Role of the Polls and the Political conscience

Embedded in this column are some of the controversial views held on the role of the polls, one of the communication issues of the day and the impact of the same on the formation of a political conscience.

"The term polls is used generally to understand the basic method adopted by communication researchers to gauge the attitude of a person or a group of persons on a matter, concept, or a commodity at a particular given moment. When it comes to the concept of knowing the opinion held by people the term 'public opinion' is coined to polls making a high sounding term 'Public Opinion Polls'.

Thus the term polls denotes a kind of preference perhaps a personal single preference out of many." These are some of the basic facts submitted by an opinion researcher named Bill Kovach in an article titled 'A user's view of the polls'.

In political campaigns it is important to assess from time to time the significance and the strength of factors like the pre-election behaviour on the part of the voters and their persuasive measures via mass media channels and the swing towards candidates from what they had already laid down as their political ideologies, guiding principles, policies, speculations, promises and various other communal welfare factors like peace, anti war campaigns, supply of food, employment, education, health and foreign relationships etc.

Once the President Franklin D Roosevelt said openly (as far back as nineteen forties) that he wished to change the 'political conscience' of his voters and get to know whether they have been changed 'conscience wise' depending on the polls impartiality.

He stated in his political campaign that 'in the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential freedoms'. Then he laid down the four factors as follows.

The first is freedom of speech and expression - everywhere in the world. The second is the freedom of every person to worship God (or any other faith) in his own way - every where in the world. The third is the freedom from want - everywhere in the world.

The fourth is freedom from fear which, translated into world terms, means a worldwide reduction or armaments to such a point that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbour anywhere in the world.

The popularity gained was so high that these factors with further analysis and elaboration had gone into the framing of the political conscience of the masses that they were regarded as the basic human rights later in our own time and generation.

The newspapers of the day reported that in their opinion polls the swing was towards Roosevelt and was even predicted by the pollsters as the most likely elected President. (source: US News and World Report, 1970) This may look an occasional event. But the salient factor lying beneath is significant from the point of view of political ideological preference.

According to Kovach, 'opinion polling operation on a particular ideology has led to a full time political assignment on voter attitudes, an assignment that uses data on a growing trend'.

As such more and more mass media channels prefer to hold opinion polls of varying types.

Most media operators believe that gauging opinions via polls is beyond the concept of political reporting, in the broader area of public responses to social or economic changes.

The polls have in certain ways broadened and deepened our understanding of our social standpoints on community issues.

But the inevitable question raised by many a communication scholar is whether opinion polls via media channels take place carefully scientifically (broadly meaning methodically) and impartially (the term often used is unbiased).

The proliferation of opinion polls all over the world is evident even as a money spinning measure where heavy amounts of expenditure is incurred as a commercial venture and not as a formulation of an information theory.

According to Bill Kovach a growing number of journalists all over the world are beginning to raise questions about the impact of their poll reporting on the political process, and there are the beginnings of a backlash at this use of polling, at the time of its widest acceptance as a reportorial tool.

He cites Tom Winslip, Editor of the Boston Globe, became so concerned in 1978, that he discontinued surveys briefly, only to be forced to reintroduce them because of competitive pressures.

But his doubts remained. More of this nature of events are laid down in several issues of Public Opinion Quarterly magazine published by The Trustees of Colombia University.

In an enlightening article written by the well known communication scholar Elihu Katz (Platforms and Windows: Broadcasting's role in Election Campaigns' in Journalism Quarterly 1971) it is mentioned that 'one may object that a candidate's 'performance' on television -his showmanship- is not a good predictor of how he will perform in office where administrative skills and effective face to face diplomacy are more important requirements than gala appearance; but one may argue the other side with equal cogency'.

An opinion on such aspects may be interesting from several points of view states Katz in order to gauge the intensity of the political image.

Thus he elaborates the point by stating 'that the question that must be asked is how to employ mass media (especially television) in a way which will maximize the unique educational opportunity as well as the societal functions of political campaigns even if the parties are out only for themselves, and even if the voter exposes himself to political communications for irrelevant reasons, it is up to the society to devise a system whereby the interested voter will be intelligently served and whereby the political consciousness of the uninterested voter will be aroused and channelled to the central issues which are at stake.'

The role of the opinion polls should be geared to the betterment of the community via the spread of information, is the guiding policy of UNESCO (See Many Voices One World , UNESCO publication Paris 1980).

In acceptance of this view it is laid down that 'the community is in fact an aggregation of groups which vary in social class, economic status, often in political and /or religious affiliation and also in outlook and opinion.

Any community, large or small is held together by a nexus of communications'.