The Tyranny of the Poll

A recent Time/CNN poll asked 1,005 adult members of the general public how well they thought “things are going in the country these days.” Fifty-one percent said they thought that things were going very or fairly well. Well, well! Fear not, for the lukewarm public has spoken!

But wait! An equally recent Associated Press asked 1,001 folks whether they thought the country was “heading in the right direction” or “on the wrong track.” Turns out 57 percent thought that the country was on the “wrong track.”

What gives? Who is this “general public,” anyway? A distant cousin to notary publics, or a newly interpreted incarnation of Rousseau’s social contract? Is it some sort of populist organization? I’ve sure as hell never signed up for it. In fact, I’m a little scared by the whole idea. What kind of a general public purports to speak for everyone and then goes around contradicting itself? This reminds me a bit of what Groucho Marx said—“I don’t care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members.” But according to pollsters, I am a member. If the whole idea didn’t make me a little uneasy, I might just put it on my résumé—“22-Year Member of the General Public (in Good Standing),” it would say. I guess I would put it under “Experience.” (I can just see the ad campaigns: “The General Public: Shaping public opinion for over 100 years!”)

But I digress. (My apologies.) Here’s the deal: there is no such thing as the “general public.” It’s a fiction, a fatuous farce, as much as the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus and weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. But just because these things don’t exist doesn’t mean that they aren’t incredibly powerful rallying points. Santa Claus almost single-handedly incites massive consumerist frenzies during the holiday season. Likewise, polls and their “general public” do as much to cement massive conformity as they do to highlight differences in opinion.

When it comes down to it, polls put people together that really don’t have any connection to each other. Sure, 51 percent of those polled may have said that they think the country’s doing just fine. But it’s all an illusion. What we call “public opinion” is just the after-dinner musings of the 510 citizens who answered their telephones and, after a moment of consideration, answered a multiple-choice question (And I’ll be damned if it’s not the most vague, open-ended question I’ve ever seen.) When it comes down to it, what does it mean that 51 percent of those polled think that the country’s doing “fairly well” or better? Nothing! Absolutely nothing. What these polls give us is a way of feeling like we’re not alone in our opinions. “Look!” we seem to say, pointing to a new poll on the popularity of Issue X or Personality Y, “I’m not alone! There are others like me!”

Alexis de Tocqueville noticed this, I think (without the help of a polling apparatus), during his 1830 trip to America. He writes that democratic nations like America “have neither leisure nor taste to think out new opinions. Even when they are doubtful about accepted ideas they stick to them because it would take too much time to examine and change them. They hold to them not because they are certain but because they are accepted.”

I wonder why we have polls. Who are they for? What good do they do us? Are they tools to help our public officers shape their behavior to better satisfy their citizens, or do they help the voting public to form their own political opinions? In a democracy, there ought to be no real use for polls. After all, if you are entitled to your opinion, what does it matter if 67 percent of poll respondents (read: the General Public) disagree with you? And if you’re free to vote for whomever you wish, does it matter whether Kerry or Bush is ahead in the polls?

Of course it does. Because we’re not interested in personal freedom of thought. What we really want is to be in good company. It’s oh-so-comfortable to belong to a group of people who share your opinions, even if that group is abstract and statistical—numbers on a page. If we really wanted to think for ourselves, we’d demand to be rid of the oppression of the “general public” and its confounded opinions.

I suppose there’s some fitting irony in the recent Harris Poll that found that 72 percent of respondents believe that public opinion has “too little power and influence” on “policy, politicians, and policymakers in Washington.” I guess I’m in the uncomfortable minority on this one.

Christopher W. Snyder ’04 is a social studies concentrator in Leverett House. His column appears on alternate Fridays.