Liberals Are Far Too Obsessed With Polls
Opinion polls give us important insights to build political strategy from. But the way Democrats have become obsessed with them is completely distorting the party’s strategic thinking. It’s a recipe for incoherence and defeat.
Bill Clinton at a rally at North Carolina State University in Raleigh on October 4, 1992. (Kenneth C. Zirkel / Wikimedia Commons)
From media coverage to electoral strategy, the overbearing influence of opinion polls on American politics is difficult to overstate. For one niche of Democratic strategists in particular, polling offers a simple and elegant route to success: a way of thinking about campaigns and policymaking that has been aptly dubbed “survey liberalism.”
Ryan Cooper is a national correspondent at The Week. In this interview, he speaks to Jacobin’s Luke Savage about the issues raised by his recent essay on the many limitations of survey liberalism — and why left-wing politics should use, but not be bound by, opinion polls.
Luke Savage
Your piece is engaging with a phenomenon that’s widely associated with politics, and I think generally disliked — namely the way professional strategists and politicians chase opinion polls. But there’s actually a very specific theory of electoral politics at work here — and one that enjoys a real constituency within the Democratic Party. It’s something Aaron Freedman has dubbed “survey liberalism.” What exactly is survey liberalism?
Ryan Cooper
This article is for subscribers only. Please login or subscribe to access our full archives and beautiful print and digital magazine starting at just $3 a month.