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#2 Public-Interest Polling is the Missing
Link to Rescue Democracy
1987-1999
Public-interest polling arose from five separate discoveries documented in Locating Consensus for Democracy – a Ten-Year US Experiment, published October 1998 by Americans Talk Issues (ATI), a foundation that studies and promotes scientific, random-sample polling on the subject of what the American people want for governance – policy, legislation, and regulations. The discoveries are thanks to Elise Boulding:
First. The level of folk wisdom on major public issues of governance is far higher than has been commonly thought.
Second. There is a significant degree of folk consensus (>67%) on those issues.
Third. There is an almost total disconnect between the public's preferences and the policies supported by elected leaders.
Fourth. This disconnect can be repaired by the use of deliberative polling that helps citizens think issues through and arrive at constructive opinions reflecting a public consensus that can be fed back to policy makers.
Fifth. Consensus findings apply to the entire public, not just to those tiny percentages that have gone through a deliberation process. This is demonstrated by how well support holds up at consensus levels when those proposals that pass the tests of the deliberation process are re-tested with fresh samples not subjected to deliberation.
Public-interest polls stand in sharp contrast to current practices of special interest polls that commercial pollsters routinely do for customers, the poll sponsors. Such polls guide
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corporations on how to reach markets;
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politicians on what to say about issues (what to do about issues is public-interest polling);
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non-profit organizations appealing to members and donors;
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and news media seeking readers while accommodating advertisers.
Such sponsors believe that their polls educate people. Yes, they do educate them to the needs of the sponsors. The poll findings often also produce skewed images of the public itself, skewed policy, and skewed legislation.
What is needed is governance that will help make the world, or our part of it, work with consensus support as easily realizable as a small town-meeting can find a consensus should it wish to. That is what public-interest polling, properly done, accomplishes and it works beautifully.
| >>> 2.1 How Public-Interest Polling Works |