silent majorities

[Doug Henwood]

Interesting point from one of the members of the public opinion list 
- a quote from Ben Ginsburg's The Captive Public on the Nixon 
administration's attitudes about opinion on the Vietnam war:


>"From the administration's perspective, the real virtue
>of the silent majority was precisely its silence.  Many of those
>Americans who remained silent did so because they lacked strong opinions
>on the political issues of the day.  The use of polls to identity a
>"silent majority" was a means of diluting the political weight and
>undermining the credibility of those members of the public with the
>strongest views while constructing a permissive majority of 'silent'
>Americans.  In a sense, polls came to be used against those persons who
>truly had opinions" (pp. 66-67).