Ss.

Cyril and Methodius University

Iustinianus Primus Faculty of Law

PUBLIC OPINION

Public opinion and the mass media

Darko Crvenkovski

Skopje 2011

HISTORY OF PUBLIC OPINION

Public opinion as science has developed with the development of the democracy. Democratic
government by itself require the public to have opinions about the public maters and political
decisions because as we know democracy is system which is ruled by the people and the
government should listen to the peoples wil if it wants to keep the power in its hands.The best
way to know what the public means about some issue are public opinion research or surveys.
Public opinion as we know it today has developed in cafeterias, clubs, saloons, pubs and
restaurants where the people gather to have some coffee or tea and discussed about public
maters. The creation of the nation and the public government is the first step in creation of the
public opinion.1 For the first time public opinion was mention by the French Minister of
Finance in the years just before the French Revolution who first pointed out the importance of
l'opinion publique. When it comes to the public opinion in USA we can find it very in the
language of the Declaration of Independence that requires public opinion should be taken into
consideration. I think that Abraham Lincoln gives the definition to other political figures in USA
about how they need to treat the public opinion by saying What I want to get done is what the
people desire to have done, and the question for me is how to find that out exactly."2 The first
classic survey was made in 1906 by the British scientist Francis Galton. And when it comes to
USA the first survey was made by a newspaper about their election coverage. They interviewed
people when they were exiting the pooling place. These interviews were called "straw polls," and
took place in 1824. From etymological point of view the word public opinion has origin from the
Latin word opinion which means unproved opinion.
For me the most suitable definition for public opinion is that is a collection of individual
opinions on an issue of public interest, and they usually note that these opinions can exercise
influence over individual behavior, group behavior, and government policy.
In this paper I will try to give an answer to the question can surveys accurately gauge the
opinion of 300 million Americans by ehplaning the most vital part of one survey the sampling,
can we trust this surveys and how the mass media surveys affected the public opinion in USA.

1 Jurgen Habermans, Public opinion, Beograd, Kultura, 1969. Pp.9

2 Web page : http://www.pbs.org/now/politics/polling.html pp.1/1

PUBLIC OPINION AND MASS MIEDIA

As we all know the only measurement for the public opinion is a survey. Surveys can be made
by e-mail, phone, face to face and etc. Also different methods and different question to get
information from the people can be used. Every survey methods has its own straights and
disadvantages but what should every have is a random sample of all representatives. This was
proven in the campaign for president elections in USA in 1936.There were two candidates the
democrats Frank D. Roosevelt and the Republican Alf Landon. The survey that was
accomplished before the elections was made by sending postcards. Based on more than
2,000,000 returned post cards which was a quarter of the whole voters, the final prediction was
that the Republican presidential candidate Alfred Landon would win 57 % of the popular vote
and 370 electoral votes. But it came out totally opposite and Frank D. Roosevelt wins the
election with 60.8% of votes and 523 electoral votes. The result of the survey was totally wrong
just because the sample of the people who were asked wasnt a random sample.
The only way to get most accurate results from a survey is to question the whole population
that can vote which nowadays is totally impossible. So, the only way to get most precise results
from a survey is a survey that is done on a sample of 1000 people who are randomly chosen. Its
scientifically proved that in this kind of survey the margin error is from 1% to 3% no matter how
much people have the right to vote on the election. With this kind of survey you can go wrong
and you can know exactly right what the public thinks about one question. So we can be sure that
in the USA if you choose the right sample of people you can know what the public thinks about
something without asking the whole population of 300 million people. With this kind of survey
the Literary Digest, the venerable magazine founded in 1890, had correctly predicted the
outcomes of the 1916, 1920, 1924, 1928, and 1932 3 and many others.
But in the modern times, its not just the random sample that is responsible for getting the right
or wrong survey results. Nowadays we have a bigger issue that is called the mass media.The
medias are very important in the process of forming the public opinion by transmission of
information. The media is playing important role in connecting the government with the
people.4But the problem shows up when the media becomes the creator of the public opinion. In
3 Web page : http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5168/ p.p 1/1
4 Russel Brooker Todd Shaefer, Pubilic opinion in the 21 st centery: Let the people
speak. Houghton Miffin Company, Boston, 2006. Pp.169

many times through the history of the USA the false prediction and the favorableness on some
candidate by the media changed the opinion of the American people in very crucial moments.
One of this moments happened in the presidential elections in 1946. The candidates for this
elections were Harry S. Truman from the Democrats and Thomas E. Deway from the
Republicans. From all the surveys that were made before the election, Deway had the wining
position and was far ahead. Several weeks before the elections everybody stopped doing surveys
and the mass media was informing that Deway will comfortable win the election. The night
before the elections the Chicago Daily Tribune, a newspaper, was so sure of Deways victory, it
printed DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN as its headline for the following day. With this kind of
support of the media and the people, Deway was sure a winner.However election day showed the
opposite. Truman came out as a winner and he collected 303 electoral votes wining in 28 states.
The difference from the survey percentage and the outcome of the elections in votes was huge
14%.
Unfortunately media made bad favor for Deway, by pronouncing him as a winner weeks before
the election. With this they maybe didnt changed the public opinion but they affected the results.
The supporters of Deway were sure that he would win the election so they simply stayed at home
on the Election Day thinking that even without their vote their favorite candidate will win. For
the first time in US history the media showed their power as a public opinion creator. Although
the surveys were made by all scientific methods and rules, the outcome was totally different.
Another case in which the media was creator of the public opinion was in the president
elections in 2000.The candidates were Gorge W. Bush from the Republicans and Al Gore from
the Democrats. The 2000 election was a tie between Bush and Gore and was the closest election
since the Kennedy-Nixon election in 1960. Democrat Gore had a slight edge in the CBS and
Zogby polls, while seven of the other polls leaned to Republican Bush. The Harris poll had it
tied.5 Every pool has a difference between 0.5 to 2% which is under the percentage for the
margin error in these type of surveys which is 3%. With these type of pools nobody could guess
who will be the winner of the election.
However the major media in the USA had made a big mistake which resulted with the greatest
controversial results in history. All five major US TV news networks made incorrect assumption
that all of Florida's polls closed at 7:00 p.m. EST, which was not the case. A. Westernmost
5 Official page of National council of public pools: http://www.ncpp.org/?q=node/20
pp.1/1

counties in Florida had the polls open for another hour, until 8:00 p.m. EST, as they were part of
the Central Time Zone. This region of the state traditionally voted mostly Republican. Because
of the above mistaken assumption, some media outlets reported at 7:00 p.m. EST that all polls
had closed in the state of Florida. Also all major Medias called that the winner in Florida was Al
Gore which in that time would made him a president of the USA. However it came out totally
opposite and Bush won in Florida with only 1,700 votes ahead of Al Gore. Many surveys that
were made after the Election Day showed out that if the media didnt made this mistake Bush
would have won by a bigger margin. The surveys showed that he would have another 7,500
votes and the controversy would have been avoided. Many people made public statements that
they would have voted for Bush, but did not vote because of the poll close time confusion.
Up untill now, the Media had shown its power to change the public opinion or to shape
differently from what it really is. There is no doubt that with the right methods and the right
random sample you can get the right results of what are people thinking about some public
question which is crucial in the political systems like democracy. But in several cases, it had
been shown that media have a huge impact of the public opinion, not just as transmitters of
information but unfortunately as creators. With such impact in the future they can create a false
picture of the public opinion, there is an essential need for democracy to put some chins over the
media. Because if the wil of the people is not represented in the government, than the democracy
is in crisis.