, modern opinion polling arose from consumer capitalism, but while “Pepsi or Coke?” offered a simple choice, political polling required a certain packaging of question-and-answer into linguistic forms that increased quantifiability at the cost of accuracy. “It may be worth noting how odd it is to record people’s opinions on complex matters by asking them to choose among prefabricated questions,” Beha wrote.
If Morrison ends up flipping the polls and winning in May, no doubt some pollsters will pick the swing. But even in that case, what was the point of all those surveys, both public and internal to the parties, between elections? These are not just benign or immaterial: they affect decisions of government, as we saw in the recent federal budget when the fuel excise was lowered for a short period specifically to service the government’s survival.
With our consumer data already under constant siege, we are tempted to rebuff or misdirect political pollsters. Beha quotes anthropologist James C. Scott, in his book, who details this history of resistance to being polled in which local cultures “modify, subvert, block, or even overturn the categories imposed” on them. In other words, the more sophisticated consumer research becomes, the more people mislead those researchers for fun.
Pollsters might pull out of the “horse race” business but, as Beha asks, what will replace them? “If we want to know what people really think, we may need to start actually listening, rather than deciding in advance which opinions are possible and inviting people to choose among them.”
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