The Opinion Makers: An Insider Exposes the Truth Behind the Polls

by David W. Moore

On January 8, 2008, the date of the New Hampshire primary, media pollsters made their biggest prediction gaffe since dubbing Thomas Dewey a shoo-in to beat incumbent president Harry S. Truman. Eleven different polls forecast a solid win by Barack Obama; instead, Hillary Clinton took New Hampshire and recharged her candidacy. The months that followed only brought more dismal performances and contradictory results-undeniable evidence that something is terribly wrong with the polling industry today.

It's easy to spot the election polls that get it wrong. Equally misleading and often far more disastrous are polls misrepresenting public opinion on government policy. For instance, in the period leading up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, every major media poll showed substantial public support for a preemptive strike. In truth, there was no majority of Americans calling for war.

For the first time, David W. Moore—praised as a "scholarly crusader" by the New York Times—reveals that pollsters don't report public opinion, they manufacture it. And they do so at the peril of our democratic process. While critics cry foul over partisan favoritism in the mainstream media, what's really at work is a power bias that polls legitimate by providing the stamp of public approval.

Drawing on over a decade's experience at the Gallup Poll and a distinguished academic career in survey research, Moore describes the questionable tactics pollsters use to create poll-driven news stories-including force-feeding respondents, slanting question wording, and ignoring public ignorance on even the most arcane issues. More than proof that the numbers do lie, The Opinion Makers clearly and convincingly spells out how urgent it is that we make polls deliver on their promise to monitor, not manipulate, the pulse of democracy.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction

208 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 2008

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

Reviews

[cscb · Rating 3 out of 5]

moore, who was one of the higher ups at gallup, breaks down several ways in which public trust in opinion polls has been abused by the press and polling orgs. one of the biggest misrepresentations are brought on by sins of omission, he says, namely the failure of polls to address how strongly held and subject to change opinions might be. so, at the outset of the iraq war, roughly a third of the us public identified as strongly anti-invasion, a third strongly in favor, and a final third also in favor, but who, as shown by those few polls that bothered to dig deeper, did not have a firm commitment to their position and would not have been deeply upset had the US not invaded - yet most polls did not gauge this and the results were always presented by msm as 2/3 in favor, 1/3 against, whereas in the long run, we know how things went). moore also discusses how polls often force people to make decisions on issues, generating results that are then very often presented as indicative of something they're not (e.g., people are asked how they would vote if elections were held today, months and months in advance of the actual elections. though very significant numbers may not have really solidified their opinion, results are again presented in a way that does not address this factor. polls can, in this way, become self-fulfilling prophecies, as there may appear to be overwhelming support or opposition for a given stance or candidate, swaying anyone not yet fully committed to an opinion, but inclined to express minimal favor one way or another. there is a substantial amount of repetition throughout the book, and while the argument is maybe not as tightly and succinctly put together as possible, his examples are all instructive and the points that he's making important enough to have made me really glad to have stumbled upon this one.