Do the Pollsters Control Your Vote?
DAY, JOHN F.
Do the Pollsters Control Your Vote? An analysis of the role now being played by the anonymous 'new political advisers' By John F. Day HERBLOCK, the Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist, recently...
...And there," he concludes tri umphantly, "lies our protection...
...Nelson Rockefeller with drew from the Presidential race last winter in large part because polls indicated he couldn't win, but who can say what continued exposure of his vigorous personality and an honest discussion of important issues would have done for him in a cam paign...
...What issues will meet with the greatest response...
...behind the assertion of the new breed of sophisticated pollsters that of course they know they're not infallible, that, as one authority puts it, "the use of polls does not by any means insure a candidate of election"—behind it all, it seems to me, there is a frightening moral vacuum...
...No candidate has been a more active poll user than Senator Ken nedy...
...Louis Harris apparently has worked for him exclusively for many months...
...A third assumption about polling is that it is a real index to the needs —economic, physical or emotional— of the segment of population studied...
...Before 1948, based on the polling techniques then in use...
...The truth is, concludes Newsweek, that politicos can no more ignore poll figures than they can ignore a candidate's war record...
...For this polltaker's part, he will not undertake work for a candidate he believes will set back human progress, and this includes present and potential candidates in both parties...
...For behind the glib talk about the "new look" in polling, the new polling "in depth...
...On the other hand, according to the Wall Street Journal of April 25th, "National Democratic Chairman Paul Butler contends polling and depth research smacks too much of Madison Avenue and the 'image makers.' Yet Mr...
...As of April, according to some reports, Kennedy alone had spent more than $250,000 on polls...
...I submit that we have in the year 1960 a unique situation in American political affairs...
...The costly private pollster then tabulates and interprets all this information for his "client-candidate" (the term is revealing) in long private sessions to show him how to win...
...Nixon's total vote was larger than Kennedy's...
...One is that polling is "just another technique," buttressed by such quasi-scientific methods as "representative samplings," "non-directive questions," "weighted inter views...
...And there...
...There is no doubt that widespread rumours about alleged drinking on the part of the Republican incumbent in 1956 played an important role in Senator Frank Church's victory...
...A key feature of this process is "subtle questioning...
...Some public opinion analysts—Elmo Roper, for example—are concerned about the extent to which a number of their contemporaries have become part of politics instead of reporters on it...
...The polls determine what the persons inter viewed think they are thinking, feel they are feeling, believe they are going to believe or going to do...
...I agree that all this may in time lead to a complete determinism in our once relatively free political choices...
...It is also true that good candidates can be helped by them...
...How do they see their new power, their new responsibility...
...Others, however, boast that they not only furnish information but devise campaign strategy, identify issues and...
...Indeed, the fallibility of polls was illustrated most recently in two surveys made for psychological purposes...
...Actually, the opposite proved true...
...Thus, we are left to the tender conscience of the polltaker in the ultimate choices that are open to us on a "free election" ballot...
...But the polls are not infallible: samplings of a particular area may not be representative, or data may be misinterpreted...
...Now the polling organizations seem to believe that the campaign is important, that you must create a candidate "image," that you must find out what interests the people who are being interviewed and exploit those inter ests...
...But," this optimist continues, "events hap pen swiftly...
...He won in Wisconsin, but not by as big a margin as was indicated by some of the poll information that had been leaked...
...The old kind of polling, designed merely to predict (hopefully) who would win if the voting took place at a given time, has been replaced by a mysterious process termed "polling in depth...
...It indicated that if the "undecideds"— some 23 per cent of the total—divided evenly, in the May 10th primary, Kennedy would win 70 per cent of the votes in that state to Senator Hubert Humphrey's 30 per cent...
...When the votes were counted, the newest poll looked cock eyed and the original December poll proved to be a much more accurate forecast...
...designed to determine which way an undecided voter's interest leans, whether he is, in fact, un decided, or simply doesn't want to say that he is for a candidate be cause it isn't popular to say so, etc...
...But no where is this "How-to-win" formula ever submitted to the moral test of "Deserve-to-win...
...These two candidates polled more than 45,000 votes, despite the fact that one was Lar Daly and the other was a complete unknown...
...Many people will give various reasons for not liking Democratic Presidential aspirant John F. Kennedy be fore owning up to the fact that they just don't like the idea of voting for a Catholic for President...
...The total figure may run into the millions, though I suspect that al most any politician will deny that it is above one million...
...Herblock, of course, was jabbing at this age of "scientific polling...
...People change, not just in the six or nine months of a campaign but in as many days and even hours...
...Writing in Life magazine in May, Leonard Hall, former Chairman of the Republican National Committee, said about polls: "I don't think there is anyone in the country today who could manage a major campaign alone...
...A poll a few days before the voting—or in any event, the information that was leaked—indicated a neck-and-neck race between Kennedy and Humphrey...
...Here is a case in Idaho that is cited by Harris: "Polls in 1956 told a young thirty-two-year-old Democrat that if he ran with high moral indignation against his Republican Senatorial opponent in the Idaho Mormon belt, he could win...
...Yet we are, without recognizing it, relinquishing to him some of the most precious privileges of our political life...
...I would add, may also lie our death...
...How do the political pros and the pollsters feel about the heavy stress now being placed on polls...
...When polling questionnaires are extensive, the cost per straw vote runs to about $10...
...It is just a method for learning about human wishes and beliefs...
...Thus, if you take a big sample of, say, 2,500 straw votes, you have spent $25,000 for one poll...
...It isn't the candidate's stature that counts, it is whether he has "personality" and whether he says often enough what "the people" want to hear...
...This shift was motivated by a Harris poll which showed that Kennedy had slipped badly since the December survey...
...There is also a fourth assumption that must not be overlooked...
...there was a theory that the campaign was really meaningless—that a man ahead at the beginning would be ahead at the end...
...People can and do change their minds...
...Psychologically, his victory was almost disappointing be cause it did not meet expectations...
...or to an issue of no real moment being made "important...
...This indicated, among other things, that Nixon would get 52 per cent of the vote against Kennedy's 48 per cent in a direct election contest in that state...
...Similarily, people can and often do withhold their true feelings, no matter how subtle the questioning...
...One of the greatest dangers of this polling age is that issues and candidates tend more and more to be selected by the anonymous "mass voter...
...Today, there is a new breed of king-makers, of boys-in-the-smoke-filled rooms, of—is it too extravagant to say?—bossism...
...Largely on the basis of this, Kennedy entered a contest which looked easy in December but was to become his roughest battle...
...Ac cording to Louis Harris, one of the leading political poll takers, by 1958 polling was used in roughly two out of every three Senatorial campaigns and in about half the gubernatorial campaigns...
...The first involved a Wisconsin poll taken for Kennedy by Louis Harris, which led the Senator to go too far in building up a big-winner picture of himself in that state's primary...
...Polls can lead to a bad man's election, a good man's not running, a not-so-good man's continuing to run...
...After all, no poll can tell a candidate what to do about a specific issue as it arises, for the very good reason that things happen too fast...
...Republicans more than Democrats, big-city pros more than rural ones...
...This brings me to what I consider the heart of the matter...
...According to a recent survey in Newsweek, political pros deny publicly that they put much stock in polls but actually watch them closely...
...Butler's National Committee has hired a University of California Professor [George Belknap] to pre pare 'political behavior reports' de scribing voter attitudes . . . based on published polls...
...In defining the nature of this vacuum, I'd like to examine a few of the assumptions about polling that can often be heard from intelligent people...
...There are Senators and Representatives in Washington today who regularly commission polls on 10 or 12 public issues, and then obligingly-become excited about the points that are thus found to be exciting their constituents...
...Now, what about the pollsters...
...The second assumption, an extension of the first, is that polling is neither good nor bad...
...A week before the voting, he was stating publicly that he would do well if he won 40 per cent of the vote in West Virginia...
...Harry Truman's victory in the face of all the predictions to the contrary destroyed this theory...
...It strikes me there is an anonymity about these men not found with an Ed Crump, a Carmine De Sapio, a Frank Hague or a James Curley...
...Now, I can imagine some optimist rising to qualify the situation...
...These are taken privately, paid for privately and held in great secrecy until the candidate or his supporters decide upon the right moment to re lease their results...
...The polling organization apparently for got to take into account anti-Kennedy votes which would go to two other candidates running in the Democratic primary...
...and "statistical interpretation," all of which add up to a more efficient gathering of information for political use...
...In short, the man behind the man who is to guide our political destinies is a free-wheeling agent, responsible only to himself and his "client-candidate...
...Further, it is likely that while, as things stand now, the poll is largely an instrument which tells the candidate how to win office, it will become a tool for telling him how to stay in office even when this is in the worst interests of the electorate...
...And this chilling thought brings me to a few general concerns...
...Even its practitioners admit that this "almost defies description," but essentially it is an attempt to ascertain motivations: What type of candidate personality will go best JOHN F. DAY, in his capacity as Vice President—CBS News, has devoted many years to covering and studying political developments in the U.S...
...After all, these people say, the old-time political captain or ward-heeler tried his darndest to get just such "dope" by sending out his lieutenants to do leg-work, to listen and talk in labor halls, clubrooms, saloons and street corners...
...In effect, then, an election campaign becomes a personality contest conducted by anonymous backers for big fees...
...The public knows of the Gallup Poll and the Roper Poll, but probably few people are aware that there are some 30-40 firms in the country doing opinion surveys for market research and that at least 12-15 of these are also engaged in political polling for candidates or parties...
...Oddly enough, there is a contra diction in the conclusions drawn from these matters...
...I agree that the polls which are now being increasingly accepted as a guide to the issues and needs of the electorate sometimes reflect only fancied issues and irrelevant needs...
...Louis Harris writes in Politics USA : "Polls have been criticized for being instruments that can be employed by 'bad' candidates...
...In Politics USA, Harris reports with a bland amorality some of the triumphs of the polls...
...It might also be noted, in passing, that if the poll strategy is as effective a campaign tool as claimed, it gives the rich candidate one more advantage over his less-endowed opponents...
...In mid-April Kennedy shifted his strategy in West Virginia: Instead of ignoring the religious question he began to lash out at bigotry and deliberately make religion an issue of the greatest importance...
...IT is A melancholy experience to read the material now available on the large, squashy subject of the use of polls in political campaigns...
...Newsweek says the pros want polls on issues...
...But the accuracy of the published results of this poll is open to question, for it also indicated that Kennedy would probably get a larger vote in Indiana's Democratic primary than Nixon would get in the Republican primary because a larger Democratic turnout was expected...
...It is that the poll takers, the new political advisers, can help to start the ball rolling for an artificial folk-hero...
...They can also be used to determine where campaign funds can best be spent—e.g., newspapers, television, etc.—where speeches should be made, what persons can advance or hinder a campaign by openly sup porting a candidate, and for psycho logical political warfare...
...Finally, does democracy demand the open acceptance of responsibility for conduct and policy, or is it to be the province of an amorphous mass of behind-the-scenes operatives who call the signals which make us push down that particular lever on election day...
...he was taking a poll, and over the phone at that...
...in which candidates don't make decisions after examing their conscience but instead take a poll to find out what the "mass" thinks it is thinking...
...At best, they indicate how people feel about a subject or a candidate at the time of the polling...
...with various classes and ethnic groups...
...Therefore, it can be extended to the people within a locality, a state or the nation...
...It has no moral content in itself, although admittedly it may somethimes be used for improper ends...
...I hear this optimist saying, "O.K...
...It showed a telephone booth occupied by a man puffing on a cigarette...
...I agree that there is a danger to our democracy in turning over the business of governing to the polls...
...The second involved a poll taken for backers of Vice President Richard Nixon by the Claude Robinson Opinion and Research Corporation of Princeton, New Jersey, prior to the Indiana primary...
...You need polls and surveys...
...Is it one in which office holders must be wholly sensitive to the wishes of the electorate, or is it one which demands that leaders have ideas, convictions and policies which they develop and test in open discussion with all their constituents...
...Frequently, only certain information is leaked to build an "underdog" or "big-winner" image, whichever the candidate may desire in a particular situation...
...Thus we come to the crucial question: What is the real form or our democracy...
...that lowest common denominator of intelligence and information...
...An analysis of the role now being played by the anonymous 'new political advisers' By John F. Day HERBLOCK, the Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist, recently drew a cartoon entitled "Smoke-filled Room—1960...
...This is undoubtedly true...
...Nobody knows how much is being spent in this political year for polls...
...in effect, formulate policy...
...For if the poll-selected candidate is a stupid man, a limited man, or conceivably a bad man, no amount of "free choice" on issues will insure us the good motive, the wise choice, the generous action...
...The new machine candidate, according to this view, is produced by the electric impulses of a high-speed calculator...
...Business Week and Life say that the pros want to find the personality "image" that seems to win the vote...
...Ironically, a poll taken in West Virginia last December could have been Kennedy's undoing...
...You need advertising experts, research men, to name but a few...
Vol. 43 • August 1960 • No. 33
