Polling and the Presidential Election

Abstract

The role and influence of political pollsters in presidential politics have grown enormously in recent years. Once little more than behind-the-scenes technicians, presidential pollsters are now highly visible campaign decision makers and strategists. Surprisingly, there is only a handful of presidential pollsters, Republican and Democratic survey takers with recent experience in all phases of presidential campaigning. Still, despite their small number, these latter-day oracles often have considerable campaign clout. Based on survey data and political judgment, presidential pollsters identify strategic campaign themes and concepts, determine key campaign issues, and help target groups of voters. Using sophisticated polling techniques and other tools of political communication research and analysis, campaign pollsters provide the numbers that in large part determine how and where candidates will campaign, where campaign resources will be spent, and how candidates will conduct themselves for critical events such as conventions and debates.

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References

1. Quoted in William J. Lanouette , “Candidates Turn to Their Pollsters for Advice on Campaign Strategies,” National Journal, 18 Oct. 1980, p. 1742.

2. In the summer of 1983, Senator Gary Hart named Dotty Lynch to head up polling for his presidential bid. Lynch, who had been a vice-president of Cambridge Survey Research and director of polling for the Democratic National Committee thus became, in her own words, the first “pollsterette” in presidential campaign history.

3. These capsule biographies are based, in part, on Larry J. Sabato , The Rise of Political Consultants (New York: Basic Books, 1981).

Details of Democratic polling are drawn from my experiences in the 1980 campaign and from Patrick Caddell , “The Democratic Strategy and Its Electoral Consequences,” in Lipset, Party Coalitions, p. 267-306.

5. Richard Wirthlin , “Use of Survey Research in the Decision Making Process of the Reagan Presidential Campaign” (presented to the Thirty-sixth Annual Meeting of the American Association for Public Opinion Research, Buck Hill Fall, PA, 28 May 1981).

6. Quoted in William J. Lanouette , “When a Presidential Candidate Moves, A Pollster May Be Pulling the Strings,” National Journal, 15 Dec. 1979, p. 2092.