Public Opinion Polls Often Biased
Responsiveness – how closely public policies track public opinion – is a critical gauge of democratic accountability. A high degree of responsiveness indicates that citizens are guiding policy, which is a standard benchmark and expectation in democracy. Accountability is breached when public policy ignores public opinion.
The democratic process spurs citizens to form opinions on a number of issues. Voters choose candidates in elections, consider constitutional amendments, and approve or reject municipal taxes and other legislative initiatives. Almost any matter on which the executive or legislature has to decide may become a public issue. Immigration and abortion are dominating the political landscape in the U.S., despite the fact that neither issue directly impacts most Americans. Both have become posterchilds for political smoke and mirrors. Because of labor shortages in the U.S. over the past few years, both Republicans and Democrats have stalled immigration reform and solutions, which has allowed thousands of illegal immigrants to enter our nation unchecked. Both parties blame each other for the insane situation.
The substantial inflow of immigrants to the United States during the last 30 years has significantly shaped the U.S. economy and society. Immigrants affect native workers’ opportunities in the labor market, their productivity, and their specialization. Immigrants can also have an impact on other aspects of the host country’s economy (for example, through fiscal effects, consumption, and contributions to scientific innovation), as well as on its culture, social norms, and sense of security. In addition, immigration can affect political outcomes.
Immigration took center stage in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and its aftermath, as Donald Trump took strong stands on illegal immigration, the construction of a border wall, refugees from Syria, and “sanctuary cities.” Meanwhile, he ignored the fact that his “wife,” Melania, was an immigrant and so are her parents – all are now citizens thanks to his hypocrisy.
Meanwhile, abortion is an issue that impacts very few Americans, but we are holding our nation hostage over extreme religious rhetoric.
Our nation ignores millions of children who are living and dying in poverty, but we whitewash our consciences by opposing abortion (even when caused by rape or incest). We defend guns more vigorously than we defend our country from fascism.
Meanwhile, we don’t debate the national budget, military spending, corruption, and the poisoning of our air, land and water. We ignore people who are being battered by climate change and we ignore the threat
In the early years of modern democracy, some scholars acknowledged the power of public opinion but warned that it could be a dangerous force. In fact, public opinion is so powerful that most politicians will say and do anything to harness it.
The role of public opinion varies from issue to issue. Unfortunately, public opinion does not influence the details of most government policies but it does set limits within which policy makers must operate. Public officials usually seek to satisfy widespread opinion and they often try to avoid decisions that they believe will be widely unpopular.
Yet efforts by political leaders to shape government policies to fit public opinion are not always perceived as legitimate. Journalists and political commentators often characterize these politicians as pandering to public opinion and driven by the latest polls – now known as political responsiveness.
Today, most politicians tend to respond to public opinion in cynical ways. They merely use public opinion research to identify slogans and symbols that will make predetermined policies more appealing to their constituents.
Most public opinion research is used to manipulate the public rather than to act on its wishes.
Public opinion seems to be 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.
Polls may serve a variety of purposes. Those reported in the mass 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 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. Unfortunately, it’s possible for bias to enter into the polling process at any point, especially when 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 potentially biased surveys are frequently released to the mass media to magnify their impact. This deceptive practice is known as advocacy polling (fake news).
Opinion research evolved 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.
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 centers were organized at several universities.
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. Reporters 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 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 phone or e-mail, an online survey, or in person), 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.
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 and that polling interferes with the democratic process.
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 conflicting opinions, as shown by the polls themselves. One person may favor larger government expenditures and simultaneously oppose higher taxes.
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 say that candidates, politicians, and corporations use polls less to gauge public opinion than to manipulate it in their favor.
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. Politicians may exploit polls by contracting privately with a research organization and then releasing only those results for areas in which they are 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.
The real question is why would a legitimate democracy tolerate such abusive behavior? We clearly have liars and cheaters among us in American politics. The motives are clear. The stakes are high. It isn’t about abortion, immigration and gun control.
