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).<\/p>\n
There are two ways to find out what people think, believe, want, and like:\u00a0 (1) Ask them, or (2) Observe their behavior.<\/p>\n
If one had to choose the better way to understand some phenomenon in the social sciences, one would study behavior, not attitudes. Behavior talks:\u00a0poll responses walk. And hard data on behavior are everywhere.<\/p>\n
Historically, studies of public opinion were only<\/em> about behavior. Even the study of “attitude” only emerged in the 1930s. \u00a0Modern-type\u00a0surveys did not even exist much before that. Public thinking was inferred from voting, newspaper stories, personal traits like religion or occupation and, of course,\u00a0actual behavior. Chasing the tax collector out of town was a sure sign of unhappiness over taxes.<\/p>\n
The academic Left has become infatuated with surveys since they control the questions and the interpretations, and can release the data as it suits\u00a0them. Polls are putty in the hands of those wishing to make points not otherwise discernible. That the enterprise is draped in “science” and\u00a0technical jargon settles the debate. So ignore actual tax avoidance and focus instead on what people say about paying taxes (they love the tax\u00a0collector and crave more social welfare\u00a0\u2026 yet all the while are cheating). Racial integration, for example, now becomes opinions <\/em>about racial integration; and with the “right” data treatments, reality is no match for the skilled investigator. An ample literature exists\u00a0demonstrating a weak link between attitudes and behavior. If you believe polls, nobody in America watches porn.<\/p>\n
These observations are hardly novel. I’ve written about it all in my book\u00a0Polling,\u00a0Policy and Public Opinion<\/em><\/a>. Interestingly, conservatives are regularly hoodwinked by poll results, though they insist the questions were\u00a0loaded. They have it wrong. Verbal reality and behavioral reality are fundamentally different<\/em> \u2014 witness liberal whites fleeing\u00a0blacks when they move nearby.<\/p>\n
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\u00a0sound bites about liberal bias and lack any interest in technical details.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
[Me]\u00a0 I don’t know that conservatives are any more averse to data, evidence, numbers, and science, than are liberals. I guess religionism\u00a0throws\u00a0a 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\u00a0“hardest” data if it makes them uncomfortable. I’d put myself at about the 99th percentile in data-orientedness, yet I catch myself\u00a0reaching for the ignore\/reject button sometimes. We are poor muddled creatures.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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:\u00a0 (1) Ask … Continue reading