have the polling done.
This includes bad-faith polling which is also done by some. A poll is designed in advance to produce a result that is beneficial to the one commissioning a poll. Those poll results are then published and promoted in an attempt to use them to shift public opinion in their favor. The use of bad-faith polling is the reason so much emphasis is placed on polling methodology when a poll is evaluated.
But that is of little concern to the bad-faith pollsters. Once they obtain their desired headline, it's mission accomplished and time to move on to the next bad-faith poll they have in mind.