The Pulse of Democracy: The Representatives

An excerpt from Polling Matters: Why Leaders Must Listen to the Wisdom of the People

[Many elected representatives] tend to value their own personal judgments on key issues more than the views of the people they represent. We saw this in particular when members of the House of Representatives and members of the Senate pondered their votes regarding the impeachment of President Bill Clinton in 1998 and 1999. We saw it again when President George W. Bush and his advisors repeatedly claimed that they would not be making decisions on military action in Iraq based "on the polls," echoing Bush's earlier statements while campaigning in 2000 that "I don't need polls to tell me how to think. If elected President, I will not use my office to reflect public opinion."

These types of views were vociferously espoused by the perennial gadfly and syndicated columnist Arianna Huffington, who at one point in her antipolling crusade argued, "The political landscape today is littered with politicians who never stop looking over their shoulders at the latest polls and whose motto seems to be 'I'm their leader, I shall follow them.'"

In other words, the idea of having wise representatives make the key decisions essentially "on their own" seems perfectly acceptable to many observers. Advocates of the trustee model [of representative democracy] do not argue for a society that totally disenfranchises the average citizen, but rather for allowing that citizen to have an impact on governing that is infrequent and indirect (primarily the vote). Mechanisms that allow much more frequent and much more direct monitors of the will of the people are not highly desired.

…[S]ome of the most ardent adherents to this trustee viewpoint are the elected officials themselves, who can easily become more and more enamored of their own personal ability to make wise decisions. Relying on one's own judgment is easier than constantly checking with others to discern a course of action, and it is more compatible with a mental image of oneself as brilliant and in possession of supreme reasonableness. Serving only as a messenger/delegate is much less interesting and certainly much less consistent with a healthy ego. It isn't surprising that many elected representatives begin to think that they know best and that the views of the people (between elections) are less relevant. (Still, elected representatives end up responding to a number of other pressures, including in particular lobbyists and special interests.)

Elected representatives sometimes throw up the "but I am in touch" argument and claim they in fact do stay very closely attuned to what their constituents think and feel on a daily basis—and that they certainly don't need polls or other "artificial" systems to augment their understanding of what should be done. A number of studies document the degree to which representatives claim that they enjoy a broad, subtle, and constant "in-touchness" with their people. After all, representatives receive a steady barrage of letters, phone calls, and e-mails in which constituents express their viewpoints. Furthermore, many elected representatives pride themselves on the degree to which they go "back to the district" regularly and maintain the connection with their constituents that allows them to get an almost intuitive feel for what they think and feel.

Those methods of staying in touch are certainly useful and often perform valuable functions. Some elected representatives are indeed quite closely in touch with the views of their constituents. But most don't regularly take advantage of the ability we have today to access constituents' views on a systematic, scientific basis, and many argue that it's not necessary.

Here's a paradox of sorts: elected representatives are both willing and proud to announce that they carefully track constituent calls and letters and take time to hold town hall meetings in order to keep current with citizen concerns. But representatives are much less likely to proclaim proudly that they commission and study the type of scientific polls that would do a more precise job of helping them understand their constituents' concerns and opinions. This doesn't make a lot of sense. Why shouldn't elected representatives take full advantage of the most scientific and demonstrably accurate ways available of understanding their constituencies—polls?

The answer to that question is not totally clear, but we do know that many political elites, in addition to having perhaps inflated conceptions of their own wisdom and value, simply don't have a lot of respect for the people. This basic disdain for the wisdom of the people on the part of elites was supported by a 1998 poll of elites conducted by the Pew Research Center. The poll asked questions of a sample of representatives, congressional staffers, presidential appointees, and senior civil servants. The poll showed that significantly less than a majority of those in all these groups felt that the public was smart enough to have worthwhile opinions on important matters of policy. (It's interesting that the majority of elected officials use polling in their election and reelection campaigns, despite the fact that they may disdain its use to help guide decision making between elections.)

This elitist notion that regularly consulting the views of the people is not necessary can be contrasted with what the people themselves say. In poll after poll, the people of the United States affirm that they have more faith in their own collective insights and wisdom than they do in their elected representatives. Two such polls were conducted at times in which public opinion was very important: the months leading up to the Persian Gulf War in 1990 and 1991 and during the Clinton impeachment crisis. In both situations, the Gallup poll asked Americans whether their elected officials should be paying attention to the wishes of the people as expressed through polls in making their decision, or doing what they (the elected officials) thought was right. In both situations, the public came down firmly on the side of paying attention to the polls. The public, in short, had less interest in their representatives' making decisions on their own, but rather were more interested in the representatives' following the wishes of the people who elected them.

In a September 2003 Gallup poll, Americans were asked to rate how much confidence they had in various components of American society. Confidence in "the American people as a whole when it comes to making judgments under our democratic system about the issues facing our country" was the highest of the eight components tested. Three out of four Americans said they had a great deal or fair amount of confidence in the people. Meanwhile, only 2 percent said they had no confidence at all. The next highest-rated components of society were local government and the federal judicial branch of the government, headed by the Supreme Court.

Indeed, the juxtaposition of the polls of elites and polls of the public tells the story well. The elites in Washington are skeptical of the public's ability to have opinions of value, while the public itself demands that its views be given full attention.

Excerpted from Polling Matters: Why Leaders Must Listen to the Wisdom of the People, by Frank Newport. Copyright © 2004 by The Gallup Organization, and published by Warner Books. Reprinted by permission.