Page 429 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

0 | Publ c Op n on: Are Polls Democrat c?

many other representations of public opinion). Polls do not so much measure
public attitudes as manufacture them. After all, the conversation between the poll-
ster and the respondent bears little relation to the way people generally talk about
politics and current affairs. They are based on artificial, one-sided conversations,
where the pollster chooses the subjects to discuss, asks all the questions, and of-
fers a limited range of responses. The citizen plays a part, but it is a small and
tightly scripted one. For some, this makes polls less a signifier of public attitude
than a poor substitute for deliberative public discussion and debate.
This does not mean that polls are necessarily bogus or manipulative: the at-
tempt to represent public opinion can be done in a way that tries to capture
people’s priorities, concerns, and beliefs. But it is a form of manufacture none-
theless, and the circumstances in which polls are produced will shape the nature
of the responses. Although it may be difficult to get people to profess opinions
they do not hold, the poll is an unthinking apparatus that can only reveal what it
has been told to look for. The beauty of polling machinery lies in its propensity
for statistical sophistication, not in its understanding of the everyday.
All of which raises important questions of authorship and motive. Although
polls are extremely efficient ways to gauge public responses to specific ques-
tions, they are too expensive to be viable for ordinary individuals or citi-
zens groups. Polls are therefore bound up in a political economy that favors
corporate bodies: notably business and government. While there are some
institutions—notably universities or public agencies—with a genuine commit-
ment to using polls purely as a form of democratic expression, the motives be-
hind the commissioning opinion polls are not always so laudable. To be able to
claim to speak on the public’s behalf is a powerful political or marketing tool.
Some have argued that polls are democratic because they allow us to appeal
to a broader citizenry than the cabal of well-heeled lobby groups who routinely
try to influence the political process. This is certainly true in theory, but polls
can also be used by those very same groups for their own ends. Indeed, it is the
well-heeled lobbyists who are most likely to have the resources and the motive
to commission them. Many polls may have thus very little to do with public con-
sultation, and can be designed primarily as a way to highlight a consumer need,
a legislative issue, or simply to grab a headline.
So, for example, Jon Kronsnik examined a poll commissioned by an insur-
ance company, whose function was clearly to create an impression that public
opinion favored legislation that insurance companies were pressing for. While
the poll may have been statistically beyond reproach, he showed how it was as
much an exercise in manipulation as consultation. It was designed to promote
a cause, and the failure of news reports in the New York Times to point this out
highlights the importance of understanding the political economy of polls.
Similarly, it is worth considering why news media polls tend to proliferate
during election periods. This is not, in most cases, to fulfill a Brycean vision
to bring political representatives closer to those who elect them. On the con-
trary, only rarely do we see polls that ask people which policy initiatives they re-
ally want from their politicians. Instead, we are obliged to conform to the main
party agendas by simply stating who we will vote for, rather than what we want