Polls and Politics: The Dilemmas of Democracy (review)

In this slender anthology, Michael A. Genovese and Matthew J. Streb charge contributors with addressing a complex, if long-considered question: Do polls contribute to the vitality of our democracy or are they undermining the health of our political system? While conceding the somewhat inevitable premise inherent to their query—polls are, after all, here to stay—the editors conclude that, given a careful calibration between the public interest and the reportage of findings by responsible, informed media, polls possess the potential to serve, not harm, democratic governments.

Polls and Politics will serve as a useful primer to undergraduate and graduate students who may be less familiar with the long-standing debates endemic to the field of public opinion. The initiated will find value in this volume as well, particularly in those chapters that incorporate primary source data, often unearthed from presidential archives, into their analyses. These efforts advance our understanding of the nexus between the public opinion data presidential pollsters collect and the rhetorical stratagems presidents pursue.

For example, through their investigation of Nixon pollster Robert Teeter's private memorandum, Lawrence R. Jacobs and Melinda S. Jackson offer readers a behind-the-scenes look at the 1972 Nixon campaign's focus on reshaping the incumbent president's public image. "[The president] does not have any great personal appeal and will not be re-elected on the basis of personality or personal appeals," wrote Teeter. "We would have trouble trying to fight the campaign on [a] series of specific issues" (45–46).

Likewise, Diane J. Heith, drawing from documents obtained through various presidential libraries, explores the degree to which some presidents remain fixated on polls and their electoral ramifications. Heith's historiography pays readers great dividends. In a memorandum from Nixon to John Ehrlichman, the poll-conscious president notes, "people who live in homes that they own tend to take a much more conservative view on public issues than people who rent. I think this has significant consequences as far as our own programs are concerned. . . . I would like you to follow through . . . to reach our homeowner constituency" (58).

Heith argues that this fragmentary approach to coalition building, centered less on political ideology and more on peripheral attributes and presidential personality, has a deleterious effect on democracy. She concludes that the triangulation strategy employed by President Clinton and his chief strategist, Dick Morris, "challenges governing, as presidents do not truly mobilize citizens in support of anything beyond themselves" (72).

Those interested in the theoretical tensions surrounding the collection and transmission of public opinion data will find interest in the chapters by Michael W. Traugott and James S. Fishkin. Traugott explores whether polls give the public a voice in a democracy. In so doing, he offers readers a useful history of modern polling that includes a discussion about the evolution of techniques and methodologies within the industry. He then focuses on the distribution of polling by media, whom he believes play the most significant role in determining whether polls reflect or distort public opinion.

Many of the concerns Traugott raises are addressed in James S. Fishkin's interesting chapter "Deliberative Polling." As the director of the Center for Deliberative Democracy at Stanford University, Fishkin is the ideal person to introduce readers to the developments in—and implications of—this method of survey research, one ripe for consideration by rhetoric scholars. The author explains that a "Deliberative Poll is a survey of a random and representative sample of respondents, both before and after they have had a chance to deliberate" (148). By allowing participants to inform their opinions through interaction, Fishkin argues Deliberative Polls better fulfill the intent of democratic theory, as well as the Madisonian ideal wherein parity is not sacrificed on the altar of popularity.

Readers concerned with the manipulation of public opinion will want to focus on Matthew J. Streb and Susan H. Pinkus's chapter on "push polling" and Gerald...