public opinion
Introduction
an aggregate of the individual views, attitudes, and beliefs about a particular topic, expressed by a significant proportion of a community. Some scholars treat the aggregate as a synthesis of the views of all or a certain segment of society; others regard it as a collection of many differing or opposing views. Writing in 1918, the American sociologist Charles Horton Cooley (Cooley, Charles Horton) emphasized public opinion as a process of interaction and mutual influence rather than a state of broad agreement. The American political scientist V.O. Key (Key, V O, Jr.) defined public opinion in 1961 as “opinions held by private persons which governments find it prudent to heed.” Subsequent advances in statistical and demographic analysis led by the 1990s to an understanding of public opinion as the collective view of a defined population, such as a particular demographic or ethnic group.
The influence of public opinion is not restricted to politics and elections. It is a powerful force in many other spheres, such as culture, fashion, literature and the arts, consumer spending, and marketing and public relations.
Theoretical and practical conceptions
In his eponymous treatise on public opinion published in 1922, the American editorialist Walter Lippmann (Lippmann, Walter) qualified his observation that democracies tend to make a mystery out of public opinion with the declaration that “there have been skilled organizers of opinion who understood the mystery well enough to create majorities on election day.” Although the reality of public opinion is now almost universally accepted, there is much variation in the way it is defined, reflecting in large measure the different perspectives from which scholars have approached the subject. Contrasting understandings of public opinion have taken shape over the centuries, especially as new methods of measuring public opinion have been applied to politics, commerce, religion, and social activism.
Political (political science) scientists and some historians have tended to emphasize the role of public opinion in government and politics, paying particular attention to its influence on the development of government policy. Indeed, some political scientists have regarded public opinion as equivalent to the national will. In such a limited sense, however, there can be only one public opinion on an issue at any given time.
Sociologists (sociology), in contrast, usually conceive of public opinion as a product of social interaction and communication. According to this view, there can be no public opinion on an issue unless members of the public communicate with each other. Even if their individual opinions are quite similar to begin with, their beliefs will not constitute a public opinion until they are conveyed to others in some form, whether through print media, radio, television, the Internet, or telephone or face-to-face conversation. Sociologists also point to the possibility of there being many different public opinions on a given issue at the same time. Although one body of opinion may dominate or reflect government policy, for example, this does not preclude the existence of other organized bodies of opinion on political topics. The sociological approach also recognizes the importance of public opinion in areas that have little or nothing to do with government. The very nature of public opinion, according to the American researcher Irving Crespi, is to be interactive, multidimensional, and continuously changing. Thus, fads and fashions are appropriate subject matter for students of public opinion, as are public attitudes toward celebrities or corporations.
Nearly all scholars of public opinion, regardless of the way they may define it, agree that, in order for a phenomenon to count as public opinion, at least four conditions must be satisfied: (1) there must be an issue, (2) there must be a significant number of individuals who express opinions on the issue, (3) there must be some kind of a consensus among at least some of these opinions, and (4) this consensus must directly or indirectly exert influence.
In contrast to scholars, those who aim to influence public opinion are less concerned with theoretical issues than with the practical problem of shaping the opinions of specified “publics,” such as employees, stockholders, neighbourhood associations, or any other group whose actions may affect the fortunes of a client or stakeholder. Politicians and publicists, for example, seek ways to influence voting and purchasing decisions, respectively—hence their wish to determine any attitudes and opinions that may affect the desired behaviour.
It is often the case that opinions expressed in public differ from those expressed in private. Some views—even though widely shared—may not be expressed at all. Thus, in a totalitarian state, a great many people may be opposed to the government but may fear to express their attitudes even to their families and friends. In such cases, an antigovernment public opinion necessarily fails to develop.
Historical background
Antiquity
Although the term public opinion was not used until the 18th century, phenomena that closely resemble public opinion seem to have occurred in many historical epochs. The ancient histories of Babylonia and Assyria, for example, contain references to popular attitudes, including the legend of a caliph who would disguise himself and mingle with the people to hear what they said about his governance. The prophets of ancient Israel sometimes justified the policies of the government to the people and sometimes appealed to the people to oppose the government. In both cases, they were concerned with swaying (persuasion) the opinion of the crowd. And in the classical democracy of Athens, it was commonly observed that everything depended on the people, and the people were dependent on the word. Wealth, fame, and respect—all could be given or taken away by persuading the populace. By contrast Plato found little of value in public opinion, since he believed that society should be governed by philosopher-kings whose wisdom far exceeded the knowledge and intellectual capabilities of the general population. And while Aristotle stated that “he who loses the support of the people is a king no longer,” the public he had in mind was a very select group; in the Athens of his time, the voting population was limited to about one-third of free adult male citizens.
The Middle Ages to the early modern period
In the traditional rural European societies of the Middle Ages, most people's activities and attitudes were dictated by their social stations. Phenomena much like public opinion, however, could still be observed among the religious, intellectual, and political elite. Religious disputations, the struggles between popes and the Holy Roman Empire, and the dynastic ambitions of princes all involved efforts to persuade, to create a following, and to line up the opinions of those who counted. In 1191 the English statesman William Longchamp (Longchamp, William), bishop of Ely, was attacked by his political opponents for hiring troubadours to extol his merits in public places, so that “people spoke of him as though his equal did not exist on earth.” The propaganda battles between emperors and popes were waged largely through sermons, but handwritten literature also played a part.
From the end of the 13th century, the ranks of those who could be drawn into controversy regarding current affairs grew steadily. The general level of education of the lay population gradually increased. The rise of humanism in Italy led to the emergence of a group of writers whose services were eagerly sought by princes striving to consolidate their domains. Some of these writers served as advisers and diplomats; others were employed as publicists because of their rhetorical skills. The 16th-century Italian writer Pietro Aretino (Aretino, Pietro)—of whom it was said that he knew how to defame, to threaten, and to flatter better than all others—was sought by both Charles V of Spain and Francis I of France. The Italian political philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli (Machiavelli, Niccolò), a contemporary of Aretino, wrote that princes should not ignore popular opinion, particularly in regard to such matters as the distribution of offices.
The invention of printing from movable type in the 15th century and the Protestant Reformation in the 16th further increased the numbers of people able to hold and express informed opinions on contemporary issues. The German priest and scholar Martin Luther (Luther, Martin) broke with the humanists by abandoning the use of Classical Latin, which was intelligible only to the educated, and turned directly to the masses. “I will gladly leave to others the honour of doing great things,” he wrote, “and will not be ashamed of preaching and writing in German for the unschooled layman.” Although Luther's Ninety-five Theses, which were distributed throughout Europe despite being printed against his will, were of a theological nature, he also wrote on such subjects as the war against the Turks, the Peasants' Revolt, and the evils of usury. His vituperative style and the criticism he received from his many opponents, both lay and clerical, contributed to the formation of larger and larger groups holding opinions on important matters of the day.
During the Thirty Years' War (1618–48), extensive attempts were made to create and influence public opinion, including the use of tracts illustrated with woodcuts. Opinions were also swayed by means of speeches, sermons, and face-to-face discussions. Not surprisingly, some civil and religious authorities attempted to control the dissemination of unwelcome ideas through increasingly strict censorship. The first Index Librorum Prohibitorum (“Index of Forbidden Books”) was published during the reign of Pope Paul IV in 1559. Charles IX of France decreed in 1563 that nothing could be printed without the special permission of the king. The origin of the word propaganda is linked to the Roman Catholic Church's missionary organization Congregatio de Propaganda Fide (Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith), which was founded in 1622.
More quietly but more significantly, other means of distributing information were becoming a common part of life. Regular postal services, started in France in 1464 and in the Austrian Empire in 1490, facilitated the spread of information enormously. Rudimentary private news services had been maintained by political authorities and wealthy merchants since Classical times, but they were not available to the general public. Regularly printed newspapers first appeared about 1600 and multiplied rapidly thereafter, though they were frequently bedeviled by censorship regulations.
The great European news centres began to develop during the 17th century, especially in cities that were establishing sophisticated financial exchanges, such as Antwerp, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, London, and Lyons. With the introduction of a paid civil service and the employment of paid soldiers in the place of vassals, princes found it necessary to borrow money. The bankers, in turn, had to know a great deal about the credit of the princes, the state of their political fortunes, and their reputations with their subjects. All kinds of political and economic information flowed to the money-lending centres, and this information gave rise to generally held opinions in the banking community; the ditta di borsa (“opinion on the bourse”) is often referred to in documents of the period.
The 18th century to the present
Significantly, it was another financial official who first popularized the term public opinion in modern times. Jacques Necker (Necker, Jacques), the finance minister for Louis XVI on the eve of the French Revolution, noted repeatedly in his writings that public credit depended upon the opinions of holders and buyers of government securities about the viability of the royal administration. He too was vitally concerned with the ditta di borsa. But he also remarked on the power of public opinion in other areas. “This public opinion,” Necker wrote, “strengthens or weakens all human institutions.” As he saw it, public opinion should be taken into account in all political undertakings. Necker was not, however, concerned with the opinions of each and every Frenchman. For him, the people who collectively shaped public opinion were those who could read and write, who lived in cities, who kept up with the day's news, and who had money to buy government securities.The final years of the 18th century showed how enormously the power of public opinion had grown. Revolutionary public opinion had transformed 13 North American British colonies into the United States of America. In France, public opinion had inspired both the middle classes and the urban masses and had ultimately taken shape as the French Revolution. Observers of the Revolution were mystified—and often terrified—by this new spectre, which seemed able to sweep aside one of the most-entrenched institutions of the time—the monarchy.
In keeping with theories of social class developed in the 19th century, some scholars of the era viewed public opinion as the domain of the upper classes. Thus, the English author William A. Mackinnon defined it as “that sentiment on any given subject which is entertained by the best informed, most intelligent, and most moral persons in the community.” Mackinnon, who was one of the first authors to focus on the subject, drew a further distinction between public opinion and “popular clamour,” which he described as
that sort of feeling arising from the passions of a multitude acting without consideration; or an excitement created amongst the uneducated; or amongst those who do not reflect, or do not exercise their judgment on the point in question.
There is no doubt that public opinion was on the minds of the great thinkers and writers of the era. The German philosopher G.W.F. Hegel (Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich) described public opinion as containing both truth and falsehood and added that it was the task of the great man to distinguish between the two. The English jurist and historian James Bryce (Bryce, James Bryce, Viscount), writing in the late 19th and the early 20th century, maintained that a government based on popular consent would give a nation great stability and strength but did not believe that public opinion could or should determine the details of policy, since in his view most people do not have the leisure or inclination to arrive at a position on every question. Rather, the masses would set the general tone for policy, their sentiments leading them to take a stand on the side of justice, honour, and peace.Various theories of public opinion have been developed since the early 20th century, though none has been recognized as predominant. According to a framework suggested by the Canadian communications theorist Sherry Devereux Ferguson, most of them fall into one or the other of three general categories. Some theories proposed in the first half of the 20th century treat public opinion as a welling up from the bottom levels of society to the top, ensuring a two-way flow of communication between representatives and the represented. This “populist” approach acknowledges the tendency of public opinion to shift as individuals interact with each other or respond to media influences. It has been opposed by theories of the “elitist” or social constructionist category, which emphasize the manipulative aspects of communication and recognize the multiplicity of perspectives that tend to form around any issue. Reflecting a more pessimistic outlook, theories belonging to a third category, known as critical or radical-functionalist, hold that the general public—including minority groups—has negligible influence on public opinion, which is largely controlled by those in power. This perspective, however, has been challenged by those who recognize a persistent plurality of views in democracies, evidenced most recently by the flourishing of public discourse through the Internet and other new media.
The formation and change of public opinion
No matter how collective views (those held by most members of a defined public) coalesce into public opinion, the result can be self-perpetuating. The French political scientist Alexis de Tocqueville (Tocqueville, Alexis de), for example, observed that once an opinionhas taken root among a democratic people and established itself in the minds of the bulk of the community, it afterwards persists by itself and is maintained without effort, because no one attacks it.In 1993 the German opinion researcher Elizabeth Noelle-Neumann characterized this phenomenon as a “spiral of silence,” noting that people who perceive that they hold a minority view will be less inclined to express it in public.
Components of public opinion: attitudes (attitude) and values
How many people actually form opinions on a given issue, as well as what sorts of opinions they form, depends partly on their immediate situations, partly on more-general social-environmental factors, and partly on their preexisting knowledge, attitudes, and values. Because attitudes and values play such a crucial role in the development of public opinion, scholars of the subject are naturally interested in the nature of these phenomena, as well as in ways to assess their variability and intensity.
The concepts of opinion, attitude, and value used in public opinion research were given an influential metaphorical characterization by the American-born political analyst Robert Worcester, who founded the London-based polling firm MORI (Market & Opinion Research International Ltd.). Values, he suggested, are “the deep tides of public mood, slow to change, but powerful.” Opinions, in contrast, are “the ripples on the surface of the public's consciousness—shallow and easily changed.” Finally, attitudes are “the currents below the surface, deeper and stronger,” representing a midrange between values and opinions. According to Worcester, the art of understanding public opinion rests not only on the measurement of people's views but also on understanding the motivations behind those views.
No matter how strongly they are held, attitudes are subject to change if the individual holding them learns of new facts or perspectives that challenge his or her earlier thinking. This is especially likely when people learn of a contrary position held by an individual whose judgment they respect. This course of influence, known as “opinion leadership,” is frequently utilized by publicists as a means of inducing people to reconsider—and quite possibly change—their own views.
Some opinion researchers have contended that the standard technical concept of attitude is not useful for understanding public opinion, because it is insufficiently complex. Crespi, for example, preferred to speak of “attitudinal systems,” which he characterized as the combined development of four sets of phenomena: (1) values and interests, (2) knowledge and beliefs, (3) feelings, and (4) behavioral intentions (i.e., conscious inclinations to act in certain ways).
Perhaps the most important concept in public opinion research is that of values. Values are of considerable importance in determining whether people will form opinions on a particular topic; in general, they are more likely to do so when they perceive that their values require it. Values are adopted early in life, in many cases from parents and schools. They are not likely to change, and they strengthen as people grow older. They encompass beliefs about religion—including belief (or disbelief) in God—political outlook, moral standards, and the like. As Worcester's analogy suggests, values are relatively resistant to ordinary attempts at persuasion and to influence by the media, and they rarely shift as a result of positions or arguments expressed in a single debate. Yet they can be shaped—and in some cases completely changed—by prolonged exposure to conflicting values, by concerted thought and discussion, by the feeling that one is “out of step” with others whom one knows and respects, and by the development of significantly new evidence or circumstances.
Formation of attitudes
Once an issue is generally recognized, some people will begin to form attitudes about it. If an attitude is expressed to others by sufficient numbers of people, a public opinion on the topic begins to emerge. Not all people will develop a particular attitude about a public issue; some may not be interested, and others simply may not hear about it.
The attitudes that are formed may be held for various reasons. Thus, among people who oppose higher property taxes, one group may be unable to afford them, another may wish to deny additional tax revenues to welfare recipients, another may disagree with a certain government policy, and another may wish to protest what it sees as wasteful government spending. A seemingly homogeneous body of public opinion may therefore be composed of individual opinions that are rooted in very different interests and values. If an attitude does not serve a function such as one of the above, it is unlikely to be formed: an attitude must be useful in some way to the person who holds it.
Factors influencing public opinion
Environmental factors
Environmental factors play a critical part in the development of opinions and attitudes. Most pervasive is the influence of the social environment: family, friends, neighbourhood, place of work, church, or school. People usually adjust their attitudes to conform to those that are most prevalent in the social groups to which they belong. Researchers have found, for example, that if a person in the United States who considers himself a liberal becomes surrounded in his home or at his place of work by people who profess conservatism, he is more likely to start voting for conservative candidates than is a liberal whose family and friends share his political views. Similarly, it was found during World War II that men in the U.S. military who transferred from one unit to another often adjusted their opinions to conform more closely to those of the unit to which they were transferred.
The mass media
Newspapers (newspaper), radio, television, and the Internet—including e-mail and blogs—are usually less influential than the social environment, but they are still significant, especially in affirming attitudes and opinions that are already established. The news media focus the public's attention on certain personalities and issues, leading many people to form opinions about them. Government officials accordingly have noted that communications to them from the public tend to “follow the headlines.”
The mass media can also reinforce latent attitudes and “activate” them, prompting people to take action. Just before an election, for example, voters who earlier had only a mild preference for one party or candidate may be inspired by media coverage not only to take the trouble to vote but perhaps also to contribute money or to help a party organization in some other way.
The mass media play another important role by letting individuals know what other people think and by giving political leaders large audiences. In this way the media make it possible for public opinion to encompass large numbers of individuals and wide geographic areas. It appears, in fact, that in some European countries the growth of broadcasting, especially television, affected the operation of the parliamentary system. Before television, national elections were seen largely as contests between a number of candidates or parties for parliamentary seats. As the electronic media grew more sophisticated technologically, elections increasingly assumed the appearance of a personal struggle between the leaders of the principal parties concerned. In the United States, presidential candidates have come to personify their parties. Once in office, a president can easily appeal to a national audience over the heads of elected legislative representatives.
In areas where the mass media are thinly spread, as in developing countries or in countries where the media are strictly controlled, word of mouth can sometimes perform the same functions as the press and broadcasting, though on a more limited scale. In developing countries, it is common for those who are literate to read from newspapers to those who are not, or for large numbers of persons to gather around the village radio or a community television. Word of mouth in the marketplace or neighbourhood then carries the information farther. In countries where important news is suppressed by the government, a great deal of information is transmitted by rumour. Word of mouth (or other forms of person-to-person communication, such as text messaging) thus becomes the vehicle for underground public opinion in totalitarian countries, even though these processes are slower and usually involve fewer people than in countries where the media network is dense and uncontrolled.
Interest groups (interest group)
interest groups, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), religious groups, and labour unions ( trade unions) cultivate the formation and spread of public opinion on issues of concern to their constituencies. These groups may be concerned with political, economic, or ideological issues, and most work through the mass media as well as by word of mouth. Some of the larger or more affluent interest groups around the world make use of advertising and public relations. One increasingly popular tactic is the informal poll or straw vote. In this approach, groups ask their members and supporters to “vote”—usually by phone or via the Internet—in unsystematic “polls” of public opinion that are not carried out with proper sampling procedures. Multiple votes by supporters are often encouraged, and once the group releases its findings to credible media outlets, it claims legitimacy by citing the publication of its poll in a recognized newspaper or online news source.
Reasons for conducting unscientific polls range from their entertainment value to their usefulness in manipulating public opinion, especially by interest groups or issue-specific organizations, some of which exploit straw-poll results as a means of making their causes appear more significant than they actually are. On any given issue, however, politicians will weigh the relatively disinterested opinions and attitudes of the majority against the committed values of smaller but more-dedicated groups for whom retribution at the ballot box is more likely.
Opinion leaders
Opinion leaders play a major role in defining popular issues and in influencing individual opinions regarding them. Political leaders in particular can turn a relatively unknown problem into a national issue if they decide to call attention to it in the media. One of the ways in which opinion leaders rally opinion and smooth out differences among those who are in basic agreement on a subject is by inventing symbols or coining slogans: in the words of U.S. Pres. Woodrow Wilson, the Allies in World War I were fighting “a war to end all wars,” while aiming “to make the world safe for democracy”; post-World War II relations with the Soviet Union were summed up in the term “Cold War,” first used by U.S. presidential adviser Bernard Baruch (Baruch, Bernard) in 1947. Once enunciated, symbols and slogans are frequently kept alive and communicated to large audiences by the mass media and may become the cornerstone of public opinion on any given issue.Opinion leadership is not confined to prominent figures in public life. An opinion leader can be any person to whom others look for guidance on a certain subject. Thus, within a given social group one person may be regarded as especially well-informed about local politics, another as knowledgeable about foreign affairs, and another as expert in real estate. These local opinion leaders are generally unknown outside their own circle of friends and acquaintances, but their cumulative influence in the formation of public opinion is substantial.
Complex influences
Because psychological makeup, personal circumstances, and external influences all play a role in the formation of each person's opinions, it is difficult to predict how public opinion on an issue will take shape. The same is true with regard to changes in public opinion. Some public opinions can be explained by specific events and circumstances, but in other cases the causes are more elusive. (Some opinions, however, are predictable: the public's opinions about other countries, for example, seem to depend largely on the state of relations between the governments involved. Hostile public attitudes do not cause poor relations—they are the result of them.)
People presumably change their own attitudes when they no longer seem to correspond with prevailing circumstances and, hence, fail to serve as guides to action. Similarly, a specific event, such as a natural disaster or a human tragedy, can heighten awareness of underlying problems or concerns and trigger changes in public opinion. Public opinion about the environment, for instance, has been influenced by single events such as the publication of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring in 1962; by the nuclear accident at Chernobyl, Ukraine, in 1986 (see Chernobyl accident); by British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's 1988 address to the Royal Society on a number of environmental topics, including global warming; by the accidental spill from the oil tanker Exxon Valdez in 1989; and by the Academy Award-winning documentary on climate change, An Inconvenient Truth, in 2006. It is nonetheless the case that whether a body of public opinion on a given issue is formed and sustained depends to a significant extent on the attention it receives in the mass media.Some changes in public opinion have been difficult for experts to explain. During the second half of the 20th century in many parts of the world, attitudes toward religion, family, sex, international relations, social welfare, and the economy underwent major shifts. Although important issues have claimed public attention in all these areas, the scope of change in public attitudes and opinions is difficult to attribute to any major event or even to any complex of events.
Public opinion and government
By its very nature, the democratic process spurs citizens to form opinions on a number of issues. Voters are called upon to choose candidates in elections, to consider constitutional amendments, and to approve or reject municipal taxes and other legislative proposals. Almost any matter on which the executive or legislature has to decide may become a public issue if a significant number of people wish to make it one. The political attitudes of these persons are often stimulated or reinforced by outside agencies—a crusading newspaper, an interest group, or a government agency or official.
The English philosopher and economist Jeremy Bentham (Bentham, Jeremy) (1748–1832) saw the greatest difficulty of the legislator as being “in conciliating the public opinion, in correcting it when erroneous, and in giving it that bent which shall be most favourable to produce obedience to his mandates.” At the same time, Bentham and some other thinkers believed that public opinion is a useful check on the authority of rulers. Bentham demanded that all official acts be publicized, so that an enlightened public opinion could pass judgment on them, as would a tribunal: “To the pernicious exercise of the power of government it is the only check.”In the early years of modern democracy, some scholars acknowledged the power of public opinion but warned that it could be a dangerous force. Tocqueville was concerned that a government of the masses would become a “tyranny of the majority.” But, whether public opinion is regarded as a constructive or a baneful force in a democracy, there are few politicians who are prepared to suggest in public that government should ignore it.
Political scientists have been less concerned with what part public opinion should play in a democratic polity and have given more attention to establishing what part it does play in actuality. From the examination of numerous histories of policy formation, it is clear that no sweeping generalization can be made that will hold in all cases. The role of public opinion varies from issue to issue, just as public opinion asserts itself differently from one democracy to another. Perhaps the safest generalization that can be made is that public opinion does not influence the details of most government policies but it does set limits within which policy makers must operate. That is, public officials will usually seek to satisfy a widespread demand—or at least take it into account in their deliberations—and they will usually try to avoid decisions that they believe will be widely unpopular.
Yet efforts by political leaders to accommodate government policies to public opinion are not always perceived as legitimate; indeed, journalists and political commentators have often characterized them as pandering to public opinion to curry favour with their constituents or as being driven by the latest poll results. Such charges were questioned, however, by public opinion scholars Lawrence R. Jacobs and Robert Y. Shapiro, who argued in Politicians Don't Pander: Political Manipulation and the Loss of Democratic Responsiveness (2000) that politicians do not actually do this. They found instead that by the early 1970s the accusation of pandering was being used deliberately by prominent journalists, politicians, and other elites as a means of lessening the influence of public opinion on government policy. This practice, they theorized, might have resulted from long-standing suspicion or hostility among elites toward popular participation in government and politics. In keeping with their findings, Jacobs and Shapiro postulated the eventual disappearance from public discourse of the stigmatizing term pandering and its replacement by the more neutral term political responsiveness.
Although they rejected the charge of pandering, Jacobs and Shapiro also asserted that most politicians tend to respond to public opinion in cynical ways; most of them, for example, use public opinion research not to establish their policies but only to identify slogans and symbols that will make predetermined policies more appealing to their constituents. According to Jacobs and Shapiro, most public opinion research is used to manipulate the public rather than to act on its wishes.
Public opinion exerts a more powerful influence in politics through its “latent” aspects. As discussed by V.O. Key (Key, V O, Jr.), latent public opinion is, in effect, a probable future reaction by the public to a current decision or action by a public official or a government. Politicians who ignore the possible consequences of latent public opinion risk setback or defeat in future elections. Government leaders who take latent public opinion into account, on the other hand, may be willing to undertake an unpopular action that has a negative effect on public opinion in the near term, provided that the action is also likely to have a significant positive effect at a later and more important time.
Public opinion seems to be much more effective in influencing policy making at the local level than at the state or national levels. One reason for this is that issues of concern to local governments—such as the condition of roads, schools, and hospitals—are less complex than those dealt with by governments at higher levels; another is that at the local level there are fewer institutional or bureaucratic barriers between policy makers and voters. Representative government itself, however, tends to limit the power of public opinion to influence specific government decisions, since ordinarily the only choice the public is given is that of approving or disapproving the election of a given official.
Public opinion polling
Public opinion polling can provide a fairly exact analysis of the distribution of opinions on almost any issue within a given population. Assuming that the proper questions are asked, polling can reveal something about the intensity with which opinions are held, the reasons for these opinions, and the probability that the issues have been discussed with others. Polling can occasionally reveal whether the people holding an opinion can be thought of as constituting a cohesive group. However, survey findings do not provide much information about the opinion leaders who may have played an important part in developing the opinion (although this information may be obtained through subgroup analysis, provided that the original sample is large enough to ensure that reports of opinion leaders are statistically reliable to a reasonable degree).
Polls are good tools for measuring “what” or “how much.” Finding out “how” or “why,” however, is the principal function of qualitative research—including especially the use of focus groups—which involves observing interactions between a limited number of people rather than posing a series of questions to an individual in an in-depth interview. However, polls cannot identify the likely future actions of the public in general, nor can they predict the future behaviour of individuals. They are also inappropriate as tools for exploring concepts unfamiliar to respondents. One of the best predictors of how people will vote is, simply, the vote that they cast in the last election. This is especially true if they automatically vote for the same political party, say they strongly support that party, and state that they are certain that they will vote.
Polls may serve a variety of purposes. Those reported in the media, for example, may be used to inform, to entertain, or to educate. In an election, well-run polls may constitute one of the most systematic and objective sources of political information. They are also the means by which journalists, politicians, business leaders, and other elites—whether they admit it or not—learn what the general public is thinking (other sources include casual encounters with ordinary citizens, listening to callers on radio talk shows, and reading letters from concerned citizens). Other things being equal, leaders who pay attention to public opinion will be better able to understand the groups they are trying to influence and better equipped to communicate overall.
Ideally, the people who prepare surveys and carry them out have no mission other than the objective and systematic measurement of public opinion. It is nonetheless possible for bias to enter into the polling process at any point, especially in cases where the entity commissioning the poll has a financial or political interest in the result or wishes to use the result to promote a specific agenda. Polls have been skewed from the outset by news companies surveying public opinion on political issues, by manufacturing firms engaged in market research, by interest groups seeking to popularize their views, and even by academic scholars wishing to inform or influence public discourse about some significant social or scientific issue. The results of such potentially biased surveys are frequently released to the media in order to magnify their impact, a practice known as advocacy polling. (See below Nonscientific polling (public opinion).)
Opinion research
Opinion research developed from market research. Early market researchers picked small samples of the population and used them to obtain information on such questions as how many people read a given magazine or listen to the radio and what the public likes and dislikes in regard to various consumer goods. About 1930 both commercial researchers and scholars began to experiment with the use of these market research techniques to obtain information on opinions about political issues. In 1935 the American public opinion statistician George Gallup (Gallup, George Horace) began conducting nationwide surveys of opinions on political and social issues in the United States. One of the first questions asked by the American Institute of Public Opinion, later to be called the Gallup Poll, was “Are Federal expenditures for relief and recovery too great, too little, or about right?” To this, 60 percent of the sample replied that they were too great, only 9 percent thought they were too little, and 31 percent regarded them as about right (the poll did not have a category for those who had no opinion).
From the 1930s on, the spread of opinion polls conducted by both commercial and academic practitioners continued at an accelerated pace in the United States. State and local polls—some sponsored by newspapers—were started in many parts of the country, and opinion research centres were organized at several universities. Before and during World War II, opinion polls were extensively used by U.S. government agencies, notably the Department of Agriculture, the Treasury Department, and the War Department.
Regional and global surveys
At the same time, opinion research was increasingly used in other parts of the world. Affiliates of the American Institute of Public Opinion were organized in Europe and Australia in the late 1930s, and, following World War II, polling organizations appeared in numerous countries of Europe, Asia, and Latin America. The World Association for Public Opinion Research was founded in 1947.
Several regional and multicountry surveys were established in the 20th century. Studies of the European Economic Community first appeared as the Eurobarometer Surveys in 1974. The twice-yearly surveys, sponsored by the European Union, use a common questionnaire to determine trends in attitudes in categories such as cultural and national identity, international relations, living conditions, media, political participation, values and religion, and policy debates within the European Union. The core survey is augmented by in-depth investigations of subjects such as the role of women, energy use and the environment, alcohol consumption, health, and the future of pension programs.
Other regional studies, often led by university research programs or NGOs as well as by national governments, have been developed around the world. The Latinobarometer, based in Chile, publishes an annual study of attitudes toward democracy, trust in institutions, and other topical issues pertaining to Latin American countries. Similar comparative regional barometer surveys have been undertaken in eastern Europe, Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Caribbean. The International Social Survey Program, better known as the ISSP Survey, is a collaborative effort involving research organizations in many parts of the world. Its survey topics include work, gender roles, religion, and national identity. The World Values Survey takes a slightly more political tack by examining the ways in which religious views, identity, or individual beliefs correspond to larger phenomena such as democracy and economic development. Using World Values Survey results, the American political scientist Ronald Inglehart found that democratic institutions develop and endure only in societies that emphasize what he called “self-expression values,” including individual autonomy, tolerance, trust, and political activism. This value orientation is also known as postmaterialism.
Increasingly, corporations, NGOs, and other multinational charities and interest groups have sponsored international comparative studies, as have some countries. Many of these studies are conducted by commercial research companies that are themselves becoming multinational organizations.
Any opinion research that aims to be truly international faces a number of challenges. First, the program must identify issues that can be studied in several different countries, if not throughout the world. Next, in developing the survey, the project leaders must determine ways to frame questions—many of which demand cultural sensitivity and careful wording—comparably from one country to the next. Many such surveys, however, fail to cover every region of the world adequately. The countries of the Middle East, for example, tend to be underrepresented, and in some less-developed countries these surveys are carried out only in urban centres.
World opinion
The increasing importance of global telecommunication, trade, and transportation have contributed to interest in a new concept of world public opinion, or “world opinion.” The idea began to receive serious academic consideration near the end of the 20th century, as scholars noticed certain global homogeneities in views and attitudes as well as in tastes and consumer behaviour.
According to the American political scientist Frank Rusciano, world opinion can be understood as “the moral judgments of observers which actors must heed in the international arena, or risk isolation as a nation.” Rusciano argued that a “world opinion” of sorts can be identified when there is general consensus among informed and interested individuals around the world involving: (1) the major issues that form the agenda for world opinion, (2) the relative emphasis or importance allotted these issues over time, and (3) the dates or time period in which these issues were important. The challenge posed by the development of world opinion, he concluded, concerns a country's image in the world—that is, its reputation in world opinion. Citing examples such as Germany in the wake of reunification, South Africa during the era of apartheid, and the United States since the end of the Cold War, Rusciano suggested that some countries will adjust their actions in the world in order to maintain or strengthen their reputations in world opinion.
Some scholars have been skeptical of the notion of world opinion, arguing that it lacks methodological rigour. They question how the views of millions of people living in poverty or under totalitarian regimes can be accounted for and compared with the views of those living in capitalist democracies. By definition, world opinion cannot be measured, because there is no single general framework capable of drawing representative samples from the populations of different countries. Moreover, the rural areas of many developing countries—including China, India, Indonesia, Brazil, much of the Middle East, and most countries of Africa—are largely untouched by public opinion polling. Consequently, any formulation of world opinion tends to represent only the opinions of social and political elites living in urban centres. Although this emphasis may be partly justified by the fact that elite groups are able to influence events in their countries, it fails to represent the world population as a whole on the basis of one person, one vote. In order to achieve such global representation, a prototypical poll would need to accommodate the population disparities between countries by weighting, for example, the views of a single Chinese respondent with a factor roughly 100 times greater than that assigned to the views of a single British or American respondent. And there are examples of countries that choose to go against public opinion. Iceland, Norway, and Japan, for example, continued to allow commercial whaling operations despite criticisms and protests from around the world.
Despite these difficulties, Rusciano identified certain events, such as the First Persian Gulf War (Persian Gulf War) (1990–91), whose outcomes were bolstered by world opinion. He claimed that a prevailing world attitude of support for the defense of Kuwait effectively isolated Iraq and its president, Ṣaddām Ḥussein, and contributed to a swift U.S.-led victory against the Iraqi forces that had invaded Kuwait. In Rusciano's view, although world opinion may succeed in supporting, controlling, or limiting conflicts in certain instances, it is better conceived, at least for the present, as one among many variables utilized by political leaders in their formulation of foreign policy.
Political polls
Polls conducted on the eve of the voting day have been successful in forecasting election results in nearly every case in which they have been used for this purpose. Some notable failures occurred in the United States in 1948 (when nearly all polls forecast a Republican victory and the Democrats won by a narrow margin) and in Great Britain in 1970 (when all but one of the major polls incorrectly predicted a Labour Party victory) and again in 1992 (when all polls incorrectly predicted a hung parliament). Professional opinion researchers point out that predicting elections is always uncertain, because of the possibility of last-minute shifts of opinion and unexpected turnouts on voting day; nevertheless, their record has been good over the years in nearly every country.Although popular attention has been focused on polls taken before major elections, most polling is devoted to other subjects, and university-based opinion researchers usually do not make election forecasts at all. Support for opinion studies comes largely from public agencies, foundations, and commercial firms, which are interested in questions such as how well people's health, educational, and other needs are being satisfied, how problems such as racial prejudice and drug addiction should be addressed, and how well a given industry is meeting public demands. Polls that are regularly published in newspapers or magazines usually have to do with some lively social issue—and elections are included only as one of many subjects of interest. It is estimated that, in any country where polls are conducted for publication, electoral polling represents no more than 2 percent of the work carried out by survey researchers in that country.
Methodology
The principal steps in opinion polling are the following: defining the “universe,” choosing a sample, framing a questionnaire, interviewing persons in the sample, collating the results, and then analyzing, interpreting, and ultimately reporting the results.
The universe
The term universe is used to denote whatever body of people is being studied. Any segment of society, so long as it can be replicated, can represent a universe: elderly people, teenagers, institutional investors, editors, politicians, and so on. Effort must be made to identify the universe that is most relevant to the issue at hand. If, for example, one wishes to study the opinions of college students, it is necessary to decide whether the universe should be limited to full-time students, or whether it should also include nondegree and part-time students. The way in which these decisions are made will have an important bearing on the outcome of the survey and possibly on its usefulness.
The sample (sampling)
Probability sampling
Once the universe has been defined, a sample of the universe must be chosen. The most reliable method of probability sampling, known as random sampling, requires that each member of the universe have an equal chance of being selected. This could be accomplished by assigning a number to each person in the universe or writing each person's name on a slip of paper, placing all the numbered or named slips in a container, mixing thoroughly, and then picking a sample without looking at the names or numbers. In this way, each slip would have the same probability of being chosen. If each person is numbered, the same effect can be achieved by using tables of random numbers, which can be generated on any computer. The random numbers are matched with the numbered members of the universe until a sample of the desired size is drawn. Although the numbering procedure is often not practicable, a few universes are already assigned numbers—such as all the workers on the payroll in a given factory, for instance, or all members of the armed forces.
Another probability method, systematic sampling, includes every nth member of the universe in the sample. Thus, if one wishes to study the attitudes of the subscribers to a certain magazine and the magazine has 10,000 subscribers, one could derive a sample of 1,000 subscribers from a list of subscriber names by randomly choosing a number between 1 and 10, selecting the name on the list corresponding to that number, and then selecting every 10th name after it. Systematic sampling is not as statistically reliable as random sampling.
Nonprobability sampling
Probability sampling techniques are less likely to be useful when the universe consists of a large population that is not homogeneous. This was the challenge faced by market and opinion researchers when they first started to conduct large-scale surveys. Their solution was the quota sample, which attempts to match the characteristics of the sample with those of the universe, thereby achieving a small replica of the universe. For example, if one knows, possibly on the basis of a recent census, that there are 51 women to every 49 men in the universe, then the sample should reflect these proportions. The same principle should be applied with respect to age, income, education, occupation, religion, national origin, area of residence, and indeed any characteristic that might be relevant to the range of opinions being studied. Each interviewer is instructed to locate and interview people who fulfill the characteristics targeted for the quota sample.
In the first half of the 20th century, most survey organizations used quota samples, and many still do, though the shift to telephone surveys made random sampling much more common through the use of random-digit dialing, in which a computer is programmed to dial randomly selected numbers (every nth from the available universe of telephone numbers). In Great Britain, where election campaigns last only a few weeks, quota samples have proven more accurate than probability samples in nearly all elections since World War II.
The quota sampling technique has drawbacks, however. In many countries, census data are poor or nonexistent. Even the most reliable census information cannot reveal all the characteristics that may affect the opinions being studied. For most populations, for example, it is not known how many people are vegetarians or how many are extraverts or introverts. Yet these characteristics may be related to opinions on certain subjects. Statisticians point out that in a quota sample it is impossible to give each member of the universe a known chance of being selected, and one cannot therefore calculate the range of error in the results that could be due to chance. Furthermore, in this type of sample, interviewers have to use their judgment in selecting respondents. Because their standards in choosing respondents may vary, it is possible for the outcomes to be biased; it is often the case that interviewers will choose to work with respondents who are most like them.
The great advantage of a quota sampling is that it is relatively easy to design and prosecute once the target universe is defined. Quota sampling also takes less time in the field, as callbacks are not necessary (as they are in probability sampling, where participation by the chosen sample members must be confirmed). In contrast, defining a universe and then randomly selecting and interviewing a probability sample from a large population can be time-consuming and expensive (often disproportionately so). Even in cases in which telephone interviewing would be appropriate, as for a population with a high incidence of telephone ownership, its effectiveness can be hindered by unlisted numbers or by telephone screening devices that filter out unwanted callers. In such cases, researchers usually employ weighting procedures to adjust for these types of errors. This has been a common practice in Web-based surveys, which have tended to be skewed toward more-affluent, better-educated, and middle-aged households.
Size and precision
The required size of a sample depends on the level of precision that is desired. For many purposes, a sample of a few hundred is adequate—if it is properly chosen. A magazine, for instance, might poll a random sample of 200 of its subscribers and find that 18 percent want more fiction and 62 percent want more articles on current social issues. Even if each of these figures is wrong by as much as 10 percentage points, the poll would probably still be of value, since it would give fairly accurate information about the way the subscribers rank the types of content. An electoral poll, on the other hand, would have to be much more accurate than this, since leading candidates often split the vote rather evenly. A national sample of at least 1,000 to 1,500 completed interviews is usually adequate, unless the poll is designed to make comparisons among rather small subgroups in the population or to compare one small group with a much larger one. In such cases a larger sample must be drawn to assure that a significant number of members of the minority group will be represented. The size of the universe, except for very small populations (e.g., members of Parliament), is not important, because the statistical reliability (also known as margin of error or tolerance limit) is the same for a smaller country such as Trinidad and Tobago (with a population of roughly 1.3 million) as it is for china (the most populous country in the world)—so long as the quantity and locations of sampling points reflect proper geographic distribution.
Allowance for chance and error
There are no hard-and-fast rules for interpreting poll results, since there are many possible sources of bias and error. Nevertheless, for a well-conducted poll, the following rule-of-thumb allowances for chance and error are helpful.
Sample size and definition
When any group of people is compared with any other and the sample size of the smaller group is about 100, a difference between the two groups on a given question will be insignificant (i.e., attributable to chance or error) unless the poll finds it to be greater than 14 percentage points. If the smaller group is larger than 100, the allowance decreases approximately as follows: for a group comprising 200 cases, allow 10 percentage points; for 400 cases, allow 7 percentage points; for 800, allow 5; for 1,000, allow 4; for 2,000, allow 3. Thus, if a national sample survey shows that 27 percent of a representative sample of college students favour a volunteer army while 35 percent of adults who are not in college do and there are only 200 students in the sample, the difference between the two groups may well be insignificant. If the difference were greater than 10 percentage points, then it would be much more likely that the opinions of college students really do differ from those of other adults. Similar allowances have to be made when election polls are interpreted. The larger the sample and the larger the difference between the number of preferences expressed for each candidate, the greater the certainty with which the election result can be predicted. (Of course, these guidelines presuppose that the samples are properly selected; hence, they do not apply to “self-selected” polls or to polls that fail to prevent a single person from making more than one response.)
Errors in defining the sampling framework can also lead to errors. For example, in 1936 the journal Literary Digest mailed more than 10 million political questionnaires to American citizens and received more than 2,500 responses; nevertheless, it incorrectly predicted the outcome of the 1936 American presidential election, which was won by Democratic candidate Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The Digest drew its sample from telephone books and automobile registration lists, both of which tended to overrepresent the affluent, who were more likely to vote Republican.
Phrasing of questions
Variations larger than those due to chance may be caused by the way the questions are worded. Consider one poll asking “Are you in favour of or opposed to increasing government aid to higher education?” while another poll asks “Are you in favour of the president's recommendation that government aid to higher education be increased?”; the second question is likely to receive many more affirmative answers than the first if the president is popular. Similarly, the distribution of replies will often vary if an alternative is stated, as in “Are you in favour of increasing government aid to higher education, or do you think enough tax money is being spent on higher education now?” It is probable that this question would receive fewer affirmative responses than the question that does not mention the opposing point of view. As a rule, relatively slight differences in wording cause significant variations in response only when the opinions people hold are not firm. In such cases, therefore, survey researchers may try to control for variation by asking the same question frequently over a period of years.
Questionnaire construction, as with sampling, requires a high degree of skill. The questions must be clear to people of varying educational levels and backgrounds, they must not embarrass respondents, they must be arranged in a logical order, and so on. Even experienced researchers find it necessary to pretest their questionnaires, usually by interviewing a small group of respondents with preliminary questions.
Poll questions may be of the “forced-choice” or “free-answer” type. In the former, a respondent is asked to reply “yes” or “no”—an approach that is particularly effective when asking questions about behaviour. Or a respondent may be asked to choose from a list of alternatives arranged as a scale (e.g., from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree”); this format was developed by the American psychometrician L.L. Thurstone (Thurstone, L.L.) and the American social scientist Rensis Likert (Likert, Rensis). Even in forced-choice questionnaires, however, respondents often reply “don't know” or prefer an alternative that the researcher had not listed in advance. A free-answer question—for instance, “What do you think are the most important problems facing the country today?”—allows respondents to state their opinions in their own words.
Interviewing
Interviewing is another potential source of error. Inexperienced interviewers may bias their respondents' answers by asking questions in inappropriate ways. They may even alienate or antagonize some respondents so that they refuse to complete the interview. Interviewers also sometimes fail to record the replies to free-answer questions accurately, or they are not sufficiently persistent in locating designated respondents. Most large polling organizations give interviewers special training before sending them out on surveys. Organizations may also contract with an interviewing service that provides trained and experienced interviewers.
Tabulation
Tabulation is usually done by computer. To simplify this process, most questionnaires are “precoded,” which is to say that numbers appear beside each question and each possible response. The answers given by respondents can thus be translated rapidly into a numerical form for analysis. In the case of free-answer questions, responses must usually be grouped into categories, each of which is also assigned a number and then coded. How the categories are defined may make a large difference in the way the results are presented. If a respondent mentions narcotics addiction as a major problem facing the country, for instance, this answer might be coded as a health problem or a crime problem, or it might be grouped with other replies dealing with drug abuse or alcoholism.
Presentation of findings
The final steps in a survey are the analysis and presentation of results. Some reports present only what are termed marginals or top-lines—the proportion of respondents giving certain answers to each question. If 40 percent favour one candidate, 50 percent another, and 10 percent are undecided, these figures are marginals. Usually, however, a number of cross tabulations are also given. These may show, for instance, that candidate A's support comes disproportionately from one ethnic group and candidate B's from another. Sometimes a cross tabulation will substantially change the meaning of survey results. A poll may seem to show that one candidate is the favourite of suburban voters and another of urban voters. But if the preferences of poor respondents and rich respondents are analyzed separately, it may turn out that candidate A is actually supported by most poor people and candidate B by most rich people. In this case, therefore, the most important factor determining voters' intentions may be not whether they dwell in a suburb or a city but whether they are rich or poor. It is also important to project voter turnout by asking about the respondents' certainty of voting and determining how important the outcome might be to them.
Nonscientific polling
Straw polls and other nonscientific surveys are based on indiscriminate collections of people's opinions, while responsible surveys are based on scientific methods of sampling, data collection, and analysis. Yet, because they are so easy to obtain, data derived from nonscientific methods are often confused with responsible survey results. At best, they reflect only the views of those who choose to respond. But they are also used as tools of “spin” by those who wish to put forth a particular slant on popular opinion. Referred to as “voodoo polls” by some polling experts, they lack the statistical significance achieved through proven sampling methods, and they have grown increasingly prevalent—especially on Web sites. Given the number of Internet opinion polls that are nonscientific, communications theorist James Beniger observed that they are just as unrepresentative as call-in polls (frequently sponsored by television and radio stations), pseudo-ballots (published in many magazines and newspapers), straw polls, and the “hands up” of the studio audience. None of these approaches can properly measure or represent public opinion.
The limitations of self-selecting samples should be obvious, because the spread of views expressed will represent only those people who saw or heard the invitation to respond to the poll. Yet such polling practices remain popular. They are frequently the tools of radio and television programs and newspapers that wish to encourage audience participation. But instead of recognizing their entertainment value (many will agree that these polls ought to be fun) and treating them accordingly, reporters too often present the results as serious and objective measures of public opinion.
This encourages interested political parties, campaign managers, or pressure groups to manipulate the outcomes to their advantage. They may attempt to skew the results or administer their own competing straw polls with the goal of contradicting the outcomes of properly conducted representative surveys. To take full advantage of this manipulation, the straw poll sponsor often issues press releases calling attention to the results. To further lend the poll an appearance of credibility, its sponsor might also describe it as having been published by a leading newspaper or a reputable news organization, even if it appeared only in a paid advertisement.
Interest groups such as the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR), the European Society for Opinion Marketing and Research, and the World Association for Public Opinion Research serve a watchdog role regarding opinion polling. To assist reporters as well as the general public in their understanding of poll results, AAPOR published a list of guidelines for determining the credibility of online polls. A reliable poll should indicate, for example, whether its results were based on sampling procedures that gave each member of a population a fair chance of being selected and whether each respondent was limited to one and only one chance of participating in the poll; it should also state the response rate. According to AAPOR, outcomes that fail to meet criteria such as these should not be included in news reports.
In fact, anyone judging the overall reliability of a survey will scrutinize a number of factors. These include the exact wording of the questions used, the degree to which particular results are based on the whole sample or on small parts of it, the method of interviewing (whether by telephone, mail, or Internet survey or face-to-face), the dates over which the interviewing was conducted (intervening events frequently make people change their opinions), and the identity of the sponsor as well as the reputation of the organization conducting the poll. One signal that the poll may have been conducted by less-experienced researchers is the reporting of findings in decimal points, a practice that indicates questionable accuracy. A poll of at least 10,000 people would be required before statistically reliable interpretations could be carried to the first decimal point. The visual presentation of the results should also be checked. Frequently, graphics can be designed to mislead or confuse the reader or viewer into thinking that the responses to the poll differed from the raw figures the poll actually indicated.
Criticisms and justifications
There have been numerous criticisms of public opinion polling. Among these are the observations that people are asked to give opinions on matters about which they are not competent to judge, that polling interferes with the democratic process, and that survey research causes annoyance and is perceived as an invasion of privacy.
It is often pointed out that most members of the public are not familiar with the details of complex policies such as those governing tariffs or missile defense systems. Therefore, it is argued, opinion researchers should not ask questions about such subjects. The results at best could be meaningless and at worst misleading, since respondents may be reluctant to admit that they are ignorant. Critics also refer to the fact that many people hold inconsistent or even conflicting opinions, as shown by the polls themselves. One person may favour larger government expenditures and simultaneously oppose higher taxes.
Poll takers usually acknowledge that these problems exist but maintain that they can be overcome by careful survey procedures and by proper interpretation of results. It is common for surveys to include “filter” questions, which help to separate those who are familiar with an issue from those who are not. Thus, the interviewer might first inquire: “Have you heard or read about the government's policy on the tariff?” Then the interviewer would ask only those who answered “yes” whether they were or were not in favour of the policy advocated by the government. Sometimes polls include factual questions that help to assess knowledge, such as “Can you tell me how the veto power in the United Nations Security Council works?” Furthermore, argue the researchers, if people are ignorant, or if they hold inconsistent opinions, this should be known. It is not possible to raise the level of information if areas of ignorance or inconsistency are not identified.
Critics allege also that election polls create a “bandwagon effect”—that people want to be on the winning side and therefore switch their votes to the candidates whom the polls show to be ahead. They complain that surveys undermine representative democracy, since issues should be decided by elected representatives on the basis of the best judgment and expert testimony—not on the basis of popularity contests. They point out that some well-qualified candidates may decide not to run for office because the polls indicate that they have little chance of winning and that a candidate who is far behind in the polls has difficulty in raising funds for campaign expenditures since few contributors want to spend money on a lost cause. Other critics, such as Jacobs and Shapiro, say that candidates, politicians, and corporations use polls less to gauge public opinion than to manipulate it in their own interests.
Those engaged in election research usually concede that polls may discourage or derail some candidates and also may inhibit campaign contributions. But they also point out that candidates and contributors would have to make their decisions on some basis anyway. If there were no polls, other methods that are less accurate would be used to test public sentiment, and columnists and political pundits would still make forecasts. As far as the bandwagon effect is concerned, careful studies have failed to show that it exists.
An abuse that is recognized by both critics and poll takers is the practice of leaking to the press partial or distorted results from private polls. A politician may exploit polls by contracting privately with a research organization and then releasing only those results for areas in which he is ahead, releasing old results without stating the time when the poll was taken, or concealing the fact that a very small sample was used and that the results may have a large margin of error.
Finally, critics aver that the proliferation of opinion polls and market research surveys places an unfair burden on the public. People may be asked to respond to questionnaires that take an hour or more of their time. Interviewers may tie up their telephones or occupy their doorsteps for long periods, sometimes asking questions about private matters that are not suitable subjects for public inquiry. Insofar as public resistance to polling is concerned, researchers point out that, while the refusal rate in most surveys has tended to be low, it has been increasing, particularly in the most-developed countries and especially where telemarketing is more prevalent. It is still the case, however, that many people enjoy answering questions and offering their opinions on any number of topics—just as there are organizations willing to pay for such insight into the views and attitudes that make up public opinion.
Additional Reading
Classic treatments of public opinion include William Alexander MacKinnon, On the Rise, Progress and Present State of Public Opinion in Great Britain, and Other Parts of the World (1828, reprinted 1971); James Bryce, The American Commonwealth, 2 vol. (1888, reissued 1995); Albert V. Dicey, Lectures on the Relation Between Law & Public Opinion in England During the Nineteenth Century, 2nd ed. (1914, reissued 1985); Charles Horton Cooley, Social Process (1918, reissued 1966); Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion (1922, reissued 2004); William Albig, Modern Public Opinion (1939, reissued 1956); and Leonard W. Doob, Public Opinion and Propaganda, 2nd ed. (1966).The history of public opinion is traced in Harold D. Lasswell, Daniel Lerner, and Hans Speier (eds.), Propaganda and Communication in World History, 3 vol. (1979); John G. Geer, From Tea Leaves to Opinion Polls: A Theory of Democratic Leadership (1996); John R. Zaller, The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion (1992); and Slavko Splichal, Public Opinion: Developments and Controversies in the Twentieth Century (1999).Excellent summaries of polling theory and application are found in Sherry Devereaux Ferguson, Researching the Public Opinion Environment: Theories and Methods (2000); Frank Louis Rusciano et al., World Opinion and the Emerging International Order (1998); Paul J. Lavrakas and Michael W. Traugott, Election Polls, the News Media, and Democracy (2000); and Richard Hodder-Williams, Public Opinion Polls and British Politics (1970).Defenses of the polling process by eminent practitioners, albeit with suggestions about how the polls might be improved, are George Gallup and Saul Forbes Rae, The Pulse of Democracy (1940, reissued 1968); George Gallup, A Guide to Public Opinion Polls, 2nd ed. (1948); Frank Teer and James D. Spence, Political Opinion Polls (1973); John Clemens, Polls, Politics, and Populism (1983); Robert M. Worcester (ed.), Political Opinion Polling: An International Review, 2nd ed. (2002); Leo Bogart, Polls and the Awareness of Public Opinion, 2nd ed. (1988); Robert M. Worcester, British Public Opinion (1991); Albert H. Cantril, The Opinion Connection (1991); and Daniel Yankelovich, Coming to Public Judgment (1991).Academic critiques of polling include Lindsay Rogers, The Pollsters: Public Opinion, Politics, and Democratic Leadership (1949); Michael Wheeler, Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics: The Manipulation of Public Opinion in America (1976); Benjamin Ginsberg, The Captive Public: How Mass Opinion Promotes State Power (1986); Irving Crespi, The Public Opinion Process: How the People Speak (1997); John Lukacs, Democracy and Populism: Fear and Hatred (2005); and Hanno Hardt and Slavko Splichal, trans. and eds., Ferdinand Tönnies on Public Opinion: Selections and Analyses (2000).Innovative and significant works using poll data include V.O. Key, Public Opinion and American Democracy (1961); Ronald Inglehart, The Silent Revolution: Changing Values and Political Styles Among Western Publics (1977); Paul M. Sniderman, Richard A. Brody, and Phillip E. Tetlock, Reasoning and Choice: Explorations in Political Psychology (1991); and Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, The Spiral of Silence: Public Opinion, Our Social Skin, 2nd ed. (1993; originally published in German, 1980), which tries to show how perceptions of public opinion themselves shape what individuals say and do. Policy making at the legislative and executive levels is discussed in Lawrence R. Jacobs, The Health of Nations: Public Opinion and the Making of American and British Health Policy (1993); Lawrence R. Jacobs and Robert Y. Shapiro, Politicians Don't Pander: Political Manipulation and the Loss of Democratic Responsiveness (2000); and Geoff Mulgan, Connexity: Responsibility, Freedom, Business, and Power in the New Century (1997).The continuing problem of “rationality” is the focus of V.O. Key, The Responsible Electorate: Rationality in Presidential Voting, 1936–1960 (1966); Graeme C. Moodie and Gerald Studdert-Kennedy, Opinions, Publics, and Pressure Groups: An Essay on ‘Vox Populi' and Representative Government (1970); Benjamin I. Page, Choices and Echoes in Presidential Elections: Rational Man and Electoral Democracy (1978); and Benjamin I. Page and Robert Y. Shapiro, The Rational Public: Fifty Years of Trends in Americans' Policy Preferences (1992).Classic studies of American elections, which reveal a great deal about public opinion, include Bernard Berelson, Paul F. Lazarsfeld, and William N. McPhee, Voting: A Study of Opinion Formation in a Presidential Campaign (1954, reprinted 1986); Angus Campbell, Gerald Gurin, and Warren E. Miller, The Voter Decides (1954, reprinted 1971); Angus Campbell et al., The American Voter (1960, reprinted 1980); Paul F. Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson, and Hazel Gaudet, The People's Choice, 3rd ed. (1968); and Martin P. Wattenberg, The Rise of Candidate-Centered Politics: Presidential Elections of the 1980s (1991). Diffusion of information and opinion leadership is discussed in Elihu Katz and Paul F. Lazarsfeld, Personal Influence, 2nd ed. (2006); and Todd Gitlin, “Media Sociology: The Dominant Paradigm,” Theory and Society, 6(2):205–253 (September 1978). Ed.
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