Americans are in a bad mood and pollsters should pay attention

Americans are in a bad mood and pollsters should pay attention

By Jennifer Benz

In April 2021, the first media poll to gauge a possible 2024 election showdown between President Joe Biden and former President Trump was commissioned by Reuters just 100 days after Biden’s inauguration. Another 1,279 national election “horse race” polls Biden/Trump and 521 Harris/Trump followed. With the votes and the election of Donald Trump for a second term, it is worth asking whether this was the best use of the polls.

Maybe. Such pre-election horse racing polls often capture public attention because of their apparent simplicity: a snapshot of who is winning or losing. When reported well, it helps voters understand the dynamics of the political campaign.

But the news and polling industry’s inordinate focus on “the horse race” comes at the expense of surveys that measure public sentiment. Often, this mood can tell us more than the ups and downs of the horse race, as we just saw in the presidential election, seemingly driven by feelings of economic anger among late-arriving and undecided voters.

---

On supporting science journalism

If you enjoy this article, please consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscription. By purchasing a subscription, you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.

---

Public mood is a general term for the shared feeling that emerges from people’s interactions within a political community. At the national level, this includes citizens’ trust in democratic processes and political institutions, their engagement with their communities and trust in other Americans, and their vision for the country’s future. This data is rarely presented in pre-election coverage because it is nuanced and harder to explain. But when public opinion surveys are conducted rigorously and interpreted thoughtfully, they convey important signals that we can’t get from horse racing polls alone.

Over the past three decades, political scientists have demonstrated the impact of public mood on policies and their outcomes. Benjamin Page of Northwestern University and Robert Shapiro of Columbia have demonstrated that public attitudes are sensitive to important political and social events and provide a reliable guide to policymakers who wish to align laws with citizens’ priorities; examples include slow changes in racial attitudes in response to the civil rights movement, or changes in economic attitudes with changes in unemployment or inflation. The revolutionary concept of the public’s “political mood,” developed by University of North Carolina political scientist James Stimson, showed how overall public attitudes shift over time, oscillating between liberal and conservative preferences, reflecting the nation’s evolving priorities. Christopher Wlezien, now at the University of Texas at Austin, described this as “thermostatic public opinion.” When government policy overrides public preferences in one direction, citizens respond by expressing their preferences and voting to change them in the other direction. These thermostatic adjustments predict and explain long-term policy trends, such as support for defense spending and investments in environmental protection.

The interest in understanding public mood goes beyond political preferences. A recent study by Karlyn Bowman of the American Enterprise Institute examined people’s tendency toward nostalgia, or the idea that the country was better off in the past, in contrast to the public’s general optimism about the future of country. Through a thorough examination of data dating back to the 1930s, she finds that the public oscillates between these views in logical ways that fit the political and economic context of the time. She provides examples of how politicians can gain support when they understand and harness a nostalgic or optimistic mindset.

You may have already guessed where this pendulum currently stands. As the 2024 presidential election approaches, my colleagues and I at the University of Chicago’s NORC and Louisiana State University’s Manship School of Mass Communication have been studying the public mood by measuring attitudes toward long-standing systemic issues rather than their temporal reactions to current events. . We found that Americans felt a pervasive distrust and pessimism, with deep-seated cynicism about institutions and democracy, and quite pessimistic views about the country’s future. For example, only a quarter of respondents thought the country’s best days were ahead. And when asked a battery of questions about how much trust people have in those who run the government, the responses were alarming. Only about two in ten people said they could trust those in government to do the right thing. The same number believe that politicians are more interested in blocking things than in solving problems. Only one in ten people believe that the government represents them well.

Many Americans had lost faith in the fundamental principles that underpin our democracy, including about 70 percent who were at least somewhat concerned about the lack of a peaceful transition of power after the presidential election . A quarter of Americans think the country needs a “complete and total upheaval” to get back on track.

We showed that on many of these measures, Americans became more negative and pessimistic. For example, 20 years ago, less than half the population believed that politicians only cared about themselves. Today, that figure is 70 percent.

We also found that this cynicism is shared by people across the political spectrum: by those who are highly engaged and those who are not, by those who have a positive view of the history of America’s diversity and by those who are not. As the report acknowledges, “in one sense, it is in deep distrust that Americans seem most united.”

While polling in the 2024 horse races could only tell us that the race was close, this study of public mood revealed the strong headwinds the Harris campaign faced. The campaign attempted to project a prospect of political and economic opportunity rooted in America’s core systems and institutions, when the electorate had virtually no confidence in the system or the future. Understanding the public mood helps explain why Harris’s attempt to differentiate how she would reshape the country was not enough to overcome Trump’s ability to exploit the public pessimism and anger that so deeply resonated. resonating with Americans across the political spectrum.

Collectively, this body of research highlights the importance of public mood in understanding long-term social, political, and economic health. Although public opinion on individual issues and candidates can be volatile, the general public mood tends to exhibit long-term stability and rationality. This consistency allows public opinion to serve as a reliable guide to understanding the electorate.

To realize their potential, public opinion polls must broaden their scope during election cycles. Horse racing polls serve their purpose, but they are only a fragment of what polls can reveal about our democracy. By investing more resources in measuring public sentiment – ​​tracking changes in optimism, confidence and policy preferences – we can deepen our understanding of the electorate and the forces that influence their decisions. We can help people understand where their fellow voters are coming from and, perhaps, reduce the number of electoral surprises. As media investigators, we have a responsibility to preserve public opinion research as a tool not only for predicting elections, but also for enriching public discourse and informing a more responsive democracy.

This is an opinion and analysis article, and the opinions expressed by the author(s) are not necessarily those of Scientific American. The author’s opinions are solely her own and do not represent any organization with which she is affiliated.