Does Polling Serve to Support the Democratic Process?

The United States of America is not a republic; it is a democracy. Americans do not make the same assumption that Plato made in his famous political text. Americans believe in the ability of common men and women to inform themselves about critical issues and make rational decisions based on their preferences. The founding fathers believed the value of the country was in the people, and that it is the people's right to decide what laws rule a country. But national or even state-wide voting can not be done for every issue facing a country or state. Americans elect public officials who they trust will consider public opinion on the issue and make an informed choice. In the absence of voting, polling is the best option for gathering public opinion. But many questions arise when considering the ability of public opinion polls to effect or influence policy development and approval. Are legislators actually affected by public opinion polls? Should legislators be influenced by polls, when the accuracy is in question and pollster bias is an issue? Polls seem to be the best way to gather public opinion on crucial issues, but are they functioning properly?
Technology has allowed polling greater claims to accuracy, and definite improvements in response time, but it has also allowed polling to be thrust to the center of the voting process through the use of media. This increased presence has influenced the outcome of the voting process. Following the 9/11 attacks on New York City and Washington D.C., favorable public opinion for invasion of Iraq increased from 52% in February of 2001 to 58% in September of 2002, to 64% in March of 2003, just before the U.S. invaded Iraq. (http://www.gallup.com/poll/1633/Iraq.aspx#4) The "bandwagon effect" was experienced not only by the American public, but by the U.S. Congress, as the United States voted to declare war. Some evidence suggests the bandwagon effect was magnified by media-biased polls and coverage of the issues. In this article, I propose that despite the inherent problems of inaccuracy, bias, and voter influence, polling performs a necessary function to support democracy. Polls, when done properly, have the ability to show the media and politicians the "will of the people." It is an additional piece of information legislators muss assess to make an informed decision for their constituents.

Polling is subject to important inaccuracies because it is a social science. Polls attempt to explain public opinion with statistics that represent answers to questions, but much like psychological and sociological studies, researchers must consider their own influence on the subject. Since the time of George Gallup (1930's), the questions pollsters asked and the manner in which the questions are asked has been a source of polling error. "Throughout his career, Gallup paid lip service to the problems of question-wording by occasionally conceding that 'question-wording' posed 'difficult' and 'important' problems for polling." "Not only does the error result from the wording of individual questions, but also from the order in which the questions are asked, and other factors that influence the context within which the respondents interpret particular questions." Even a detail as small as aligning a partucular option with yes or no affects the response; an effect known as "response acquiescence" influences respondents to prefer answering questions positively as opposed to negatively (Hogan 168-9). In The Opinion Makers: An Insider Exposes the Truth behind the Polls, David Moore shares some of his trouble as senior editor at Gallup Organization with the results of the polls. In a February 2003 poll Moore directed pollsters to ask about American support for invasion of Iraq, and then followed it by asking how they would feel if the government did the opposite of the way they felt. The results showed that Americans were less certain of the proper action and more willing to accept the opposite decision from the one they would make. (Moore 8) Americans were more ambivalent to invasion than the numbers that were reported by the media revealed.
In the lead-up to the Iraq invasion, the public opinion polls did not show consistent support for invasion. Polls were taken regularly, and showed great variance. Although the March 2003 Gallup poll showed 64% support for invasion (http://www.gallup.com/poll/1633/Iraq.aspx#4), "three CNN/USA Today/Gallup polls conducted in the months leading up to the war and immediately after the war began showed that a majority of Americans were not calling for war." (Moore 5) The inconsistency of the results requires researchers to question whether pollsters were priming the respondents to answer affirmatively because they wanted the better story for their network. Additionally, many researchers point to the trend as evidence of the bandwagon effect, when undecided or uninformed voters choose the most popular choice to join the winning side. When the bandwagon effect is strong, those with the minority opinion often keep quiet. Finally, Moore asserts because "this divided state of public opinion was not measured by the other media polls and neither CNN, USA Today, nor Gallup emphasized the public's ambivalence about the war," it "reveals much about the way that media polls manufacture public opinion for their own purposes." (Moore 5) To support Moore's claim of bias, The New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/26/international/middleeast/26FTE_NOTE.html), along with other newspapers (Moore 3-4), published an apology for its inconsistent objectivity in covering the lead-up to the war with Iraq. Polling was used to support media coverage that was very profitable and entertaining. But it did not properly reflect public opinion, and may have convinced legislators to make a decision they felt the public supported overwhelmingly.
Although polling may lead to distorted ideas of public opinion and influence policies with grave consequences, it still remains an integral support mechanism for democracy. The decision to invade Iraq supports the importance of polling not because it was successful in helping to make the proper decision in an important international security issue. This example supports polling because even in its supreme failure, it provides a service to American voters, legislators, and academics. Even with major errors in interpretation, polling allows the people's voice to be heard. The public that was polled in early 2003, as those who will be polled in the future, need to make sure they are heard properly. Those respondents and joined the bandwagon need to reflect on herd mentality and its consequences. Communication is the responsibility of both transmitter and receiver. New ways of polling will be developed that incorporate informed, deliberating respondents, and new polling agencies will rise up that recognize more fully the role of these informed respondents in American politics. (Fishkin 2)
The American public is not always as easy to influence as they were leading up to the Iraq War, but war has a special power over public opinion. In "What do the Polls Show" (http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1379/polling-history-influence-policymaking-politics), Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center, describes multiple instances in which the public views played a central role in the course of significant national events. During Ronald Reagan's presidency, public opinion restrained the President's from invading Nicauragua. With Vietnam still fresh for many Americans, they protested strongly against an invasion of Nicauragua in 1980. They reinforced these protestation with strong poll numbers against invasion, and Reagan deferred. President H.W. Bush had to be very conscious of similar public opinion against war when he campaigned for invading Iraq in 1990. The public supported protecting oil reserves in Saudi Arabia, but was opposed to invading Iraq. The president used this sentiment to shape his policy initiatives. He acquired the sanctions of the U.N. and Congress to invade Iraq only to protect oil reserves in Kuwait. Finally, despite an incredible amount of negative media attention surrounding President Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky, the public opinion of President Clinton actually improved. His approval rating increased from the mid 60's to 71% at the time of his impeachment and through the end of his term. The public is not a slave to the media or political pressure, though it might be affected.
For a properly functioning democracy, for a country of the people, ruled by the people, the public must be heard. Polls make errors in calculating and communicating public opinion, but this is mediated by our legislative system. We vote for representatives who will contemplate the validity of polls and find ways to make assessments of true public opinion. And the public needs to make its voice heard when policy disagrees with them. Additionally, it legislator's responsibility to make the right decision for the country, despite public opinion. The voters opinion must be heard, but everyone is not an expert. Expert, informed opinions are also a part of the decision-making process. It is important to learn from the failures of polling. Just as the industry itself was born by the failure of the Literary Digest to predict Harry Truman in 1936 and the subsequent improvements made in polling "science". Daniel Yankelovich, the founding father of public opinion research, says that "Americans want a voice, that — increasingly, I think one of the great changes of the past 20 years is this insistence, it's not only a desire, it's an insistence that the public has in having a voice in the decisions that affect their lives." (Moyers) Polls can improve, and voters can improve; the voice of the voter can be heard. We just need to convince voters their freedom depends on being informed.


Works Cited


Fishkin, James. "The Nation in a Room: Turning Public opinion into Policy." Boston Review, March/April, 2006. (http://www.bostonreview.net/BR31.2/fishkin.php)

Kohut, Andrew. "What do the Polls Show." Pew Research Center Publications. 14 October, 2009. (http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1379/polling-history-influence-policymaking-politics)

Moore, David. The Opinion Makers: An Insider Exposes the Truth behind the Polls. Beacon Press, 2009.

Moyers, Bill. "Margins of Error: Poll Reading Tips." PBS Radio, January 11, 2008. (http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/archives/yankelovichnow_ts.html)

Political Advertising and Political Communication

The use of political advertising has been transformed from useful to integral in the fifty years that television has become the central channel.

"Advertising has grown from a tool used exclusively by presidential candidates to an essential element of campaign communication at all levels of government. ... As a result there has been a shift from news to advertising over the last two decades. Citizens are now exposed to huge amounts of political ads each election cycle, but exposure to news has declined over the same period." (Valentino 338)

If American voters are receiving more of their political information through political advertising, does that make them more susceptible to persuasion? Or is political advertising a more dynamic way to reach the public with relevant issues? Does it benefit this country to lower standards of political communication to meet the desires of the public? By promoting political advertising as the major form of political communication, our candidates and political parties do not advance American democracy by creating a more informed electorate.

The strongest argument supporting the widespread use of political advertisements centers around informing the least informed members of society. In the meta study "The Impact of Political Advertising on Knowledge, Internet Information Seeking, and Candidate Preference" Nicholas Valentino and his colleagues contemplate a wide array of studies on political communication and its effect on voters. "[D]rawing on extant models of opinion change", Valentino makes an important delineation in the American electorate, separating voters by their level of awareness of potential candidates as well as the political landscape. (Valentino 337) By doing so, the study is able to identify segments of the population that do benefit from the expansion of political advertising. Valentino sites a 1979 Hofstetter and Zukin study that found most political advertising focuses on substantial campaign issues. By presenting substantial issues, political advertisements make uninformed voters aware of the "important" issues. Further, these adds inform the least informed voters about their candidate's stance on such issues. Finally, strong emotions are often evoked from viewers, and provide an energy for the least informed to get more information, or, even better, for them to get involved in the campaign.

In the 1978 study, The unseeing eye: the myth of television power in national elections, Patterson and McClure found that the least informed gained the most information from political television advertising. The researchers concluded that T.V. ads helped to fill the information gap experienced by the American public, especially because the least informed segment of the population was also the most likely to watch television. (Valentino 339) This research supports the Hofstetter and Zukin argument, that the uninformed are gaining an understanding of the existence of specific issues, at the very least. The more informed would have already gained awareness of the issues.

The immediate question that must be asked, though, is whether informing the public should be the responsibility of a decidedly non-objective political source. Is it better to be ignorant, or to be informed by a source attempting to persuade? The least informed are gaining awareness of issues from a source that is also attempting to persuade viewers to choose one side of the issue. But Valentino goes on to site several studies that question the power of political advertising to persuade viewers. He states that many early studies found very little conversion of voters from one candidate to another due to campaign advertising. Later studies supported this, but found that party identification moderated the effect. Voters do change their opinion of candidates because of political advertising, but this does not often lead to a change in their vote. Persuasion does not seem to be the most glaring danger of political ads.

When provided additional information, people may change their viewpoint, but not necessarily their decisions. During the conflict with Iraq, 60% of Americans believed that Saddam Hussein was behind the 9/11 attacks of the World Trade Center. Even after the non-partisan 9/11 commission concluded that Saddam Hussein was not involved in Al-Qaeda's attack on the World Trade Center, 50% of Americans still believed that he was involved. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/05/AR2008090502666.html) People understood that the situation was not as simple as blaming one man or one country, but yet, they decided it was important to stick behind the country, and blame Iraq and Saddam Hussein. They must not have read the report or gotten further details.

Television advertising only allows 30 seconds of information, and therefore can not provide in-depth analysis of complex situations and issues. True, television ads inform the public, but they do not create an "informed" electorate. Informing the masses is an important part of a properly functioning democracy, and has been an unfulfilled promise throughout the history of this country. Part of this problem is related to the fact that many voters are looking for a short-cut to gain political information. People are busy and lazy; becoming informed of the issues and each candidates stance on the issues requires effort, time, and research skills. Valentino states that voters are 'cognitive misers', looking to simplify complex information presented differently by different sources. (Valentino 341) Political advertisements are appealing because they offer embedded messages by implying ideals through the character of the candidate or by appealing to social groups.

The last presidential election used character as the most common tool for embedded messages. John McCain used his history in the military and his record as a war hero to imply personal virtues that would translate to his role as president. He attacked Barack Obama for his association with certain people, namely his former pastor, Rev. Wright, and Bill Ayers, a former domestic terrorist. The importance of John McCain's war record is debatable, and Barack Obama's former connections to these men are complicated. The answers they provide are therefore inaccessible to most people. Instead, people chose to either disregard these stories as irrelevant or to proclaim John McCain as a hero and connect Barack Obama to men with questionable ideas and actions. It is true that war records and associations with evil men could be important, but it also true that it is impossible to make a fair analysis in 30 seconds. The public is informed by becoming aware that John McCain is a war hero and that Barack Obama attended the Trinity United Church of Chicago. But, overall, the public remained uniformed about the relevancy of such facts.

Television ads encourage only informed voters to seek more information. In the cases provided above, only those with previous skills of information acquisition have the ability to research the claims made by television advertisements. The well informed may look deeper into the war record of John McCain, or specifically research his votes in the senate that would confirm his support of a strong military. They might also investigate the extent of Barack Obama's relationship to Bill Ayers, or Bill Ayers life since his infamous crimes during the Vietnam War. They have the skill set to find the full length versions of Rev. Wright's inflammatory speeches that were used as sound bites in conservative political advertisements.

If the only segment of the population that uses political advertisements to gain informed opinions is the group of voters that were previously informed, political advertisements add minimally to a functioning democracy. They only offer more facts for informed citizens to consider in making their vote. The uninformed citizen is given a better opportunity to gain what he or she feels is "significant" information, but from simply cursory and opinionated information.

I hope this is not the best we can hope for democracy, because if it is, democracy is not working. The public needs to gain more skills to use the information they are given. We need to further encourage and teach ways to check facts, research the issues, and build a structure to accept the plethora of information available. As we saw with the 9/11 report, the problem is not the accessibility of information, but the public's ability to assimilate this information. How can we provide it efficiently, and how can we encourage a more thorough study of it? The internet provides a clear medium and channel for information procurement, but with the popularity of twitter and facebook, it seems like cognitive misers still prevail. So, although political advertisements add to the problem, they are not the problem. It is the public that must step up and do more.

Works Cited

Valentino, Nicholas, et. al., "The Impact of Political Advertising on Knowledge, Internet Information Seeking, and Candidate Preference", Journal of Communication, June, 2004, pgs. 337-354.

The U.S. President

Blog #2 by
Kasim Ercan Ekenler


During the 2008 presidential campaign, "change" was the buzz word. Barack Obama and the democrats used this word to embody their presidential platform as well their goals for domestic policy. John McCain then used the word to first attack Barack Obama, and then to support his own separation from George W. Bush's term, which during the course of 2008 took a heavy beating. Separating change from the common conceptions of the two major political parties, I wonder about change for America. Do we need it? Who should decide and develop the course of "change"? Who is truly empowered to make that change?

I will make an assumption and answer positively that America does need change. With economic turmoil that points to systemic problems, healthcare at the center of heated discussion, a fragile ecosystem, rising global temperatures, and international instability in the Middle East, our current path does not lead to forseeable solutions. These are my assumptions, my reasons for seeking change in this country's path. It is each man's right and responsibility as a citizen to hold such opinions and to verify their validity with study and research. But it is not the citizen's responsibility to affect changes in domestic or international policy. Politicians and legislators are ideally informed and skilled enough to craft such policy. It is the citizen's responsibility to choose politicians that support his or her ideas about change.

In "The Presidency and Political Leadership", Mary Stuckey claims that "presidential candidates, through the vehicles of the political parties, are powerful forces uniting the mass public - powerful voices determining national identity." In the democratic political system, I do not affect change, I vote for someone to affect the change I desire. Politicians are responsible for developing a political course toward affecting change, and properly communicating their platform for change. The problem in modern political times, though, is that issues are becoming less relevant to the political process. The ways in which presidents are uniting the mass public is through their character, their personal stories, and the public's emotional responses to contentious issues. Despite the ability of modern mass media to make political platforms available, and bring issues to the center of the political process, it has acted in the opposite direction, shifting the focus away from issues. If the substance of presidential communication has changed, how can citizens know when they vote what type of "change" they are choosing? And if politicians are moving away from the issues, is this because they are powerless to affect changes on the "issues"?

In "Rhetorical Challenges to the Presidency", Robert Denton Jr. discusses the distinction between the "modern" and "classic" public spheres, as postulated by Jurgen Habermas. He explores how democracy of large masses leads to a loss of discursive coherence between members of society as many less educated citizens become involved in political opinion. Communcating and discussing ideas becomes increasingly frustrating as people become less informed. The mass media outlets are at the forefront of this modern development; the media is responsible for involving far more people in democracy. While this is not inherently problematic, the shift of mass media toward smaller and smaller target audiences has made "narrowcasting," as opposed to broadcasting, the norm. (Denton 446) The response of presidential communication has been to "spend more and more time attempting to influence public opinion concerning their policies" than actually promoting the policies themselves. (Denton 447) It has become more important to spin policies through the media than to adopt changes to policies that informed social discourse has demanded.

In the presidential election of 2008, we saw excessive examples of the candidates attempting to personalize themselves for the American public. Just after becoming the presumptive democratic nominee, Barack Obama aired "biographical" commercials in 18 states emphasizing his patriotism and service to the country. (http://blogs.usatoday.com/onpolitics/2007/08/new-obama-bio-a.html) It was focused specifically on building public opinion of his character, not his policies. John McCain matched this approach by airing a 60 second spot emphaisizing his own patriotism and strength as a leader. (http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/03/28/mccain.ad/index.html) The commercial asks about the candidate "what does he think?", but fails to answer the question. The viewers are expected to create their own response based on the images and sound clips provided by the commercials.

By appealing to personal character and avoiding issues, presidential candidates avoid alienating the increasing number of voter coalitions. No longer can candidates count on a small number of voter groups, or coalitions, to gain them the presidency. Mary Stuckey contemplates how universal suffrage - the ability of all woman andminorities to vote - has provided an incredible diversity of cultural, ethnic, economic, and regional "coalitions" of voters. It is difficult to take a hard stand on any issue without alienating large numbers of potential voters. It seems to me that instead of crafting policies more carefully, politicians have chosen to remove policies and issues from their own campaigns, as much as possible. Further, we see the media, as well as the candidates, utilize the diversity of our citizens against one another. Because media outlets have already created micro-markets by "narrowcasting", it is very easy to distribute attack ads to voting coalitions who will be effected by the negative messages. The results of this situation are frightening, as both John McCain and Barack Obama aired more than 75,000 negative ads between June 3 and September 7 of 2008. (http://www.boston.com/news/politics/politicalintelligence/2008/10/mccain_obama_ne_1.html) These numbers represent the most negative presidential campaigns in history. (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081031102057.htm)

The most unfortunate result of a move away from policies, though, is that no one may be empowered to affect change. Denton declared that "it is not likely we will see the development of large-scale policy initiatives" because of the political landscape and the nature of modern presidential political communication. Barack Obama's largest policy initiative as president, the health care reform, is experiencing this same realization. The response to his initiative has been one of attack, marginalization, and emotion. Conservative media outlets attacked Obama, claiming his plan will bankrupt the country, without addressing his concern that our future economic viability depends on an overhaul of ths system. (http://mediamatters.org/research/200903310040) It is not helpful to continue attacking ideas and arguments unless we consider the negatives along with the positives. How do we change a broken system, if the system has created a feedback loop to prevent educated discourse on change by attacking anything new? Do we need to accept change as incremental and slow? Can we afford that type of change, based on our present situation?

Conscientious media outlets do exist, and objective discourse is being attempted, but people are watching Fox News, MSNBC, and CNN. Following President Obama's speech to the AMA, the foremost medical body in the U.S., multiple media outlets provided opportunities for doctors, journalists, and professors to answer questions about the feasibility of health care reform. (http://www.onpointradio.org/2009/06/obamas-health-care-push ; http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105481744) This is the type of discourse that leads to answers based on facts and logic, not emotion and fear of media attack.

For presidents to be willing to communicate clearly their stand on issues, more people need to engage in discourse that is willing to hear and share both sides of the issue. We need to continue to provide venues that encourage a diversity of ideas. If everyone were disgusted with modern, gut-reaction, one-sided media presentations of political issues, they wouldn't be aired. If our discursive coherence has been lost because of a large, un-informed public, we have two choices. Together we can find NEW ways to educate and inform the public, or we can decrease the size of the "mass public." Can we come together as diverse communities to discuss the issues in ways that we move toward meaningful answers? I hope so, it might be our only chance for change.

References:

Denton, Robert Jr. "Rhetorical Challenges to the Presidency." Rhetoric and Public Affairs, Vol. 3, No. 3, 2000. 445-51.

Stuckey, Mary. "Presidential and political Leadership." Rhetoric and Public Affairs, Vol. 3, No. 3, 2000. 452-454.