Michael Xenos
You
wouldn’t think so based on paying casual attention to the major news
stories of the day. Just yesterday, while interviewing Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullin on Meet the Press, David
Gregory referred to findings from a recent Washington Post-ABC News
poll suggesting that 51% of Americans do not think that the war in
Afghanistan is worth fighting. Coverage of the current battle over
health care reform commonly includes references to President Obama’s
approval ratings and a variety of policy-specific opinion figures.
Incidentally, a useful source of relatively raw versions of these kinds
of poll results is Polling Report.com.
And why shouldn’t there be a lot of discussion about what the public
thinks in a representative democracy such as ours? Most would agree
that having information on what the public thinks about various issues
is important in a democracy, and although they have their problems,
traditional public opinion polls conducted by telephone are the most
sophisticated and scientifically refined means we have of gathering
such information. However, as one of my colleagues recently reminded
me, even those who make a living from telephone surveys are wondering
how much longer they will be able to provide useful information about
the American public’s attitudes and opinions.
My colleague pointed me to a story in which Jay Leve, the CEO
of SurveyUSA (the country’s largest polling firm) is quoted making a
number of comments suggesting that the telephone-based public opinion
poll as we know it, is likely a creature that is not long for this
world. Some of the reasons are probably obvious to readers of this
blog. Most notably there is the difficulty most pollsters have in
reaching young people and others who rely exclusively on their cellular
phones and are not connected to any kind of landline. Moreover, due to
the nature of cellular phones, even if a pollster manages to get
someone to answer their call, it is no longer to tell things like where
they live based on the number. Perhaps most interesting is Leve’s
analysis of a much less technical issue, the fact that we simply lead
much more complicated and different lives than we did when these
techniques were perfected. In his words: “Ringing someone’s phone
without warning and asking if they have 20 minutes to spend with you
flies in the face of everything that’s going on in the world today. I
barely have 20 minutes to spend with my daughter.”
On a more positive note, Leve also suggested ways that polling might
adapt to the realities of our contemporary lifestyles, such as making
the whole process more interesting and even enjoyable for the
respondents. If effective, such adaptations might point to the
evolution of polling more than its extinction.
What do you think? Are opinion polls valuable? Are they obsolete? What role should they play in our political system?
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