Public Opinion

Public opinion as is commonly thought of today is a compilation of mined data, which after extracting the outliers and other discrepancies, is then used to bolster or detract from an argument. There is no pure public opinion, no clear cut label with which the collective thoughts, beliefs, and opinions of a people or groups can be identified.

Special interest groups are often the only entities concerned with any sort of public opinion, as their decision making process relies on it. The average citizen doesn’t make a decision based on what the current reported opinion of it is; he simply does what is in his best interest.

Public opinion, according to Wikipedia, is defined as “the aggregate of individual attitudes or beliefs held by the adult population.” This aggregation is most often derived from and based on polls, and while these polls are purported to be fair and accurate, often times they fail in this task, or the data derived from them is manipulated in such a way that it causes an inadvertent failure of the attempted goal.

Cleverly slanted questions, unorthodox sampling, and selective reporting are just a few of the factors that influence the accuracy of these attempts at gathering information. The ease of manipulation substantiates the claim that there is no true singular public opinion, just the interpretation of the facts that the public is forced to accept as its opinion. This is evidenced in popular depictions of the American populace. Democrats are said to believe one thing, while Republicans yet another. Outside of special interest groups, these rigid demographics do not translate into a clear cut set of opinions or beliefs for a person or set of people, let alone the whole of society.

Public opinion as a social construct typically seeks to equate observed behaviors with a specific reasoning. For example if sales of hybrid vehicles increased, it could be reported that “public opinion on these vehicles is that they are better for the environment, and that’s why sales are up.” While the vehicles may be more eco-friendly, that needn’t be the pervasive reason behind the upswing in purchases. Tax breaks, superior gas mileage, superior quality, could all be considered potential reasons for why the surge occurred, if there was a true upswing to speak of. The public’s reasoning for the result may differ even if the end result is the same.

Extrapolation illustrates this point in the case of a population. Not everyone who purchases a hybrid vehicle fits the same mold or is doing so for the same reason. If there were a standard vehicle that addressed the concerns of some of the new hybrid owners, the stated increase may not have even occurred. The rationale for each purchase differs from person to person. The public opinion concept fails to address this. It simply states that someone fitting Description A is most likely to purchase a hybrid. There may very well be a subset within the Description A group that absolutely refuses to purchase a hybrid vehicle, for whatever reasons they may conceive. Public opinion as we know it simply glosses over this fact and describes the subset as an outlier. It doesn’t seek to understand it, simply to motivate the public to a particular line of thought or to a selected course of action. For this reason, public opinion is more aptly depicted as propaganda used by special interest groups.