>Doug Henwood wrote:
>>
>>
>> This is from an article by Rick Perlstein in the current New York Observer:
>>
>> >The surveys show Americans now slightly more concerned with the
>> >economy than with terrorism; and that, perhaps, is why a Fox News
>> >poll reported that "if the election were held today," only 49
>> >percent of Americans would vote for Bush-despite his wartime
>> >approval ratings upwards of 80 percent.
>
>I've just been reading Richard Lewontin's article, "Sex, Lies and Social
>Science," and I think his critique there of surveys of sexual behavior
>apply also to all attempts to survey opinion on any question on which
>complex reactions are possible. "Would you vote for X?" can (more or
>less) be legitimately answered with a yes or no. "Do you support the
>(patriotic) war?" is as little apt to be answered accurately as "What do
>you think about your wife masturbating?"
Public opinion types concede that responses to "global questions" - do you like your job? do you approve of the president? are you happy? - are extremely unreliable. As are questions about spousal masturbation, but for different reasons. Sex is something people frequently lie about, even to themselves. That's of a different order from holding complex and contradictory opinions about, say, war.
One of the functions of the public opinion industry - conscious or not - is to narrow the realm of permissible discourse, and to force all thought into neat categories you can put checkboxes next to. And, as the industry cliche goes, they can't tell people what to think but they can tell them what to think about.
Doug