Has polling enhanced representation? Unearthing evidence from the literary digest issue polls

Studies in American Political Development

Volumn 21, Issue 1, 2007, Pages 16-29

  Karol, David ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 34248230851     PISSN: 0898588X     EISSN: 14698692     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0898588X07000144     Document Type: Article

References (115)

1. David Mayhew, Congress: The Electoral Connection (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1974);
2. William T. Bianco, David B. Spence, and John D. Wilkerson, "The Electoral Connection in the Early Congress: The Case of the Compensation Act of 1816," American Journal of Political Science 40 (1996): 145-71
3. ; Jamie L. Carson and Erik J. Engstrom, "Assessing the Electoral Connection: Evidence from the Early United States." American Journal of Political Science. 49 (2005): 746-57;
4. Jeffery A. Jenkins and Brian R. Sala, "The Spatial Theory of Voting and the Presidential Election of 1824," American Journal of Political Science 42 (1998): 1157-79;
5. Elaine K. Swift, "The Electoral Connection Meets the Past-Lessons from Congressional History, 1789-1899," Political Science Quarterly 102 (1987): 625-45;
6. Sean M. Theriault, The Power of the People: Qmgressional Competition, Public Attention and Voter Retribution, (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2005).
7. William Bernhard and Brian R. Sala, "The Remaking of an American Senate: The 17th Amendment and Ideological Responsiveness," Journal of Politics 68 (2006): 345-57;
8. Sarah Brandes Crook and John R. Hibbing, "A Not-So Distant Mirror: the 17th Amendment and Congressional Change," American Political Science Review 91 (1997): 845-53;
9. Ronald F. King and Susan Ellis, "Partisan Advantage and Constitutional Change: The Case of the Seventeeth Amendment." Studies in American Political Development 10 (1996): 69-102;
10. Wendy J. Schiller, "Building Careers and Courting Constituents: U.S. Senate Representation 1889-3924," Studies in American Political Development 20 (2006): 185-97;
11. Daniel Wirls, "Regionalism, Rotten Boroughs, Race, and Realignment: The Seventeenth Amendment and the Politics of Representation," Studies in American Political Development 13 (1999): 1-30;
12. Gary W. Cox and Jonathan N. Katz, Elbridge Gerry's Salamander, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002);
13. Stephen Ansolabehere, Alan Gerber, and James M. Snyder, "Equal Votes, Equal Money: Court-Ordered Redistricting and Public Expenditures in the American States," American Political Science Review 96 (2002): 767-77.
14. Warren E, Miller and Donald E, Stokes, "Constituency Influence in Congress," American Political Science Review 57 (1963): 45-56.
15. Ibid.
16. For challenges, see Christopher H. Achen, "Measuring Representation," American Journal of Political, Science 22 (1978): 475-510;
17. and Robert S. Erikson, "Constituency Opinion and Congressional Behavior: A Reexamination of the Miller-Stokes Representation Data," Amaican Journal of Political, Science 22 (1978): 511-35. For more recent affirmations,
18. see Stephen Ansolabehere, James M. Snyder, and Charles Stewart III, "Candidate Positioning in U.S. House Elections," American Journal of Political Science 45 (2001); 136-59;
19. Lynda W. Powell, "Issue Representation in Congress," Journal of Politics 44 (1982): 658-78;
20. Benjamin I. Page, Robert Y. Shapiro, Paul W. Gronke, and Robert M. Rosenberg, "Constituency, Party and Representation in Congress," Public Opinion Quarterly 48 (1984): 741-56;
21. Eric M. Uslaner, The Movers and the Shirkers: Representatives and Ideologues in the U.S. Senate (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999);
22. and Joshua D. Clinton, "Representation in Congress: Constituents and Roll-calls in the 106th House," Journal of Politics 68 (2006): 397-409.
23. See Jeff Manza and Fay Lomax Cook, "A Democratic Polity? Three Views of Policy Responsiveness in the United States," American Politics Research 20 (2002): 630-67
24. for a thorough review of this debate. For Paul Quirk and Joseph Hinchliffe, polls are the tools politicians use to react to an increasingly demanding electorate and not the only causes of the increasing role of public opinion (Quirk and Hinchliffe, "The Rising Hegemony of Mass Opinion," Journal of Policy History 10 [1998]: 19-50).
25. See also, John G. Geer, "Critical Realignments and the Public Opinion Poll," Journal of Politics 48 (1991): 434-53;
26. Geer, From Tea Leaves to Opinion Polls (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996);
27. Geer and Prateek Goorha, "Declining Uncertainty: Presidents, Public Opinion and Polls," in Uncertainty in American Politics, ed. Barry C. Burden (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003);
28. Lawrence R, Jacobs, The Health of Nations: Public Opinion and the Making of American and British Health Policy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993);
29. and Robert Weissberg, Polling, Policy and Public Opinion: The Case Against "Heeding the Voice of the People" (New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2002).
30. Of course elected officials may reflect the views of their constituents without making a conscious effort to do so if voters elect candidates who share their convictions. Representation in many cases stems from selection in this sense, rather than elected individuals deferring to public opinion.
31. Geer, From Tea Leaves to Opinion Polls, 54.
32. Philip E. (Converse, "The Advent of Polling and Political Representation," P.S.: Political Science & Politics 29 (1996): 651.
33. Claude E. Robinson, "Recent Developments in the Straw-Poll Field-Part 2," Public Opinion Quarterly 1 (1937): 42-52.
34. George Gallup, "Government and the Sampling Referendum," Journal of the American Statistical Association 33 (1938): 141.
35. Ibid., 141
36. Carl Hawver, "The Congressman and His Public Opinion Polls," Public. Opinion Quarterly 18 (1954) 123-29;
37. Susan Herbst, Numbered Voices: How Opinion Polling Has Shaped American Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993).
38. Lawrence R. Jacobs and Robert Y. Shapiro, "The Rise of Presidential Polling: The Nixon White House in Historical Perspective," Public Opinion Quarterly 59 (1995): 163-95.
39. M. Margaret Conway, "The Use of Polls in Congressional, State and Local Elections," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 472 (1984): 97-105.
40. Geer, From Tea Leaves to Opinion Polls, 55.
41. Lawrence R. Jacobs and Robert Y. Shapiro, Politicians Don't Pander: Political Manipulation and the Loss of Democratic Responsiveness (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000).
42. V. O. Key, Public Opinion and American Democracy (New York: Knopf, 1961).
43. Stanley Kelley, Interpreting Elections (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983);
44. Marjorie Randon Hershey, "The Constructed Explanation: Interpreting Election Results in the 1984 Presidential Race," The Journal of Politics 54 (1992): 943-76;
45. Lawrence J. Grossback, David A. M. Peterson, and James A, Stimson, Mandate Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
46. Keith T. Poole and Howard Rosenthal, "The Polarization of American Politics," Journal of Politics 46 (1984); 1061-79.
47. Geer, From Tea Leaves to Opinion Polls.
48. Samuel Kernell, "Life Before Polls: Ohio Politicians Predict the Presidential Vote," PS: Political Science and Politics 33 (2000): 569-74.
49. Charles W. Smith Jr., "Measurement, of Voter Attitude" Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 283 (1952): 148-55.
50. Robert Erikson, Gerald C. Wright, and John P. McIver, Statehouse Democracy: Public Opinion and Policy in the American States (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
51. Brandice Canes-Wrone, David W. Brady and John F. Cogan, "Out of Step, Out of Office: Electoral Accountability and House Members' Voting," American Political Science Review 96 (2002): 127-40;
52. Sean Gailmard and Jeffrey A. Jenkins, "Agency Problems and Electoral Institutions: The 17th Amendment and Representation in the Senate," unpub. mss., 2006; Ansolabehere et al., "Candidate Positioning."
53. William M. Leogrande and Alana S. Jeydel, "Using Presidential Election Returns to Measure Constituency Ideology- A Research Note," American Politics Quarterly 25 (1997): 3-18.
54. L. Marvin Overby, "Assessing Constituency Influence: Congressional Voting on the Nuclear Freeze, 1982-1983," legislative Studies Quarterly 16 (1991): 297-312;
55. Eileen Lorenzi McDonagh, "Representative Democracy and State Building in the Progressive Era," American Political Science Review 86 (1992): 938-50;
56. McDonagh, "Constituency Influence on House Roll-Call Votes in the Progressive Era," Legislative Studies Quarterly 18 (1993): 185-210.
57. These mailings served the Digest's marketing purposes in two ways. An offer to subscribe was included with ballots. Beyond this, the news coverage generated by the polls increased the visibility of the Digest.
58. Claude E. Robinson, Straw Votes: A Study of Political Prediction (New York: Columbia University Press, 1932).
59. The Digest also polled about the New Deal in 1934 and 1935. These surveys are harder to link to specific roll-calls, so I exclude them from my analysis.
60. Walter F. Willcox, "An Attempt to Measure Public Opinion about Repealing the Eighteenth Amendment," Journal of the American Statistical Association 26 (1931): 247.
61. Daniel Katz, and Hadley Cantril, "Public Opinion Polls," Sociometry 1 (1937): 155-79.
62. However, though Gallup had a lower response rate, they achieved greater accuracy because, unlike the Digest, they used targeted ill-person interviews to ensure that lower income and less educated individuals would not be underrepresented in their sample as they were in the Digest Polls (Lawrence E. Benson, "Mail Surveys Can Be Valuable," Public Opinion Quarterly 10 [1946]: 236).
63. This interest was sustained by leading papers for many years. See, for example, "National Poll Veers against Volstead Law," Chicago Daily Tribune, 17 Jul. 1922, 11;
64. "Volstead Law Loses in Vote," Los Angeles Times, 17 Jul. 1922;
65. "'Wet' and 'Dry' Sentiment," Washington Post, 24 Jul. 1922, 6;
66. "'Bone Drys' in Minority," Wall Street Journal, 24 Jul. 1922, 6;
67. "Near Tie On Bonus in Digest's Ballot," New York Times, 14 Aug. 1922;
68. "The Wet-Dry Poll," New York Tribune, 11 Sept. 1922, 6;
69. "Results of the 'Literary Digest' Income Tax Poll," Washington Post, 12 Apr. 1924, 18;
70. "'Digest' Opens Dry Law Poll," Los Angeles Times, 23 Feb. 1930, 2;
71. "Digest Poll 42 percent for Repeal," Wall Street Journal, 7 Apr. 1930;
72. "Illinois Wets Lead, 3 to 1, in Digest Poll," Chicago Daily Tribune, 28 Mar. 1930, 1;
73. "Drys Gain Slightly in Magazine Voting," Washington Post, 4 Apr. 1930, 2;
74. "The Literary Digest Poll," The World, 24 May 1930, 10;
75. "Poll of 20,000,000 on Dry Law Starts," New York Times, 2 Feb. 1932, 7;
76. "Wets Hold Long Lead on Literary Digest's Poll on Dry Repeal," Chicago Daily Tribune, 27 Feb. 1932, 7;
77. "Wets Maintain Lead in 'Poll'," Los Angeles Times, 26 Mar. 1932, 4;
78. "73 percent of Poll for Repeal," Wall Street Journal, 15 Apr. 1932, 7;
79. "All but 2 States Favor Rum in Poll," Washington. Post, 29 Apr. 1932, 3.
80. "As it Looks to Me," Washington Post, 26 Oct. 1924, SM4.
81. Congressional Record-Senate, 1 Apr. 1930, 7150.
82. "Disapproves Digest Poll," New York Times, 6 May 1930, 4;
83. "Women at Convention Hit Digest's Rum Poll," Washington Post, 11 Apr. 1930, 22.
84. "Harrison Attacks Poll on Tax Bill," New York Times, 21 Feb. 1924, 1.
85. "LaGuardia Brews: Policeman Amiable," New York Times, 8 July 1926, 8;
86. Congressional Record, 16 May 1930, 9078.
87. Congressional Record, 26 Mar. 1926, 6387.
88. Congressional Record, 25 Feb. 1932, 4675; 10 Mar. 1932, 5682;
89. Apr. 1932, 7684.
90. The use of mail-in replies, which Landon supporters were more likely to return, compounded the bias. See Peverill Squire, "Why the Literary Digest Poll Failed," Public Opinion Quarterly 52 (1988): 125-33;
91. Don Cahalan, "Comment: The Digest Poll Rides Again!" Public Opinion Quarterly 53 (1989): 129-33.
92. These polls received some attention from scholars: Willcox ("Attempt to Measure") used them to chart shifts in attitudes on Prohibition; Robinson (Straw Votes) cited them while assessing the merits of "straw votes" generally;
93. and W. Phillips Shiveley ("A Reinterpretation of the New Deal Realignment," Public Opinion Quarterly 35 [1972]: 621-24) uses the better-known presidential election polls.
94. Achen, "Measuring Representation."
95. Benjamin G. Bishin, "Constituency Influence in Congress: Does Subconstituency Matter?" legislative Studies Quarterly 25 (2000): 389-15;
96. Uslaner, The Movers and the Shirkers.
97. One may ask whether the Digest Poll results are more comparable to voter attitudes as opposed to survey measures of constituents' views that include non-voters. Of course the Digest Poll was a survey, albeit one whose results were very highly correlated with voting behavior at the state level. Griffin and Newman find that to the limited extent that members do represent constituents' opinion, it is voters' attitudes that they reflect. In any case, the basic findings of significant, but weak and uneven associations between votes and constituency opinion in the contemporary Congress holds whether the measure of district/state opinion is based on surveys or, less typically, election returns (John D. Griffin and Brian Newman, "Are Voters Better Represented?" Journal of Politics 67 [2005]: 1206-27;
98. Overby, "Assessing Constituency Influence"). This basic Finding also emerges in analyses based on referenda results earlier in the twentieth century (McDonagh, "Constituency Influence").
99. Keith T. Poole, and Howard Rosenthal, Congress: A Political-Economic. History of Roll-call Voting (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 113.
100. Philip E. Converse, "The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics," in Ideology and its Discontents, ed. David A. Apter (New York: Free Press, 1964).
101. Roger Daniels, The Bonus March: An Episode of the Great Definition (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1971), 58.
102. Ibid.
103. V. O. Key, "The Veterans and the House of Representatives: A Study of a Pressure Group and Electoral Mortality," Journal of Politics 5 (1943); 27-40.
104. Gallup Poll, 8 Dec. 1935, Question 1.
105. Miller and Stokes, "Constituency Influence in Congress," 49.
106. Page et al., "Constituency, Party and Representation," 744.
107. Ibid., 753.
108. Fowell, "Issue Representation in Congress"; Uslaner, The Movers and the Shirkers; Ansolabehere el al., "Candidate Positioning."
109. In general, roll-call voting indices reveal a bimodal, polarized distribution of positions on various issues, while variables built from constituency attitudes are more normally distributed.
110. Recall that Page et al. ("Constituency, Party, and Representation") found no responsiveness on abortion in the late 1970s, a time when the issue was a relatively new one for members of Congress, Similarly, Converse and Pierce found a stronger relationship in the 1960s between constituent opinion and the positions of French legislators on issues that had been debated for many years such as church-state relations as opposed to newer topics like European integration (Philip E, Converse and Roy Pierce, Political Representation in France [Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1986]).
111. John Mark Hansen, Gaining Access: Congress and the Farm Lobby, 1919-1981 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991).
112. Theda Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States, (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1992).
113. Peter H. Odegard, Pressure Politics: The Story of the Anti-Saloon League (New York: Columbia University Press, 1928);
114. Charles W. Eagles, "Congressional Voting in the 1920s: A Test of Urban-Rural Conflict," Journal of American History 76 (1989): 528-34.
115. This anomalous result may stem from collinearity between the GOP dummy and Republican Presidential vote, and it is not a stable finding. In various specifications however, the coefficient of greatest interest, the one for the Literary Digest Poll variable changes very little.