Polls, Politicians, and the Gulf War

POLITICIANS who read the polls (and which ones do not?) to help them decide which policies to support, beware. While well-conducted polls are the only reliable way to measure current public opinion, they are unreliable predictors of future opinion for two reasons. First, public opinion sometimes changes dramatically; today’s polls measure only what people are thinking now. Second, the public is not good at predicting how it will react to future or hypothetical events.

This lesson has been strongly reinforced by the Gulf War. No doubt many members of Congress who voted, on January 12, against authorization of the war did so for honorable reasons. But some surely did so with one eye on the polls.

HT

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Humphrey Taylor

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POLITICIANS who read the polls (and which ones do not?) to help them decide which policies to support, beware. While well-conducted polls are the only reliable way to measure current public opinion, they are unreliable predictors of future opinion for two reasons. First, public opinion sometimes changes dramatically; today’s polls measure only what people are thinking now. Second, the public is not good at predicting how it will react to future or hypothetical events.

This lesson has been strongly reinforced by the Gulf War. No doubt many members of Congress who voted, on January 12, against authorization of the war did so for honorable reasons. But some surely did so with one eye on the polls.