The Competition for Certainty: The Polls and the Press in Britain

Abstract

On the morning after the February 1974 General Election in Britain, The Times commented bitterly that once again, as in 1970, the message of the opinion polls, which with scarcely an exception had shown the Conservatives fairly comfortably in the lead throughout the campaign, proved to be a snare and a delusion. This article will attempt to explain this result by analyzing the organizational pressures that influence the conduct of election polls and their interpretation by the press. The highly competitive environment for British political polls creates strong pressures for them and their consumers to derive certainty and significance from ambiguous information. The result is that a tightly knit political elite collectively reinforces its expectations with the aura of science.