History's Straw Polls?

How useful are opinion polls? As we enter the 1990s they have never been so frequently commissioned and quoted. But do they represent a valuable and illuminating expression of the democratic views of the public or are they flawed, manipulative, biased exercises – even stunts – which carry too much weight and which threaten to replace rational discussion of issues and politics? The time seems ripe for the application of historical perspective to the rise and abuse of survey research.

Polls may be influential and criticised now, but it was not always so. Surprise is still expressed in many quarters, as it was at the time, that Churchill and his Conservative Party were rejected by the British electorate in 1945. The reasons for this will continue to he debated. However, the result should really not have come as a shock. In the monthly Gallup voting intention polls Labour had been ahead since June 1943; they reached a double figure lead by December 1943 and retained it right through to 1945, when the gap attained 20 per cent in February, excluding 'don’t knows'. Nowadays such evidence would he taken almost as gospel truth, and the prediction of a Government's downfall.