Monday, January 17, 2011

The public or the polls

Several Gallup polls have asked "If the leaders of our nation followed the views of the public more closely, do you think the nation would be better off, or worse off than it is today?"

             Better   Worse    Same    DK
Oct  1975    66%      15%       9%    9%
Apr  1996    80%      11%            10%
Jan  1999    81%      10%            10%
Sept 2001    75%      18%       4%    3%
Sept 2005    73%      22%       3%    2%

I guess that's to be expected, although the apparent increase in the percent saying "worse" since the 1990s is interesting.  Several of the polls have also asked a slightly different question (to different people--each went to a randomly selected half of the sample):  "If the leaders of our nation followed the views of public opinion polls more closely, do you think the nation would be better off, or worse off than it is today?"

           Better   Worse    Same     DK
Apr 1996    74%      14%             13%
Sept 2001   63%      27%       6%     4%
Sept 2005   61%      33%       3%     3%


Support for following the public and following the polls is closer than I expected--my impression was that "the polls" usually has a negative connotation (following the polls is something that other politicians do).   As with following public opinion, the number thinking it would make the nation worse off seems to increase after 1996. 

2 comments:

  1. Interesting... do you think this fits a general trend of distrusting most institutions?

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  2. Not really, because it's "the public," not the leaders of some institution. If anything, I'd think that less faith in institutions would tend to go with more faith in the public. Maybe the more polarized political and media has made more people aware that a lot of "the public" disagrees with them.

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