Poll: Politicians Should Pay Attention To Polls
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in General Politics, Polls, The WorldI had mentioned this in a previous post’s comment thread that I can’t find now, but if politicians think that polls don’t matter, the public feels the exact opposite.
In sharp contrast to views recently expressed by Vice President Cheney, a new poll finds that an overwhelming majority of Americans believe government leaders should pay attention to public opinion polls and that the public should generally have more influence over government leaders than it does.Eighty-one percent say when making “an important decision” government leaders “should pay attention to public opinion polls because this will help them get a sense of the public’s views.” Only 18 percent said “they should not pay attention to public opinion polls because this will distract them from deciding what they think is right.”
And this is especially true when responding to Dana Perino’s statement that, “The American people have input every four years, and that’s the way our system is set up.”
Especially now in this age of instant information and social media, polls provide a snapshot of what we think politicians should be doing for us…because, after all, they do work for us. And if polls show overwhelming trends, that shouldn’t be ignored. But don’t just take my word for it…check out the numbers about how much influence the public should have…
Yeah, there’s not really much wiggle room there.
Obviously this doesn’t mean that politicians should solely go by polling, so please, let’s avoid these questions in the comments section. However, what it does mean is that we think there’s value in our collective opinion, so take note.
This entry was posted on Saturday, March 22nd, 2008 and is filed under General Politics, Polls, The World. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
March 22nd, 2008 at 11:33 am
The major weakness of the idea that the only input the public should have is in an election is that the public does not consist of a population of seers. Who in 2000 foresaw 9/11 and that part of the President’s reaction to it would be to invade a country that had nothing to do with it? For all that Bush and his apologists say now does anyone really think that they would have invaded Iraq if 9/11 hadn’t occurred to give them the confidence that the public would fall for it? In 2004 how many of the people voting for Bush and his fellow Republicans thought that we would still be there come the next Presidential election? I think one major reason for the Republican losses in 2006 was that this truth was finally beginning to sink in.
March 23rd, 2008 at 8:08 am
[...] Edwards shares an interesting perspective, that ties into that poll I posted yesterday about how people think politicians should pay attention to polls… What, then, is the straw [...]