American Academy of Political and Social Science

American Academy of Political and Social Science

Public Opinion, Polling, and Political Behavior Author(s): Michael Margolis Source: Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 472, Polling and the Democratic Consensus (Mar., 1984), pp. 61-71 Published by: Sage Publications, Inc. in association with the American Academy of Political and Social Science Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1043883 Accessed: 23/01/2009 14:46 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

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ANNALS, AAPSS, 472, March 1984

Public Opinion, Polling, and Political Behavior

By MICHAELMARGOLIS ABSTRACT:The advent of scientific public opinion polling gave democratic governance a new dimension. For the first time representativescould 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.

Michael Margolis (Ph.D., Michigan) is associate professor of political science at the University of Pittsburgh. He is author of Viable Democracy (1979) and coauthor of Political Stratification and Democracy (1972), and he has contributed numerous articles to proJessional journals, books, and newspapers. He has been a visiting lecturer in politics at the universities of Strathclyde, 1965-67, and Glasgow, 1973-74.

NOTE: The author wishes to thank Michael Johnston, Richard Niemi, Bert Rockman, Lee Weinberg, and Robert Weissberg for comments on an early draft of this article.

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HROUGHOUT recorded history, governmentshave been concerned with public opinion. Well before the advent of scientific polling, rulers had devised ways of finding out what the people thought. In biblical times the pharaohs and kings had prophets and counselors to inform them of both vox Dei and vox populi. In ancient Lydia, King Croesus reputedly sent Aesop among the people as his emissary,' and in ancient Athens, according to Pericles, frank public discussion always preceded implementation of public policy.2 Although not so democratic in theory or practice, the rulers of ancient Rome nonetheless tried to satisfy the people's demands-perhaps even to manipulate those demands-by providing panem et circenses.3 All governments-ancient or modern, dictatorial or democratic-have found it prudent to satisfy, or at least to pacify, the masses. David Hume put it thus:

Democratic governments, however, add the requirement that not only must governments retain the support of mass opinion, but ultimately mass public opinion must determine basic public policy. Democracy, after all, is rule by the demos, the common people. Yet it is difficult to realize such rule, once the polity exceeds the size of the Greek citystate, wherein the citizenry can debate and resolve public issues face to face.

Since direct democracy on a mass basis is impossible, the normal arrangement, of course, is to institute representative democracy. The people's elected representatives meet face to face in lieu of the people themselves, and in the end, the representatives' acts are supposed to reflect the best opinions and interests of the people.

How people control their representatives may vary in theory from periodic authorizations of plenipotentiary powers over all pertinent decisions to delegation of specifically enumerated powers over discrete decisions. But in practice, As force is always on the side of the govthe complexity and multiplicity of erned, the governorshave nothing to sup- given decisions to be made, elected represenport them but opinion. It is, therefore, on tatives normally are granted full power opinion only that government is founded; to in act the people's stead for a desigandthis maximextendsto the mostdespotic nated term.

In point of fact, it would be andmost militarygovernments,as wellas to the most free and popular.4 if not virtually impossible, irrational, for ordinary citizens to invest the enor1. Encyclopedia Americana,international ed., mous amount of time required to study s.v. "Aesop";EncyclopediaBritannica-Micrope- all issues so that they might delegate dia, 15th ed., s.v. "Aesop." Aesop's actual cononly specific powers for political decinection to Croesus is in fact doubtful, but its assersion.5 tion by Plutarch and its persistence over time How then are the representatives to illustrates our point. discern the best opinions or interests of 2. Pericles, "Funeral Oration," in Commuthe people? Until well into the twentieth nism, Fascism, and Democracy, 2nd ed., ed. Carl Cohen (New York: Random House, 1972), p. 540. century most elected representativeshad 3. Charles W. Smith, Public Opinion in a little more information-beyond the fact York: Democracy (New

2-4.

Prentice-Hall, 1939), pp.

4. David Hume, David Hume's Political Essays (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1953), p. 24.

5. Compare Walter Lippmann, The Phantom Public (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1925), pp. 20-21.

PUBLIC OPINION, POLLING, POLITICAL BEHAVIOR

of their election-about the people's wishes than did the ancient tyrants.

Representatives could listen to self-declared opinion leaders or prophets; they could take note of demonstrations of praise or blame; or they could observe public fashions, followings, or boycotts.

By the late nineteenth century they could also be informed by the results of initiatives and referenda, a ratherelaborate and expensive means to explore matters that were of necessity rather limited in scope.6 The advent of scientific public opinion polling changed all this. With the appropriate samples and questions it was possible for the first time to discern people's opinions on virtually any public issue at relatively little expense in a very short period of time.7 Public opinion polling provided a means of linking what the people said they wanted directly to public policy decisions.

POLLS AND PUBLIC POLICY

The new found ability to link mass opinion to public policy decisions nonetheless raised three serious questions.

First, were the masses equipped to consider complex problems, however carefully posed by public opinion pollsters?

Second, even if the masses were able to understand the problems, would they be willing to give their true opinions, those 6. James Bryce, The American Commonwealth (New York: Macmillan 1891), 2:346; A. Lawrence Lowell, Public Opinion and Popular Government, new ed. (New York: Longmans, Green, 1926), pp. 54-61, 210-11. For a discussion of polling in the United States prior to 1900, see Richard Jensen, "Democracy by the Numbers," Public Opinion 3:53-59 (Feb./Mar. 1980).

7. George Gallup, Public Opinion in a Democracy, Stafford Little Lectures (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1939), pp. 14-15.

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which would be predictive of subsequent political behavior? Finally, even if the first two conditions were satisfied, would representatives have the obligation to enact policies in accordance with popular opinions?

If political scientists knew one thing for certain, it was that citizens generally neither knew nor cared very much about most governmental institutions, political leaders, current issues, or public policies. For most people the day-to-day concerns of family and work were far more salient than the concerns of politics.' Even when citizens made the extraordinary effort to become informed about some set of important public issues, their lack of direct political experience might still render their opinions inadequate. Ordinary citizens are inevitably outsiders;they cannot be expected to appreciate the complexities seen by political decision makers. Indeed, even social scientists who specialize in studying a particular policy area may still remain too far outside to appreciate nuances. As Walter Lippmann said, The man of affairsobservingthat the social scientistknows only from the outsidewhat he knows, in part at least, from the inside, recognizingthatthesocialscientist'shypothesis is not in the natureof thingssusceptible of laboratoryproof, and that verificationis possibleonly in the "real"world,has developeda ratherlow opinionof socialscientists whodo not sharehisviewson publicpolicy.9 8. Bryce, American Commonwealth, 2:23946; Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion (New York: Free Press, 1972, first published in 1922), p. 36; see also Kenneth P. Adler, "Polling the Elite: The Attentive Public" in this volume of The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.

9. Lippmann, Public Opinion, p. 235. Lippmann continues: "In his heart of hearts the social scientist shares this estimate of himself." Alas!

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Still, citizens need not be informed of details of specific policies. It is surely sufficient for them to provide general guidelines for public policy or to render opinions on the effects of current policies. Citizens can be sound judges of policy, even if they are not originators.10 We cannot conclude that citizens necessarily have nothing useful to say about public policy.

But, assuming that citizens have something useful to say, are public opinion polls a better means of communicating their opinions and interests than are other means of communication, such as voting, lobbying, writing letters, agitating, or editorializing in the mass media?

There are two aspects to this question: the reliability of polls and the validity of the answers given to pollsters.

Problems of reliability are difficult, but they are, in principle, soluble. Sampling reliability can be enhanced by appropriate techniques known as probability sampling and by achieving a high rate of response. The reliability of answers can be enhanced through the development and testing of standard question formats and standard techniques of interviewing.

Nonetheless, small changes in the wording or the format of questions can produce surprisingly large variations in answers, and even the order of questions or the environmental context in which they are asked can affect the answers."1 It is thus wise to give little credence to opinions based on responses to a single question, howeverstraightforwardit may appear.

10. Compare Pericles, "Funeral Oration," p. 540.

11. See Howard Schuman and Stanley Presser, Questions and Answers in Attitude Surveys (New York: Academic Press, 1981), chaps. 2, 3, and 7; and Burns W. Roper, "Are Polls Accurate?"in this issue of The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.

If, after taking these considerations into account, the results of a poll are judged reliable, does it follow that the opinions expressed are more deserving of the attention of political decision makersthan are those expressed through other forms of political communication?

Not necessarily. Those who lobby, demonstrate, write letters, or otherwise communicate their opinions to political decision makers usually feel more intensely about these opinions than do those who merely reply to a poll. Moreover, those who hold their opinions intensely may also be better informed.

Thus, to get an estimate of opinions and interests regarding an issue, political decision makers may need to weigh the intensity of feeling and the knowledge of those expressing opinions, not merely the number of persons on each side.12 The problem of the validity of responses to polls is even more difficult.

Publicly expressed opinions are often conventionalized versions of what people really think, conventionalized so as to conform to what they perceive to be societal norms.13 It is hard, for instance, to find many Americans these days who, when asked by pollsters, admit to racial bigotry; yet, as witnessed by events surrounding the recent mayoral elections in Chicago and Philadelphia, the behavior of many may belie their answers.

If we assume that people's opinions form the bases for their actions, then the simplest test of the validity of an expressed opinion is to examine the linkage between opinion and some behavior that is its logical consequence. The absence of such linkage would suggest that the opinion expressed was an invalid indicator of relevant political behavior.

12. Lowell, Public Opinion and Popular Government, pp. 12-14.

13. Smith, Public Opinion in a Democracy, p. 17.

PUBLIC OPINION, POLLING, POLITICAL BEHAVIOR

The presence of such linkage would provide support for the assumption that the opinion expressed was a true one.

The Gallup Report, for example, periodically prints a table that shows the accuracy of the Gallup poll by juxtaposing its final predictions in presidential elections against the actual vote over time.'4 The closeness of the actual to the predicted election outcomes provides good evidence that responses to the poll regarding electoral preference are valid indicators of subsequent collective electoral behavior. In the aggregate, people vote the way they say they will vote when asked a few days before the election.

The discovery that most election polling is valid, however, is hardly momentous. In a democratic polity voting is one of the easiest political actions citizens can take. It generally requires little expenditure of money, time, or effort, and except for voting in referenda, it generally represents little in the way of direct expression of opinion on questions of public policy.'5 A more difficult problem is to demonstrate a linkage between expressed opinions on policies concerning gun control, abortion, civil rights, nuclear freezes, inflation, unemployment, taxation, bureaucracy, education, investment, armament, energy, environmental pollution, street crime, and the like and subsequent political behavior.

This is not to dismiss the usefulness of public opinion polls. Responses to questions about issues are often associated 14. The Gallup Report, no. 204 (Princeton, NJ: The Gallup Poll, Sept. 1982), or no. 200 (May 1982), for instance.

15. Sidney Verba and Norman H. Nie, Participation in America (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), chap. 3; or Sidney Verba, Norman H. Nie, and Jae-on Kim, Participation and Political Equality (New York: Camoridge University Press, 1978), chap. 3.

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with particular party affiliations or particular voting patterns. Despite recent increases in strength, however, the direct link between positions expressed on current issues and subsequent voting behavior-let alone other subsequent political behaviors-remains generally weaker than that between party affiliation and the vote, or between opinions expressed about candidates and the vote.'6 Answers to pollsters' questions represent interesting information that representatives, political strategists, analysts, and others will wish to consider.

That they represent valid expressions of a generalwill of the people is extremely doubtful.17 Finally, even if polls contain questions on which the public has coherent opinions and which are conventional enough to elicit valid expressions of those opinions, must those policies favored by popular opinions by implemented immediately? Theories of representative democracy are by no means unanimous in requiring that representatives conform to day-to-day trends of public opinion. The Burkean conception of representative government, for instance, maintains that representatives owe their constituents their best judgments on matters of policy, not slavish conformity with their opinions.

Constituents judge their representatives' overall performance at periodic elections not on the basis of their conformity with popular opinions on any particular issue. Indeed the very pur16. See Herbert Asher, Presidential Elections and American Politics, rev. ed. (Homewood, IL: Dorsey Press, 1980), chap. 4; Norman H. Nie, Sidney Verba, and John Petrocik, The Changing American Voter, enlarged ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979), pp. 291-306.

17. Lindsay Rogers, The Pollsters (New York: Knopf, 1949), chap. 1,9; Richard E. Vatz and Lee S. Weinberg, "The Imperial Pollsters," USA Today, 107: 6-9 (Sept. 1978).

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pose of institutional features like staggered elections, separation of powers, and checks and balance is to slow the actions of government so as to curb the excesses that might result from quick conformity of public policy with the passionately held opinions of the day.18 FORGOTTEN ROOTS

If many of the concerns discussed in the preceding section seem familiar, it is because they have long been foci of attention of students of public opinion.

Readers will notice that most of the works cited thus far were first published prior to World War II. It happens that just as governments' concern for public opinion preceded scientific polling, so too did the study of public opinion. In fact, a rich and insightful literature on public opinion existed before George Gallup ever fielded his first national survey.19 Much of the current work on public opinion, however, seems oblivious of this earlier literature. Despite sophisticated treatments of the mechanics of public opinion polling and the techniques of measurement and data analysis, it frequently reveals a lack of awareness or concern for the questions that were raised by earlier writers about the linkage of publicly expressed opinions to behavior and policies. It is disconcerting, to say the least, to find no references to Bryce, Lippmann, Lowell, or Rogers in some of the leading textbooks 18. Edmund Burke, "Speech to the Electors of Bristol," 4 Nov. 1774, in Cohen, Communism, Fascism, and Democracy, pp. 436-37; Bryce, American Commonwealth, 2:259; Rogers, Pollsters, chap. 7.

19. See Robert Weissberg, Public Opinion and Popular Government (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1976), chap. 1.

on public opinion.20 It is as though no important work on public opinion was done before the advent of scientific polling.

The bulk of current work using data derived from public opinion polls really skirts the problem of the extent to which expressed opinions are linked directly to policy outputs or to any political behavior more demanding than casting a vote.

Questions of the validity of responses to polls as indicators of true opinion or of political behavior are raised, but they are generally brushed aside with arguments that defend face validity-the question appears to measure what it purportsto measure-or construct validity-the responses to the question are consistent with responses to another question in accordance with some theoretically derived hypothesis. But most studies never quite get around to examining the simple criterion of whether or not the responses are predictive of subsequent political behavior.2' The upshot of this has been the emergence of a sophisticated and fascinating body of findings about political attitudes and opinions, but a body of 20. See, for example, Robert S. Erikson, Norman R. Lutbeg, and Kent L. Tedin, American Public Opinion, 2nd ed. (New York: John Wiley, 1980); Harry Holloway and John George, Public Opinion (New York: St. Martins, 1979); Dennis Ippolito, Thomas G. Walker, and Kenneth L. Kolson, Public Opinion and Responsible Democracy (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1976); Robert G. Lehnen, American Institutions, Political Opinion and Public Policy (Hinsdale, IL: Dryden Press, 1976); Alan D. Monroe, Public Opinion in America (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1975). Monroe does contain one reference to Bryce regarding political parties.

21. See Monroe, Public Opinion in America, pp. 33-34; Edward Carmines and Richard Zeller, Reliability and ValidityAssessment (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications, 1979), pp. 17-27; David J.

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findings that contains little more of direct relevance to public policy decisions than it did when Lippmann, in Public Opinion, lamented its lack of relevance. The use of polling has greatly enhanced our knowledge of how children acquire party loyalties, of how particular groups claim to view one another, and of what public opinions people express about particular policies and issues. We have learned a great deal about how some bundles of opinions are consistently related to some other bundles of opinions. But the only political behavior that we have learned much more about is voting.22 While better knowledge of why various groups of people vote as they do may be of intrinsic interest to selected readers, and of practical interest to many campaigners, it simply does not tell us much about how, if at all, public opinion relates to public policy. The early public opinion analysts were never so naive as t call an election result an expression fpopular opinion. "The motives for a ballot of any kind [including referendumand initiative]often differ with different people who vote the same way," observed Lowell.23"It would take us hours to express our thoughts, and calling a vote the expression of our mind is an empty fiction," Lippmann wrote.24 Ironically, the impact of the behavioral revolution on the study of public opinion has been to draw our attention Hanson, "Relationship Between Methods and Findings in Attitude-Behavior Research," Psychology 17:11-13 (1980).

22. The use of survey research by Sidney Verba and his colleagues to examine other forms of political participation has been an important exception. See fn. 15. See also Lester W. Milbrath and M. L. Goel, Political Participation, 2nd ed.

(Chicago: Rand-McNally, 1977),especially chap. 1.

23. Lowell, Public Opinion and Popular Government, p. 25.

24. Phantom Public, p. 56.

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away from observing and measuring behavior directly and toward measuring such behavior indirectly by means of public opinion polls.25 As polling data have become more available, we have attempted to link responses to observed behaviors less often than to link one set of verbal responses to another set of verbal responses. True, verbal responses comprise a form of behavior, but we must ask ourselvesif the verbal responses validly representthe behaviors that originally piqued our interest. Let us look at some examples of how using polling data has tended to seduce researchers away from observing actual behaviors.

Discrepancies between opinions and behavior When public opinions from the 1940s through the early 1960s affirmed that the opinions expressed by most Americans failed to exhibit the high levels of interest in and rationality about politics that had been idealized in popular versions of democratic theory, political scientists responded by formulating a plural-elite theory of democracy. This formulation viewed democracy as an arrangementof political institutions that provided for open competition among interest groups, political parties, and freely chosen political leaders. It demanded little more of citizens beyond acceptance of the legitimacy of the governmental institutions and procedures.

Whether or not large numbers of citizens were ignorant or apathetic concerning politics was irrelevant so long as voluntary groups looked out for most

25. For a discussion of various views on behavioral political science, see Heinz Eulau, ed., Behavioralism in Political Science (New York: Atherton, 1969).

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citizens' private interests, political parties organized and aggregated those interests into coherent platforms, and competing leadership elites vied for the nominations of the parties and the electoral support of the populace.26 Polls showed that Americawas blessed with a civic culture, a bundle of attitudes held by the citizenry that allowed this plural-elite democracy to flourish. Even though citizens were apathetic toward politics, they nonetheless expressed support for the political institutions and processes that encouraged democratic standards of behavior among political elites. Moreover, most Americans expressed confidence in their abilities to gain sympathetic hearings and desired actions from public officials, albeit most also admitted they normally did nothing more than express their general approval or disapproval through their votes.

In the main, however, the attitudes of inactive citizens seemed consistent with the interpretation that apathy toward politics represented a tacit expression of satisfaction.27 The stark events of the 1960s suggested a less sanguine interpretation.

Following riots in the black ghettos of Brooklyn and Philadelphia in the summer of 1964, riots and disorderly demonstrations became commonplace in major cities and college campuses throughout the nation. These events suggested that beneath the apathy of many citizens lay frustration and resentment, not a consensus about American political institutions and processes.

Most public opinion analysts who had relied upon data from polls, how26. Michael Margolis, ViableDemocracy (New York: Penguin, 1979), pp. 96-112.

27. See Michael Margolis, "Democracy: American Style," in Democratic Theory and Practice, ed. Graeme Duncan (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 125-29.

ever, failed to anticipate these developments.28 They had been studying the responses to the questions pollsters had set instead of measuring the contrasts between the promises and performances of the programs of the Great Society and between the rhetoric of freedom and the conduct of the war in Vietnam.29It became apparent that expressions of apathy could also represent a reaction to a political system that normally avoided severe conflicts only by ignoring controversial problems that were of primary concern to less powerful groups like poor blacks or young people.30 Opinions expressed in polls regarding racial integration, handgun control, and women's rights have also tended to contrastwith political behavior. National Opinion Research Center public opinion polls show that by 1970 over 80 percent of nonsouthern whites favored integrated public schools, an increasefrom 40 percent in 1942.31Polls by the University of Michigan's Survey Research 28. Report of the NationalAdvisory Commission on Civil Disorders (New York: Bantam Books, 1968), chaps. 1, 4; James McEvoy and Abraham Miller, eds., Black Power and Student Rebellion (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1969), passim.

29. Compare Rights in Conflict: The Violent Confrontation of Demonstrators and Police in the Parks and Streets of Chicago during the Week of the Democratic National Convention of 1968 (New York: Bantam Books, 1968), pp. 13-58; Aaron Wildavsky, The Revolt Against the Masses and Other Essays (New York: Basic Books, 1971), pp. 52-65.

30. Jack Walker, "A Critique of the Elitist Theory of Democracy," American Political Science Review, 60:285-95 (June 1966); William Gamson, "Stable Unrepresentation in American Society," American Behavioral Scientist, 12:15-21 (1968).

31. Andrew M. Greeley and Paul B. Sheatsley, "Attitudes toward Racial Integration," in Public Opinion: Its Formation, Measurement, and Impact, ed. Susan Welch and John Comer (Palo Alto, CA: Mayfield, 1975), p. 51.

PUBLIC OPINION, POLLING, POLITICAL BEHAVIOR

Center-Centerfor Political Studies show that by 1976 only 10 percent of the white population admitted to favoring segregation of the races, down from 25 percent in 1964.32Gallup surveys indicate that throughout the late seventies and early eighties, nearly 60 percent of Americans favored passage of the equal rights amendment (ERA), while about the same percentage favored stricter laws regarding the sale of handguns.33 If we accept these expressions of opinion at face value, they are difficult to reconcile with so-called white flight from integrated public schools in the north, resistance among whites to the election of black mayors in Chicago and Philadelphia, failure of the required number of state legislatures to ratify the ERA, and the general lack of success that proponents of stricter handgun control have had in Congress, the state legislatures, and on statewide referenda.

Literature based on polling data While opinions expressed in public opinion polls may or may not be related to subsequent political behavior, the very availability of polling data has led to a burgeoning literature that frankly takes little direct interest in behavior.

Paul Abramson's Political Attitudes in America and Howard Schuman and Stanley Presser'sQuestions andAnswers in Attitude Surveys represent recent examples of high quality work of this genre.34 Those whose primary interest 32. My tabulations from "American National Election Study, 1964," ICPSR no. 7235 and "American National Election Series: 1972, 1974, and 1976," ICPSR no. 7607. (Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor).

33. The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion 1972-77 (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1978); also annual volumes from 1978 to 1981.

34. Abramson, Political Attitudes in America (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1983).

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lies with the behavioral consequences of political attitudes would probably find these books ratherthin. Abramson looks no further than reports of turnout and partisan vote, and Schuman and Presser deal with no political behaviors more complex than writing letters or giving money to support or oppose policies regarding gun control and abortion.

Despite these authors' cautions that expressed attitudes are not the same as political behavior, the danger exists that the further researchersand readersdelve into the archives of public opinion polls, the more prone they will become to assume that expressions of opinion are in fact valid indicators of subsequent behavior.

This sometimes occurs obviously, as when, with a flip of the page, "stated candidate preferences" as measured by "candidate thermometers" in 1979 are transformed into predictors of the vote in 1980.35Or it can occur more subtly, as when the concept of "political tolerance" is slowly transformed from a behavioral trait of the polity into an attitudinal trait of those polled.36As Robert Weissberg stated it, Theflawis in thewholeapproachto political tolerance.... Surelythis attitudinalcomponentis worthyof study,yet it is hardto argue that this should be the primaryresearch focus. The importantand prior questions concernthe existenceof tolerancein society: Can unpopulargroupsexpresstheirviews?

Candissidentsholdpublicoffice?Arepeople harassedbecause of their political views?

Oncethesequestionsareansweredone may 35. John H. Aldrich et al., "The Measurement of Public Opinion About Public Policy: A Report on Some New Question Formats," American Journal of Political Science, 26: 403-05 (Mar. 1982).

36. John L. Sullivan, James Piereson, and George E. Marcus, Political ToleranceandAmerican Democracy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), chap. 9.

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then turn to mass survey data for possible explanation.37

Lacking the treasure troves of polling data available to modern analysts, the earlier students of public opinion were less likely to be sidetracked by the study of attitudes. They kept their efforts directed toward detecting the connections between behavioral manifestations of public opinion-lobbying, demonstrations, media campaigns, votes, and the like-and the development of public policy. Their techniques of data analysis were less sophisticated and their measurements were less reliable than those of modern analysts, but their findings and conclusions were usually no less valid.

THE LIMITS OF POLLING

The major conclusion to be drawn from the foregoing discussion is that public opinion polling is but one of a number of ways to measure public opinion. Indeed, if we intend to compare public opinion with public policy outcomes, polling may not even provide a valid measure, especially in circumstances in which social norms dictate the proper opinions to express. As we have seen, it is no longer fashionable for Americans to admit to attitudes favoring racial segregation. Similarly, we may safely conjecturethat few Americans publicly favor that millions of their compatriots should suffer from poor nutrition, inadequate housing, or lack of proper medical care. In such circumstances, however, actions-white flight and tolerance of cuts in food stamps, subsidized school lunches, nutrition for pregnant women at risk, rent subsidies, 37. "Review of Political Tolerance and American Democracy, "American Political Science Review, 77: 278 (Mar. 1983).

public housing, medicare, medicaid, and the like-truly speak louder, and with greater validity, than do words.

Because they lacked the rich amounts of polling data now available, pre-war generations of public opinion analysts had to rely upon observations of actions, not statements of opinions, as their principal measures of public opinion.38 And while such measures often gave less reliable estimates of the distribution of opinions than do scientific polls, they almost always represented valid expressions of public opinion. It turns out that much of the literature of public opinion that preceded scientific polling remains relevant, and we ignore it at our peril.

The value of public opinion polling, then, must be kept in perspective. The results of polls can provide us with reliable estimates of what people say they want, but these results must always be considered in the context in which they were obtained, and whenever possible they must be validated by comparison with subsequentpolitical behaviors. Even when we are satisfied that the results of a poll reliably and validly represent the public's opinions and interests at a given point in time, we must still consider how quickly we expect the popular opinions to be translated into formal public policy in a mass representative democracy.

Finally, in assessing the value of any polling data, we should consider the extent to which the data bear directly upon the specific research questions we 38. The widespread introduction of interactive cable television and computer networks linked to private homes may eventually lead to replacing current methods of sampling and interviewing with more sophisticated interactive methods that can measure the information, initiative, and intensity of concern of citizens regarding any public issue. See Margolis, Viable Democracy, chap. 7; James C. Strouse, The Mass Media, Public Opinion, and Public Policy Analysis (Columbus, OH: Charles Merrill, 1975), chap. 9.

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wanted to answer. As we read this and other volumes in which researchers rely heavily upon data derived from polls, we must avoid becoming dazzled by the sophistication and care with which the data have been collected and analyzed.

Instead we must check that the researchers' dependent variables are indeed the ones we wish to study. In the end, polling data are simply verbal responses, surrogates for direct observations of behavior. It is the behavior that is normally of ultimate interest.

With these points in mind, let us turn for a concluding note to an admonition

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by Arthur F. Bentley, first published in 1908: We mustdeal withfelt things,not withfeelings,withintelligentlife,not ideaghosts.We must deal with felt facts and with thought facts, but not with feelingas realityor with thoughtas truth.Wemustfindthe onlyreality in the properfunctioningof the felt facts and the thoughtfactsin the systemto which they belong.39 Amen.

39. The Process of Government (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1908), p. 172.