7.5: The Effects of Public Opinion

Public opinion polling is prevalent even outside election season. Are politicians and leaders listening to these polls, or is there some other reason for them? Some believe the increased collection of public opinion is due to the growing support of delegate representation. The theory of delegate representation assumes the politician is in office to be the voice of the people.^[1] For example, if voters want the legislator to vote for legalizing marijuana, the legislator should vote to legalize marijuana. Legislators or candidates who believe in delegate representation may poll the public before an important vote comes up for debate in order to learn what the public desires them to do.

Others believe polling has increased because politicians, like the president, operate in permanent campaign mode. To continue contributing money, supporters must remain happy and convinced the politician is listening to them. Even if the elected official does not act in a manner consistent with the polls, he or she can mollify everyone by explaining the reasons behind the vote.^[2]

Regardless of why the polls are taken, studies have not clearly shown whether the branches of government consistently act on them. Some branches appear to pay closer attention to public opinion than other branches, but events, time periods, and politics may change the way an individual or a branch of government ultimately reacts.

Figure 1. In 2016, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump became the center of the media’s horserace coverage. As the field winnowed from over twenty candidates down to three, the media incessantly compared everyone else in the field to Trump. (credit: Max Goldberg)

Public Opinions and Elections

Elections are the events on which opinion polls have the greatest measured effect. Public opinion polls do more than show how we feel on issues or project who might win an election. The media use public opinion polls to decide which candidates are ahead of the others and therefore of interest to voters and worthy of an interview. From the moment President Obama was inaugurated for his second term, speculation began about who would run in the 2016 presidential election. Within a year, potential candidates were being ranked and compared by a number of newspapers.^[3] The speculation included favorability polls on Hillary Clinton, which measured how positively voters felt about her as a candidate. The media deemed these polls important because they showed Clinton as the frontrunner for the Democrats in the next election.^[4]

During presidential primary season, we see examples of the bandwagon effect, in which the media pays more attention to candidates who poll well during the fall and the first few primaries. Bill Clinton was nicknamed the “Comeback Kid” in 1992, after he placed second in the New Hampshire primary despite accusations of adultery with Gennifer Flowers. The media’s attention on Clinton gave him the momentum to make it through the rest of the primary season, ultimately winning the Democratic nomination and the presidency.

Polling is also at the heart of horserace coverage, in which, just like an announcer at the racetrack, the media calls out every candidate’s move throughout the presidential campaign. This coverage can be neutral, positive, or negative, depending upon what polls or facts are covered. During the 2012 presidential election, the Pew Research Center found that both Mitt Romney and President Obama received more negative than positive horserace coverage, with Romney’s growing more negative as he fell in the polls.^[5] Horserace coverage is often criticized for its lack of depth; the stories skip over the candidates’ issue positions, voting histories, and other facts that would help voters make an informed decision. Yet, the coverage is popular because the public is always interested in who will win, and it often makes up a third or more of news stories about the election.^[6]

Should Exit Polls Be Banned?

Exit polls, taken the day of the election, are the last election polls conducted by the media. Announced results of these surveys can deter voters from going to the polls if they believe the election has already been decided.

Exit polling seems simple. An interviewer stands at a polling place on Election Day and asks people how they voted. But the reality is different. Pollsters must select sites and voters carefully to ensure a representative and random poll. Some people refuse to talk and others may lie. The demographics of the polled population may lean more towards one party than another. Absentee and early voters cannot be polled. Despite these setbacks, exit polls are extremely interesting and controversial, because they provide early information about which candidate is ahead.

In 1985, a so-called gentleman’s agreement between the major networks and Congress kept exit poll results from being announced before a state’s polls closed.^[7] This tradition has largely been upheld, with most media outlets waiting until 7 p.m. or later to disclose a state’s returns. Internet and cable media, however, have not always kept to the agreement. Sources have been accused of reporting early, and sometimes incorrect, exit poll results.

On one hand, delaying results may be the right decision. Studies suggest that exit polls can affect voter turnout. Reports of close races may bring additional voters to the polls, whereas apparent landslides may prompt people to stay home. Other studies note that almost anything, including bad weather and lines at polling places, dissuades voters. Ultimately, it appears exit poll reporting affects turnout by up to 5 percent.^[8]

On the other hand, limiting exit poll results means major media outlets lose out on the chance to share their carefully collected data, leaving small media outlets able to provide less accurate, more impressionistic results. Few states are affected, since the media invest only in those where the election is close. Finally, an increasing number of voters are now voting up to two weeks early, and these numbers are updated daily without controversy.

What do you think? Should exit polls be banned? Why or why not?

Public opinion polls also affect how much money candidates receive in campaign donations. Donors assume public opinion polls are accurate enough to determine who the top two to three primary candidates will be, and they give money to those who do well. Candidates who poll at the bottom will have a hard time collecting donations, increasing the odds that they will continue to do poorly. This was apparent in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election. Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, and Martin O’Malley each campaigned in the hope of becoming the Democratic presidential nominee. In June 2015, 75 percent of Democrats likely to vote in their state primaries said they would vote for Clinton, while 15 percent of those polled said they would vote for Sanders. Only 2 percent said they would vote for O’Malley.^[9] During this same period, Clinton raised $47 million in campaign donations, Sanders raised $15 million, and O’Malley raised $2 million.^[10] By September 2015, 23 percent of likely Democratic voters said they would vote for Sanders,^[11] and his summer fundraising total increased accordingly.^[12]

Public Opinion and Congress

The relationship between public opinion polls and government action is murkier than that between polls and elections. Like the news media and campaign staffers, members of the three branches of government are aware of public opinion. But do politicians use public opinion polls to guide their decisions and actions?

The short answer is “sometimes.” The public is not perfectly informed about politics, so politicians realize public opinion may not always be the right choice. Yet many political studies, from the American Voter in the 1920s to the American Voter Revisited in the 2000s, have found that voters behave rationally despite having limited information. Individual citizens do not take the time to become fully informed about all aspects of politics, yet their collective behavior and the opinions they hold as a group make sense. They appear to be informed just enough, using preferences like their political ideology and party membership, to make decisions and hold politicians accountable during an election year.

Overall, the collective public opinion of a country changes over time, even if party membership or ideology does not change dramatically. As James Stimson’s prominent study found, the public’s mood, or collective opinion, can become more or less liberal from decade to decade. While the initial study on public mood revealed that the economy has a profound effect on American opinion,^[15] further studies have gone beyond to determine whether public opinion, and its relative liberalness, in turn affect politicians and institutions. This idea does not argue that opinion never affects policy directly, rather that collective opinion also affects the politician’s decisions on policy.^[16]

House of Representatives members, with a two-year term, have a more difficult time recovering from decisions that anger local voters. And because most representatives continually fundraise, unpopular decisions can hurt their campaign donations. For these reasons, it seems representatives should be susceptible to polling pressure. Yet one study, by James Stimson, found that the public mood does not directly affect elections, and shifts in public opinion do not predict whether a House member will win or lose. These elections are affected by the president on the ticket, presidential popularity (or lack thereof) during a midterm election, and the perks of incumbency, such as name recognition and media coverage. In fact, a later study confirmed that the incumbency effect is highly predictive of a win, and public opinion is not.^[17] In spite of this, policy shifts in Congress, often match the policy preferences of the public. When the shifts happen within the House, they are measured by the way members vote. The study’s authors hypothesize that House members alter their votes to match the public mood, perhaps in an effort to strengthen their electoral chances.^[18]

The Senate is quite different from the House. Senators do not enjoy the same benefits of incumbency, and they win reelection at lower rates than House members. Yet, they do have one advantage over their colleagues in the House: Senators hold six-year terms, which gives them time to engage in fence-mending to repair the damage from unpopular decisions. In the Senate, Stimson’s study confirmed that opinion affects a senator’s chances at reelection, even though it did not affect House members. Specifically, the study shows that when public opinion shifts, fewer senators win reelection. Thus, when the public as a whole becomes more or less liberal, new senators are elected. Rather than the senators shifting their policy preferences and voting differently, it is the new senators who change the policy direction of the Senate.^[19]

Beyond voter polls, congressional representatives are also very interested in polls that reveal the wishes of interest groups and businesses. If AARP, one of the largest and most active groups of voters in the United States, is unhappy with a bill, members of the relevant congressional committees will take that response into consideration. If the pharmaceutical or oil industry is unhappy with a new patent or tax policy, its members’ opinions will have some effect on representatives’ decisions, since these industries contribute heavily to election campaigns.

Public Opinion and the Supreme Court

Studies that look at the connection between the Supreme Court and public opinion are contradictory. Early on, it was believed that justices were like other citizens: individuals with attitudes and beliefs who would be affected by political shifts.^[20] Later studies argued that Supreme Court justices rule in ways that maintain support for the institution. Instead of looking at the short term and making decisions day to day, justices are strategic in their planning and make decisions for the long term.^[21]

Further research has revealed a more complex relationship between public opinion and judicial decisions, largely due to the difficulty of measuring where the effect can be seen. When examining the number of reversals taken by the Supreme Court, one study found that public opinion slightly affects cases accepted by the justices.^[22] In a study looking at how often the justices voted liberally on a decision, a stronger effect of public opinion was revealed.^[23]

Whether the case or court is currently in the news may also matter. If the majority of Americans agree on a policy or issue before the court, the court’s decision is likely to agree with public opinion.^[24] A second study determined that public opinion is more likely to affect ignored cases than heavily reported ones.^[25] In these situations, the court was also more likely to rule with the majority opinion than against it. For example, in Town of Greece v. Galloway (2014), a majority of the justices decided that ceremonial prayer before a town meeting was not a violation of the Establishment Clause.^[26] The fact that 78 percent of U.S. adults recently said religion is fairly to very important to their lives^[27] and 61 percent supported prayer in school^[28] may explain why public support for the Supreme Court did not fall after this decision.^[29]

Overall, however, it is clear that public opinion has a less powerful effect on the courts than on the other branches and on politicians.^[30] Perhaps this is due to the lack of elections or justices’ lifetime tenure, or perhaps no one has determined the best way to measure the effects of public opinion on the Court.

What if.

Wondering how your favorite candidate is doing in the polls? The site RealClearPolitics tracks a number of major polling sources on the major elections, including the presidential and Senate elections.

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2. Norman Ornstein, and Thomas Mann, eds. 2000. The Permanent Campaign and Its Future. Washington: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research and the Brookings Institution. ↵
3. Paul Hitlin. 2013. "The 2016 Presidential Media Primary Is Off to a Fast Start." Pew Research Center. October 3, 2013. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/10/03/the-2016-presidential-media-primary-is-off-to-a-fast-start/ (February 18, 2016). ↵
4. Pew Research Center, 2015. "Hillary Clinton’s Favorability Ratings over Her Career." Pew Research Center. June 6, 2015. http://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/themes/pewresearch/static/hillary-clintons-favorability-ratings-over-her-career/ (February 18, 2016). ↵
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6. Pew Research Center. 2012. "Fewer Horserace Stories-and Fewer Positive Obama Stories-Than in 2008." Pew Research Center. November 2, 2012. http://www.journalism.org/2012/11/01/press-release-6/ (February 18, 2016). ↵
7. Zack Nauth, "Networks Won’t Use Exit Polls in State Forecasts," Los Angeles Times, 18 January 1985. ↵
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9. Patrick O’Connor. 2015. "WSJ/NBC Poll Finds Hillary Clinton in a Strong Position." Wall Street Journal. June 23, 2015. http://www.wsj.com/articles/new-poll-finds-hillary-clinton-tops-gop-presidential-rivals-1435012049. ↵
10. Federal Elections Commission. 2015. "Presidential Receipts." http://www.fec.gov/press/summaries/2016/tables/presidential/presreceipts_2015_q2.pdf (February 18, 2016). ↵
11. Susan Page and Paulina Firozi, "Poll: Hillary Clinton Still Leads Sanders and Biden But By Less," USA Today, 1 October 2015. ↵
12. Dan Merica, and Jeff Zeleny. 2015. "Bernie Sanders Nearly Outraises Clinton, Each Post More Than $20 Million." CNN. October 1, 2015. http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/30/politics/bernie-sanders-hillary-clinton-fundraising/index.html?eref=rss_politics (February 18, 2016). ↵
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17. Stimson et al, "Dynamic Representation." ↵
18. Suzanna De Boef, and James A. Stimson. 1995. "The Dynamic Structure of Congressional Elections." Journal of Politics 57 (3): 630–648. ↵
19. Stimson et al, "Dynamic Representation." ↵
20. Stimson et al, "Dynamic Representation." ↵
21. Benjamin Cardozo. 1921. The Nature of the Judicial Process. New Haven: Yale University Press. ↵
22. Jack Knight, and Lee Epstein. 1998. The Choices Justices Make. Washington DC: CQ Press. ↵
23. Kevin T. Mcguire, Georg Vanberg, Charles E Smith, and Gregory A. Caldeira. 2009. "Measuring Policy Content on the U.S. Supreme Court." Journal of Politics 71 (4): 1305–1321. ↵
24. Kevin T. McGuire, and James A. Stimson. 2004. "The Least Dangerous Branch Revisited: New Evidence on Supreme Court Responsiveness to Public Preferences." Journal of Politics 66 (4): 1018–1035. ↵
25. Thomas Marshall. 1989. Public Opinion and the Supreme Court. Boston: Unwin Hyman. ↵
26. Christopher J. Casillas, Peter K. Enns, and Patrick C. Wohlfarth. 2011. "How Public Opinion Constrains the U.S. Supreme Court." American Journal of Political Science 55 (1): 74–88. ↵
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30. Gallup. 2015. "Supreme Court." Gallup. http://www.gallup.com/poll/4732/supreme-court.aspx (February 18, 2016). ↵
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