From an academic friend who knows a very great deal indeed about polls, voting, and public opinion (as in: he’s written books about them).
There are two ways to find out what people think, believe, want, and like: (1) Ask them, or (2) Observe their behavior.
If one had to choose the better way to understand some phenomenon in the social sciences, one would study behavior, not attitudes. Behavior talks: poll responses walk. And hard data on behavior are everywhere.
Historically, studies of public opinion were only about behavior. Even the study of “attitude” only emerged in the 1930s. Modern-type surveys did not even exist much before that. Public thinking was inferred from voting, newspaper stories, personal traits like religion or occupation and, of course, actual behavior. Chasing the tax collector out of town was a sure sign of unhappiness over taxes.
The academic Left has become infatuated with surveys since they control the questions and the interpretations, and can release the data as it suits them. Polls are putty in the hands of those wishing to make points not otherwise discernible. That the enterprise is draped in “science” and technical jargon settles the debate. So ignore actual tax avoidance and focus instead on what people say about paying taxes (they love the tax collector and crave more social welfare … yet all the while are cheating). Racial integration, for example, now becomes opinions about racial integration; and with the “right” data treatments, reality is no match for the skilled investigator. An ample literature exists demonstrating a weak link between attitudes and behavior. If you believe polls, nobody in America watches porn.
These observations are hardly novel. I’ve written about it all in my book Polling, Policy and Public Opinion. Interestingly, conservatives are regularly hoodwinked by poll results, though they insist the questions were loaded. They have it wrong. Verbal reality and behavioral reality are fundamentally different — witness liberal whites fleeing blacks when they move nearby.
Talk is cheap. I’ve tried to tell conservatives about this structural dishonesty of polling but they just don’t get it. They’re addicted to sound bites about liberal bias and lack any interest in technical details.
[Me] I don’t know that conservatives are any more averse to data, evidence, numbers, and science, than are liberals. I guess religionism throws a bigger wrench in the works among cons than among libs, giving a stronger bias towards magical thinking and reality-denial; but most people, of all political and confessional persuasions, seem to be able to ignore or reject even the “hardest” data if it makes them uncomfortable. I’d put myself at about the 99th percentile in data-orientedness, yet I catch myself reaching for the ignore/reject button sometimes. We are poor muddled creatures.
How political polling really works.
So ignore actual tax avoidance and focus instead on what people say about paying taxes (they love the tax collector and crave more social welfare … yet all the while are cheating
Maybe I just think that other people should pay more tax, but I cheat because I should pay less 🙂
witness liberal whites fleeing blacks when they move nearby
Wouldn’t that suggest that suburbs will become more liberal over time?
I don’t dismiss data that makes me uncomfortable outright, I just fire up the GSS and Google and brainstorm factors that weren’t controlled for.
@Derek Scruggs
Not if conservatives do the same thing, which I believe is the case.
I remember the first political science class I took that explained polling. All I could think was how stupid it was to ask ignorant people what they think. I don’t mean stupid people. I mean ignorant. Most people don’t have enough info on most topics to have a reasoned opinion. Any representative sample has to include clueless people. If people were honest the “don’t know” and “no opinion” answers would be a majority in most polls.
Wouldn’t that suggest that suburbs will become more liberal over time?
Yup, and the polling data I’ve seen indicates that that is exactly what has happened. The suburban vote was more solidly Republican a generation ago than it is today.
It’s not just political polls. How many studies in the social sciences or psychology talk about self identified properties rather than behavior? I’m no behavioralist, but that approach always struck me as odd – conflating a person’s perception of some property with the property itself. Fortunately many are careful but I’ve read way, way too many papers that have me rolling my eyes.
I mean ignorant.
“What is a browser? was the question we asked over 50 passersby of different ages and backgrounds in the Times Square in New York.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4MwTvtyrUQ
@F. Le Mur
Yes, yes, yes, and all those are voters 😀
Might it be that democracy is the root of most evil?
Notwithstanding Churchill’s quote.
What remains to be tried?
@Kevembuangga
Neo-Cameralism?
@JGP
Hmmm… not likely, I had a quick look, yet another “prophetic” nutcase.
In my opinion the right solution will NOT be designed, it will just happen out of a lot of trials and errors, with the “usual costs”…