Happy Saturday! It’s good to be back in your inbox again.
Let’s keep this newsletter short and focused on a very important topic: using polls to make government outputs more representative. Consider this email from the White House Press Office this week. In it, the press office highlights a poll from the Data for Progress that shows the administration’s long-stalled infrastructure bill has bipartisan support from the American people:
Here are two questions worth discussing:
Is it good for the White House to use polls to push — or even craft — its agenda? I argue that polls improve political representation in institutions that are otherwise slanted towards white, rural voters. Do you agree?
Is bipartisanship among the people, which the White House has enjoyed for most of its policy pushes, more normatively/democratically important than bipartisanship among Senators and House representatives? In other words, should the White House pursue something because a majority of people support it, even if a majority of legislators don’t? What is the tradeoff between democratic and republican representation?
We probably can’t answer these questions fully in ~300-word comments, but we can at least formulate how we might go about doing so.
1. In re whether push polls improve the people's representation in the Senate: It's been my observation that the people's wishes only count in the Senate when they happen to coincide with the wishes of corporations and SuperPACs who are funding the Senators. This observation is not mine alone: https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-a-super-pac-3367928 "In writing his dissenting opinion (in Citizens United) for the Supreme Court, Justice John Paul Stevens opined of the majority: "At bottom, the Court's opinion is thus a rejection of the common sense of the American people, who have recognized a need to prevent corporations from undermining self-government since the founding, and who have fought against the distinctive corrupting potential of corporate electioneering since the days of Theodore Roosevelt." This is why Democratic Senators sponsored the We The People Act, which requires full disclosure of dark money donations.
2. In re whether the majority of the people being in support of a policy makes it a good policy: Oh please.
The White House is looking at the polls and trying to represent the people. The White House likely believes representing the country as a whole in terms of policy is better rather representing people who have narrower interests. In a democratic society, we should care about the country's views and not just one group's views. One group's view should not dictate the agenda and a majority of legislators should respond to the will of the majority of people.
Those are two most excellent and discerning questions. In the polling we do for political leaders, I am often disturbed at how they seem to place far more weight on TV appearances by their elite opponents and outbursts on partisan Twitter than on the consensus wants and needs of actual citizens as represented in survey data. The survey data they really seem to pay attention to - are support for their existing measures which merely attempt triangulate the needs of elites, or horserace numbers which show them winning.
Hey Angus — Your insight here is most appreciated! It also confirms my priors based on what I’ve heard otherwise. Of course, I might also use this as an example for how getting people to focus on issue polls could improve congruency between voters and people.
1) Good political representation goes beyond what the public knows now to what they would prefer if they knew what decision-makers should know, what media and opponents would bring out, and what the consequences are likely to be. Few current polling firms can deliver this. 2) Instead, folks over time come to prefer and somewhat trust the semi-organized guides of political parties when faced with conflicting choices. Polls that indicate the partisanship of choices tend not to show bipartisan results.
1. In re whether push polls improve the people's representation in the Senate: It's been my observation that the people's wishes only count in the Senate when they happen to coincide with the wishes of corporations and SuperPACs who are funding the Senators. This observation is not mine alone: https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-a-super-pac-3367928 "In writing his dissenting opinion (in Citizens United) for the Supreme Court, Justice John Paul Stevens opined of the majority: "At bottom, the Court's opinion is thus a rejection of the common sense of the American people, who have recognized a need to prevent corporations from undermining self-government since the founding, and who have fought against the distinctive corrupting potential of corporate electioneering since the days of Theodore Roosevelt." This is why Democratic Senators sponsored the We The People Act, which requires full disclosure of dark money donations.
2. In re whether the majority of the people being in support of a policy makes it a good policy: Oh please.
Hi Elliott,
The White House is looking at the polls and trying to represent the people. The White House likely believes representing the country as a whole in terms of policy is better rather representing people who have narrower interests. In a democratic society, we should care about the country's views and not just one group's views. One group's view should not dictate the agenda and a majority of legislators should respond to the will of the majority of people.
-Elliot
Elliot: Per usual, I obviously agree! Elliott
Those are two most excellent and discerning questions. In the polling we do for political leaders, I am often disturbed at how they seem to place far more weight on TV appearances by their elite opponents and outbursts on partisan Twitter than on the consensus wants and needs of actual citizens as represented in survey data. The survey data they really seem to pay attention to - are support for their existing measures which merely attempt triangulate the needs of elites, or horserace numbers which show them winning.
Hey Angus — Your insight here is most appreciated! It also confirms my priors based on what I’ve heard otherwise. Of course, I might also use this as an example for how getting people to focus on issue polls could improve congruency between voters and people.
1) Good political representation goes beyond what the public knows now to what they would prefer if they knew what decision-makers should know, what media and opponents would bring out, and what the consequences are likely to be. Few current polling firms can deliver this. 2) Instead, folks over time come to prefer and somewhat trust the semi-organized guides of political parties when faced with conflicting choices. Polls that indicate the partisanship of choices tend not to show bipartisan results.