December 23, 2024
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Americans are moody, so pollsters should pay attention.
The greatest potential of public opinion polls lies in their ability to go beyond election predictions and reveal deeper social trends.
In April 2021, the first media poll gauging the likelihood of a 2024 race between President Joe Biden and former President Trump was commissioned by Reuters, just 100 days after Biden took office. This was followed by a national election “horse race” poll of 1,279 Biden/Trump and 521 Harris/Trump. Now that the voting is complete and Donald Trump has been elected to a second term, it’s worth asking whether this was the best use of the poll.
Maybe so. Such pre-election race polls often attract public attention due to their apparent simplicity: a snapshot of who won and who lost. Good coverage helps voters understand trends in political campaigns.
But the news and polling industry’s overemphasis on “horse racing” has come at the expense of surveys that gauge public mood. Often, as we saw in the presidential election, the mood says more than the ups and downs of a horse race. This mood appears to be driven by feelings of economic anger among voters who are late and indecisive.
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Public mood is a broad term that refers to the common feelings that emerge from the interactions of people within a political community. At the national level, these include people’s trust in the democratic process and political institutions, their trust in community engagement and other Americans, and their outlook on the country’s future. These data points are subtle and difficult to explain, so they rarely feature in pre-election coverage. But when national mood surveys are rigorously conducted and thoughtfully interpreted, they convey important signals that horse race polls alone cannot provide.
Over the past three decades, political scientists have demonstrated the influence of public mood on policy and political outcomes. Benjamin Page of Northwestern University and Robert Shapiro of Columbia University argue that public attitudes are sensitive to important political and social events and can be relied upon by policymakers seeking to align laws with people’s priorities. It has been demonstrated that this guideline can be used as a guideline. Examples include slow changes in racial attitudes in response to the civil rights movement and changes in economic attitudes in response to changes in unemployment and inflation. University of North Carolina political scientist James Stimson’s groundbreaking concept of national “policy mood” describes how the collective attitudes of the public change over time to reflect a nation’s evolving priorities. It showed how they vacillated between liberals and conservatives. Christopher Regen, now at the University of Texas at Austin, described this as a “frenzied public opinion.” When government policy exceeds public preferences in one direction, the public responds by expressing their preferences and voting to move them back in another direction. These thermostat adjustments predict and account for long-term policy trends, such as support for defense spending and investment in environmental protection.
The value of understanding the public mood extends beyond policy preferences. A recent study by Karlin Bowman of the American Enterprise Institute found that in contrast to people’s general optimism about the country’s future, people’s feelings of nostalgia, or the idea that the country was better in the past, trends were investigated. Through an extensive study of data dating back to the 1930s, she found that the public oscillated logically between these perspectives, depending on the political and economic circumstances of the time. She provides an example of how politicians can rally support by understanding and capitalizing on nostalgic and optimistic moods.
You may already have guessed where that pendulum is swinging. In the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election, my colleagues and I at NORC at the University of Chicago and the Manship School of Mass Communication at Louisiana State University are focusing on attitudes toward long-standing systemic issues, rather than temporary reactions to current events. We studied the mood of the nation by measuring . . We found that Americans have deep-seated cynicism about institutions and democracy, and a fairly pessimistic view of the country’s future, with widespread distrust and pessimism. For example, only a quarter believed that the best times were ahead for the country. And when we asked a series of questions about how much trust people have in the people leading their government, the responses were alarming. Only 2 in 10 say they can trust government officials to do the right thing. The same number of people felt that politicians were more interested in stopping things than solving problems. Only one in 10 felt the government represented them well.
Many Americans have lost faith in the fundamental principles underlying our nation’s democracy, and some 70% are at least somewhat concerned that there will not be a peaceful transition of power after the presidential election. was. A quarter of Americans thought it would take a “complete and utter upheaval” to get the country back on track.
We showed that Americans are becoming more negative and pessimistic about many of these measures. For example, 20 years ago less than half of the population believed that politicians only cared about themselves. Today, that number is 70 percent.
This irony is also shared by people across the political spectrum: those who are committed and those who are not, those who have a positive view of America’s history of diversity and those who do not. I also found out that As the report acknowledges, “In some ways, it is in deep distrust that Americans appear most united.”
While polls for the 2024 race showed only a close race, this poll reveals that Harris’ campaign faces strong headwinds. This campaign sought to project a vision of political and economic opportunity based on America’s core systems and institutions at a time when voters have next to zero confidence in America’s systems and future. Understanding the national mood shows why Harris’s attempt to differentiate how and how to rebuild the country reflects a national pessimism and anger that resonates deeply with Americans across political lines. It helps explain why it wasn’t enough to defeat President Trump’s ability to exploit it.
Taken together, this body of research highlights the importance of public mood in understanding long-term social, political, and economic health. Although public opinion on individual issues and candidates can be volatile, the overall mood of public opinion tends to exhibit long-term stability and rationality. This consistency allows public opinion to serve as a reliable guide to understanding voters.
To harness the potential of polling, we need to broaden our focus during election cycles. Horse racing polls serve that purpose, but that’s only a fraction of what polls can reveal about our democracy. Investing more resources into measuring the public’s mood, such as tracking changes in optimism, confidence, and policy preferences, can improve our understanding of voters and the forces shaping their decisions. We could help people understand where their fellow voters are coming from and perhaps reduce surprises in elections. As a media polling organization, we have a responsibility to maintain polling not only as a tool to predict elections, but also as a tool to enrich public debate and inform a more responsive democracy.
This is an opinion and analysis article and the views expressed by the author are not necessarily those of the author. scientific american. The author’s opinions are solely her own and do not represent any organization with which she is affiliated.
