Polls measure one and only one thing: headlines. (Or however things are being circulating at a given time.) This is something the right’s apparatus of media outlets and lobbying/PR firms figured out a long time ago. This is why owning local news stations and bot networks and the control of the social media that amplifies them are now so important to the oligarchs.

People get worked up about what they’re TOLD to get worked up about. Marketing actually works.

Polls used to consistently show the public believe most of the US budget goes to “foreign aid.” Under Biden polling showed the public believed the “border crisis” was the #1 “problem.” Past top polling concerns have included “Obama phones,” jury awards to people harmed by spilling extremely hot coffee in moving cars, Satanic cults abusing children, “the national debt” (when Democrats want to spend money to make people’s lives better), … It comes down to whoever is paying big bucks to get the pubic to believe something. This is how politics works right now in the US.