Public Policy and Opinion Polls

Public Policy and Opinion Polls

Sometimes it appears that the government is completely unresponsive to the will of the baby. Public opinion may strongly favor a certain policy or law, without leading to any support for that law among Congress. On the other hand, when one looks at vocal fringe minority political groups, sometimes it seems like vocal public opinion can unduly influence public policy, with politicians pandering to extremists on either side of the political divide. These observations are both true, but they also fail to recognize the true impact of public opinion on public policy. Though American public policy may not reflect the exact will of the people, time and time again it has been shown that American government is extremely responsive to the will of the people. Moreover, the representative, Federal style of American government was established in a way to prevent majority tyranny over the minority. Therefore, while a government may not respond to 51% of all Americans wanting a particular policy change, that same percentage, across all states, might lead to a change.

One of the problems with trying to describe how opinion polls impact policy is with the assumption that the impact is uniform. It is not. Different people or organizations take opinion polls and seek to discover the public mood for different reasons. Moreover, different systems may be set up to respond to public policy in different ways. This means that responsiveness to public opinion may be contingent on a number of factors other than public opinion. "Different domains have varying levels of responsiveness, according to contingency arguments, because of the nature of public opinion within the domain or institutional or political factors that mediate the opinion-policy link" (Manza & Cook, 2002). Furthermore, some organizations purport to seek public opinion, but their polls are designed to shape public opinion about an issue. The semantics of a question in a poll can change how people respond to an issue, and, once publicized, those results can further change public opinion about the issue. Take, for example, the debate over "death panels" in the recent health care law; there was no proposal that a panel meet and deny care to a dying person, but that characterization was incorporated into public opinion polls, and seemed to help change how the American public perceived the new legislation. Therefore, it is important to keep in mind that polls are rarely neutral; not only do they show public opinion, but they also have the power to change public opinion.

While there are certain cautions to using opinion polls to help determine public policy, in America, it appears that policy is very responsive to public opinion. Roll call votes in Congress tend to reflect the public opinion of the represented areas. Presidents strive to respond to the will of the people. Sometimes politicians are hampered by the fact that the public may desire legislation that is unconstitutional or not feasible, but politicians do seem to strive towards making the public happy. Moreover, when there is a negative downturn in a party or president's popularity, the politicians seem especially likely to respond. "Negative public opinion can have a powerful impact on policymaking. Low standing in the polls may encourage a president to drop an unpopular proposal or to promote new, supposedly more popular proposals" (Manza & Cook, 2002).

In fact, when investigating the empirical evidence, it appears that public opinion does shape policy. Erikson, Mackuen, and Stimson examined the question of whether the government responds to changes in public opinion and their answer was an "unqualified 'Yes'" (2002). In fact, they found that "Mood affects policy activity two ways" (Erikson, Mackuen, & Stimson, 2002). First, public opinion changes which party is in power, because Democrats are perceived to be more liberal than Republicans, and "the electorate chooses the party composition based on its current mood" (Erikson, Mackuen, & Stimson, 2002). Furthermore, politicians, once elected, act in a way to avoid sanctions by the voters, so that, if there is a mood shift after an election, politicians may not act in a way reflecting their parties' traditional stances.