I don't disagree with what you wrote, but would like to add that we can have more nuanced public opinion polling, and that can be useful.
So, in the example of the Iraq war poll, you could have better choices than merely "favor" or "oppose." One way that opinion polling has improved somewhat as a social fact is that more people are doing it, so the oligopoly on this tool has been weakened somewhat. Daily Kos, for example, does its own polling. The Program on International Policy Attitudes does some polls that are very helpful. For example, it's a useful fact that the Iranian public overwhelmingly supports Iran's nuclear program. So people who claim to support democracy in Iran, at the same time that they support broad economic sanctions on Iran purportedly to force it to give up its popular nuclear program, are living a big contradiction. Other useful facts: people in Afghanistan overwhelmingly oppose US night raids; people in Afghanistan overwhelmingly support a negotiated end to the civil war. On Sun, Jan 1, 2012 at 1:42 PM, Louis Proyect <[email protected]> wrote: > On December 12th the Gallup Poll issued a press release about their > latest findings: fear of “big government” was at a near record level. > And even more strikingly, Democratic voters represented the largest > uptick since the last poll was taken. In 2009 32% of Democrats told > Gallup that they were afraid of big government, now the number is 48%. > As might be expected, conservative pundits embraced these findings as > proof that the country was tired of Obama, tired of liberalism, tired of > socialism, etc. David Brooks, the oleaginous NY Times op-ed contributor, > wrote: > > The members of the Obama administration have many fine talents, but > making adept historical analogies may not be among them. > > When the administration came to office in the depths of the financial > crisis, many of its leading figures concluded that the moment was > analogous to the Great Depression. They read books about the New Deal > and sought to learn from F.D.R. > > But, in the 1930s, people genuinely looked to government to ease their > fears and restore their confidence. Today, Americans are more likely to > fear government than be reassured by it. > > According to a Gallup survey, 64 percent of Americans polled said they > believed that big government is the biggest threat to the country. Only > 26 percent believed that big business is the biggest threat. As a > result, the public has reacted to Obama’s activism with fear and > anxiety. The Democrats lost 63 House seats in the 2010 elections. > > My first reaction to all this was to laugh at the idea of using a > pejorative term like “big government” in a poll. This of course is the > commonly used buzzword of Rush Limbaugh and the rest of the talk radio > right. Like a bell being sounded with Pavlov’s dogs, who would not salivate? > > full: > http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2012/01/01/public-opinion-polls-and-the-left/ > _______________________________________________ > pen-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l -- Robert Naiman Policy Director Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org [email protected] _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
