POLLS TELL WHICH WAY THE WIND BLOWS - SOMETIMES.

Byline: BRIDGET JOHNSON

THIS just in: The Poles have been polled, and 85 percent said they want favorite Pole John Paul II to be Poland's patron saint (Agence France Presse, Monday).

File this under the ``No kidding!'' polls, such as polls showing oppressed people dislike dictators or that Howard Dean backers usually vote Democrat.

Also in: More than 80 percent of surveyed Rhode Islanders - a state slightly larger than the United Nations building itself - oppose the nomination of John Bolton as U.N. ambassador, reports Zogby.

File this under the ``So?'' polls that have next-to-zero bearing on the matter and are barely stimulating enough to keep a columnist from slipping into a coma.

Oh, and the government has spent $2 million polling people on Social Security since 1998, reported the Associated Press on Monday. Imagine if it had invested that dough in private accounts.

What exactly is the weight of a poll, anyway?

Do think tanks and journalism outlets use polls for amusement, or do they actually show the breadth of opinion of the electorate? Should politicians rely on the sampling of 1,000 respondents with a margin of error plus or minus 3 percentage points to shape their policy? And if they're as accurate as exit polls, do they mean a hill of beans?

Pollsters invaded swing states before the last presidential election, resulting in a Gallup and Ipsos world that swung wildly between George W. Bush and John Kerry. These branched beyond who one planned on voting for to which candidate one would prefer at their backyard barbecue (Bush; AP, May 26) to which party's members have better sex lives and fake fewer orgasms (Republicans; ABC News, Oct. 21).

Scholastic Corp., which boasts that its schoolhouse polls have predicted every presidential outcome except two since 1940, announced Oct. 20 that Bush received 52 percent of the vote of first- through eighth-graders compared to 47 percent for Kerry (the November popular vote would be 51 percent Bush, 48 percent Kerry). The remaining 1 percent of kids voted for ``other candidates'': I would assume Crayola write-ins for Hilary Duff, not Hillary Clinton. As opposed to most polls that draw from a sample under 1,000, the Scholastic poll had half a million respondents. These nonvoters weren't dumb - they know it's a jungle gym out there.

And as democracy spreads in troubled regions, it's also spreading polls.

When Saddam Hussein was still in power, he couldn't shut his people up fast enough. When liberation came and Saddam was resigned to hiding in a hole with Mars bars, the polls came along with the American Humvees. As Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's goons still kidnap and behead, pollsters are somehow trouncing unabated through the 'hoods.

The Iraqi polls have seemed to be trying to draw stats to back up preconceived theories. Do you even like the stinkin' Americans? Don't you feel less safe with a U.S. tank down the block than when Chemical Ali was dropping blistering surprises in your neighborhood? Aren't you just raring for a civil war?

Knight Ridder reported Oct. 22 that Sen. John Kerry edged out Bush, 20 percent to 16 percent, in a poll asking Iraqis who they'd like to see as U.S. president. Who was the majority victor then? Nobody! The ``I don't care'' answer, with 58.6 percent.

And just when we thought we'd see the headline ``Poll: Press can't find another poll topic,'' there's the new batch of controversies. Social Security. Gay marriage. Feeding tubes.

Would we have actually decided whether to starve a woman based on how many in a poll sampling wanted Terri Schiavo's feeding tube to stay out (66 percent; CBS News, March 24)? Someone making a life-or-death judgment to a telephone pollster while eating corn Niblets and watching ``Wheel of Fortune''?

And Pope John Paul II's body was not even cold when pollsters began jumping down Catholics' throats about whether they want married priests and women priests, or watered-down doctrine on abortion, birth control, basically everything.

Perhaps one day the secret may get out that the first plume of black smoke seen from the Sistine Chapel was not ballots, but a stack of polls snipped from papers covering every diocese around the globe - to be followed by a poll asking people how they felt about seeing the black smoke.