Public Opinion, Polling, and Political Behavior

Abstract

The advent of scientific public opinion polling gave democratic governance a new dimension. For the first time representatives could discern people's opinions on virtually any public issue. Despite this ability, three important questions remain. Are people adequately informed to consider the complex problems of modern government? Will they give their true opinions to a pollster? And even if these two conditions are satisfied, do representatives have to be bound by popular opinion? This article argues that modern public opinion analysts who use polling data tend to ignore these questions and instead focus on patterns of attitudes among various groups in the population. Before scientific polling became common, those who studied public opinion directed their efforts to the connection between behavioral manifestations of public opinion and the development of public policy. They worried more about the role of public opinion in the formulation of public policy. It turns out that much of the public opinion literature preceding scientific polling remains relevant, and we ignore it at our peril.