Presidential Manipulation of Polls and Public Opinion: The Nixon Administration and the Pollsters

Abstract

Do opinion polls lead to political responsiveness or to manipulation of public opinion? Political observers have long debated whether public opinion surveys facilitate or undermine representative government. George Gallup argued in the 1940s that polls are a tool for deciphering public sentiment and enabling policy makers to respond to what their constituents want.' By contrast, Walter Lippmann and others have contended that through the mass media elites manufacture the public attitudes they desire and that polls are merely a tool in this process of manipulating public opinion.2 Although policy makers' use of polls has profound implications for democratic government, there has been relatively little investigation of how politicians actually use polls and interact with pollsters.3 As part of our research on modem