Americans Are Moody, and Pollsters Should Pay Attention

Americans are moody, and pollsters should pay attention

Who Jennifer Benz

in April 2021 first media poll It was commissioned by Reuters to measure a possible 2024 election matchup between President Joe Biden and former President Trump less than 100 days after Biden took office. Another 1,279 Biden/Trump and 521 Harris/Trump national elections “horse race” polls he continued With the votes in, and Donald Trump elected to a second term, it’s worth asking what it was best use of survey.

Maybe so. Pre-election horse race polls often attract people’s attention for their apparent simplicity: a snapshot of who is winning or losing. Well informed, it helps voters understand the dynamics of the political campaign.

But the news and polling industry’s overwhelming focus on the “horse race” comes at the expense of polls that measure public mood. Often this mood can do it tell us more rather than the vicissitudes of the horse race, as we have just seen in the presidential election, apparently driven by feelings economic anger among undecided voters.

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The public mood It is a broad term for the shared feeling that arises from the interactions of people within a political community. At the national level, it includes people’s trust in democratic processes and political institutions, their commitment to their communities and their trust in other Americans, and their vision for the country’s future. These data points rarely appear in pre-election coverage because they are nuanced and harder to explain. But when polls of public sentiment are conducted rigorously and interpreted carefully, they convey important signals that we cannot get from horse racing polls alone.

Over the past three decades, political scientists have demonstrated the influence of public mood on politics and political outcomes. Benjamin Page of Northwestern University and Robert Shapiro of Columbia proved this public attitudes provide the answer to significant political and social events, and to provide a reliable guide to policy makers who want to align the law with the people’s priorities; examples include slow changes in racial attitudes in response to the civil rights movement or changes in economic attitudes with changes in unemployment or inflation. University of North Carolina political scientist James Stimson’s innovative concept of the public “political mood” showed how aggregate public attitudes change over time, oscillating between liberal and conservative preferences, reflecting the nation’s evolving preferences. Christopher Wlezien, now at the University of Texas at Austin, described it this way:thermostatic public opinion”. When government policy overrides public preferences in one direction, citizens react by expressing their preferences and voting to move them back in another direction. These thermostatic adjustments predict and explain long-term policy trends, such as support for defense spending and investments in environmental protection.

The value of understanding public sentiment extends beyond policy preferences. Recent research by Karlyn Bowman of the American Enterprise Institute looked at people’s prone to nostalgiaor the idea that the country was better off in earlier times, in contrast to the public’s general optimism about the country’s future. Through a broad look at data from the 1930s, he finds that the public shifts between these viewpoints in logical ways that correspond to the political and economic context of the time. It shows how politicians can gain support when they understand and tap into a nostalgic or optimistic mood.

You may already have figured out where that pendulum is swinging. In the run-up to the 2024 presidential election, I and colleagues at the University of Chicago’s NORC and the Louisiana State University Manship School of Mass Communication analyzed public mood, measuring attitudes about long-standing systemic issues rather than temporal reactions to current events. . We saw how Americans felt widespread mistrust and pessimismwith deep cynicism about institutions and democracy, and a rather pessimistic view of the country’s future. For example, only a quarter thought the country’s best days were ahead. And when asked a series of questions about how much people trust those who run the government, the answers were disturbing. Only two in 10 say you can trust people in government to do the right thing. The same number felt that politicians were more interested in blocking things than solving problems. Only one in 10 felt the government represented them well.

Many Americans lost faith in the basic principles underlying our democracy, including about 70 percent who were at least somewhat concerned that we would not have a peaceful transition of power after the presidential election. A quarter of Americans believed the country needed a “full-on, total upheaval” to get back on track.

In many of these measures we showed that Americans have become more negative and pessimistic. For example, 20 years ago, less than half of the public believed that politicians were only in it for themselves. Now that number is 70 percent.

We also found that cynicism is shared by people across the political spectrum: those who are deeply engaged and those who are not, those who hold positive views of America’s history of diversity and those who do not. Ass the report acknowledges: “In a sense, it’s the deep chords of mistrust where Americans most unite.”

While the 2024 horse racing poll told us it was a tight race, this public sentiment analysis revealed strong headwinds The Harris campaign fought back. The campaign attempted to project a vision of political and economic opportunity based on America’s core systems and institutions, when voters had little faith in the system or the future. Understanding the mood of the public explains why Harris attempted to differentiate how he would reshape the country it wasn’t enough Trump’s ability to tap into public pessimism and anger resonated so strongly with Americans across the political spectrum that he was defeated.

Collectively, this body of research underscores the importance of public mood in understanding long-term social, political, and economic health. Although public opinion on issues and candidates can be volatile, the general mood of the public shows long-term stability and rationality. This consistency allows public opinion to serve as a reliable guide to understanding elected officials.

To realize its full potential, public opinion polling must broaden its scope across election cycles. Horse racing polling serves its purpose, but it is only a fraction of what polling can reveal about our democracy. By investing more resources in measuring public mood—tracking changes in optimism, confidence, and policy preferences—we can deepen our understanding of voters and the forces that shape their decisions. We can help people understand where voters are coming from and perhaps reduce the number of electoral surprises. As media pollsters, we have a responsibility to preserve public opinion research as a tool not only for predicting elections, but for enriching public discourse and informing a more responsive democracy.

This is an opinion and analysis article, and the views expressed by the author(s) are not necessarily their own. American scientific The author’s views are his own and do not represent those of any affiliated organization.