Collective Preferences in Democratic Politics
Opinion Surveys and the Will of the People

This book advises how to make better use of opinion polls to represent the people's voice.

Scott L. Althaus (Author)

9780521820998, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 8 September 2003

386 pages, 22 b/w illus. 25 tables
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.5 cm, 0.74 kg

"Proponents of democratic decision making usually avert their eyes from the fact that many citizens know little about the issues on which they are asked to make judgments or, even worse, they 'know' things that are factually mistaken. Scott Althaus addresses this problem head-on and finds that variations in knowledge do indeed bias the outcomes of opinion surveys in a troubling way. But not always, and not unavoidably--this is no jeremiad. Instead, Althaus gives sensible, thoughtful, usable suggestions for overcoming problems that most would rather ignore. This is a vitally important book for all who care about both democracy and political fairness." Jennifer L. Hochschild, Harvard University

Since so few people appear knowledgeable about public affairs, one might question whether collective policy preferences revealed in opinion surveys accurately convey the distribution of voices and interests in a society. This study, the first comprehensive treatment of the relationship between knowledge, representation, and political equality in opinion surveys, suggests some surprising answers. Knowledge does matter, and the way it is distributed in society can cause collective preferences to reflect disproportionately the opinions of some groups more than others. Sometimes collective preferences seem to represent something like the will of the people, but frequently they do not. Sometimes they rigidly enforce political equality in the expression of political viewpoints, but often they do not. The primary culprit is not any inherent shortcoming in the methods of survey research. Rather, it is the limited degree of knowledge held by ordinary citizens about public affairs. Accounting for these factors can help better appreciate thepossibilities for using opinion polls to represent the people's voice.

1. Introduction
Part I. Illusions of Aggregation: 2. The power of noise
3. Who speaks for the people?
Part II. Information Effects in Collective Preferences: 4. The impact of information effects
5. The structure and causes of information effects
6. The temporal dynamics of information effects
Part III. Opinion Surveys and Democratic Politics: 7. Opinion surveys and the will of the people
8. What surveys can tell us about public opinion.

Subject Areas: Political campaigning & advertising [JPVL], Political parties [JPL], Politics & government [JP], Psychology [JM], Media studies [JFD]