Polls and Pollsters

PUBLIC OPINION polls have become an accepted part of everyday life in the 21st century. Political pollsters announce what the public thinks about a candidate or issue after surveying a few hundred randomly selected [Page 820]individuals, sometimes using controls to develop subgroups based on characteristics such as sex, race, age, education, and level of partisanship. Presidents of both parties monitor their approval ratings religiously, despite the fact that the public is notoriously fickle. For instance, George H.W. Bush's approval ratings, which soared to 83 percent during and immediately after the Gulf War, were so high that few Democrats were willing to challenge him in the 1992 election. However, Democrat Bill Clinton defeated him 370 to 168 in the electoral vote and 42.93 percent to 37.38 percent in the popular vote.

Since all presidential candidates except Harry Truman have used private pollsters to conduct polls since the early 1930s, pollsters have become adept at gathering polling information that furthers the interests of candidates and political parties. Liberals claim that right-wing pollsters slant polls to produce data that are distributed to conservative media, making it seem as if public opinion supports extremist views on certain issues such as abortion, religion in public schools, affirmative action, and gay marriage.

Republican pollsters have been particularly gifted at identifying and exploiting weaknesses in the background, character, and policies of Democratic candidates. For example, Republican pollsters/strategists developed the notorious Willie Horton ad used against Michael Dukakis in the 1988 election. The ad, based on polling results, purported to inform voters that Dukakis was weak on crime, unlike Bush who was depicted as strong on law and order. The Bush team also made liberal an ugly word by presenting Dukakis as a “card-carrying member of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU),” falsely identifying Dukakis as an extreme left-winger who was out of touch with mainstream America. When Republicans tried similar tactics against Bill Clinton in the following election, Clinton's savvy team refused to buckle as Dukakis had done. When Clinton was accused of adultery, he and Hillary appeared on television to face the issue head-on.

Pollsters have become amazingly accurate at identifying groups that hold the key to swing votes in a particular election. Such was the case in the 1994 election when “angry white men,” who were apparently furious at advantages given to women and minorities, wrested control of Congress from the Democratic Party. The 1994 election led to the Republican Party's Contract with America, which established a far-right agenda for the next two years. Other pollsters have leveled heavy criticism at Republican pollster Frank Luitz, who allegedly conducted polls suggesting that 70 percent of Americans supported the conservative position spelled out in the Contract with America. In 1995, the Miami Herald broke the story that Luitz had only dealt with focus groups, which had only been asked to respond to slick Republican slogans.

Scandal over Republican polling methods also surfaced in February 1996 when several campaign advisers told talk-show host Larry King that they had used “push polls” to discredit Democrats during the Iowa caucuses. Beginning with Nixon's campaigns in the 1940s, push polls were conducted by feeding potential voters negative information under cover of conducting public opinion polls. Nixon's push polls involved telling potential voters that his Democratic opponents were communists.

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