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An Insider Exposes the Truth Behind the Polls
Beacon Press
August 2008
On Sale: August 12, 2008
196 pages ISBN: 0807042323 EAN: 9780807042328 Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
On January 8, 2008, the date of the New Hampshire primary,
media pollsters made their biggest prediction gaffe since
dubbing Thomas Dewey a shoo-in to beat incumbent president
Harry S. Truman. Eleven different polls forecast a solid win
by Barack Obama; instead, Hillary Clinton took New Hampshire
and recharged her candidacy. The months that followed only
brought more dismal performances and contradictory
results—undeniable evidence that something is terribly wrong
with the polling industry today.
It's easy to spot
the election polls that get it wrong. Equally misleading and
often far more disastrous are polls misrepresenting public
opinion on government policy. For instance, in the period
leading up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, every major media
poll showed substantial public support for a preemptive
strike. In truth, there was no majority of Americans calling
for war.
For the first time, David W. Moore—praised
as a "scholarly crusader" by the New York Times—reveals that
pollsters don't report public opinion, they manufacture it.
And they do so at the peril of our democratic process. While
critics cry foul over partisan favoritism in the mainstream
media, what's really at work is a power bias that polls
legitimate by providing the stamp of public approval.
Drawing on over a decade's experience at the Gallup
Poll and a distinguished academic career in survey research,
Moore describes the questionable tactics pollsters use to
create poll-driven news stories—including force-feeding
respondents, slanting question wording, and ignoring public
ignorance on even the most arcane issues. More than proof
that the numbers do lie, The Opinion Makers clearly and
convincingly spells out how urgent it is that we make polls
deliver on their promise to monitor, not manipulate, the
pulse of democracy.
"You will never regard political
polls the same after reading David W. Moore's devastating
inside account of their severe limitations and
misapplications. This book should be required reading for
journalists, political junkies, students, scholars and
citizens." —Robert W. McChesney, author of The Political
Economy of Media
"The next time your phone rings with
questions from a pollster, beware. David Moore rings an
alarm bell that democracy is endangered by the way the news
media use public opinion polls. In chapter and verse, he
exposes how false and misleading polling practices actually
create public opinion and this, in turn, influences what
government does. The Opinion Makers demonstrates what James
Madison said two hundred years ago—a misinformed public
becomes a threat to democracy." —Ben H. Bagdikian, author
of The New Media Monopoly
"The account of how
news stories drive polls should make us stop and ask whether
the close relationship between the newsroom and polling
operations is perhaps a bit too close. A must read." —W.
Lance Bennett, director, Center for Communication and Civic
Engagement University of Washington, Seattle
"We all
know that the corporate press conducts its own opinion polls
and keeps headlining the results as if such stuff were news.
What we don't know is just how sloppy—and misleading—most of
that work really is. In this important book, veteran
pollster David Moore uses many harrowing examples from the
recent past to meticulously note the many defects in such
polling." —Mark Crispin Miller, Professor of Media,
Culture, and Communication at New York University, and
author of Fooled Again: The Real Case for Electoral Reform
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