Workaday politicians running for office are probably better informed about the state of public opinion than you are.
And if you are finding yourself baffled as to why someone won’t say something or embrace something that you think they should, it’s probably because their surveys indicate that it’s not that popular, and maybe try to be a little less mad.
Matthew Yglesias
If you read polls saying that the public supports a carbon tax, should you believe them? According to today’s guest — journalist and blogger Matthew Yglesias — it’s complicated, but probably not.
Interpreting opinion polls about specific policies can be a challenge, and it’s easy to trick yourself into believing what you want to believe. Matthew invented a term for a particular type of self-delusion called the ‘pundit’s fallacy’: “the belief that what a politician needs to do to improve his or her political standing is do what the pundit wants substantively.”
If we want to advocate not just for ideas that would be good if implemented, but ideas that have a real shot at getting implemented, we should do our best to understand public opinion as it really is.
The least trustworthy polls are published by think tanks and advocacy campaigns that would love to make their preferred policy seem popular. These surveys can be designed to nudge respondents toward the desired result — for example, by tinkering with question wording and order or shifting how participants are sampled. And if a poll produces the ‘wrong answer’, there’s no need to publish it at all, so the ‘publication bias’ with these sorts of surveys is large.
Matthew says polling run by firms or researchers without any particular desired outcome can be taken more seriously. But the results that we ought to give by far the most weight are those from professional political campaigns trying to win votes and get their candidate elected because they have both the expertise to do polling properly, and a very strong incentive to understand what the public really thinks.
First and foremost, that means representing issues as they would be in a hotly contested campaign. If someone says that they sure like the idea of taxing carbon, how much do they still like it when they find out it means their electricity bills would be $100 higher, and gas will cost 20 cents more a gallon? And do they still like it when they know one of the candidates is against it and says it will cost local jobs? This sort of progressive ‘stress testing’ is more work, but can lead researchers to very different conclusions than just asking people favour ‘policy X’.
The problem is, campaigns run these expensive surveys because they think that having exclusive access to reliable information will give them a competitive advantage. As a result, they often don’t publish the findings, and instead use them to shape what their candidate says and does.
Journalists like Matthew can call up their contacts within campaigns and get a summary from people they trust. But being unable to publish the polling itself, they’re unlikely to be able to persuade sceptics.
That’s a pain and a legitimately hard problem to get around. But when assessing what ideas are winners, one thing Matthew would like everyone to keep in mind is that politics is competitive, and politicians aren’t (all) stupid. If advocating for your pet idea were a great way to win elections, someone would try it and win, and others would copy. If none of the pros are talking about your hobby horse, it might be because they know something you don’t.
One other thing to check that’s more reliable than polling is real-world experience. For example, voters may say they like a carbon tax on the phone — but the very liberal Washington State roundly rejected one in ballot initiatives in 2016 and 2018.
Of course you may want to advocate for what you think is best, even if it wouldn’t pass a popular vote in the face of organised opposition. The public’s ideas can shift, sometimes dramatically and unexpectedly. But at least you’ll be going into the debate with your eyes wide open.
In this extensive conversation, host Rob Wiblin and Matthew also cover:
- How should a humanitarian think about US military interventions overseas?
- From an ‘effective altruist’ perspective, was the US wrong to withdraw from Afghanistan?
- Has NATO ultimately screwed over Ukrainians by misrepresenting the extent of its commitment to their independence?
- What philosopher does Matthew think is underrated?
- How big a risk is ubiquitous surveillance?
- What does Matthew think about wild animal suffering, anti-ageing research, and autonomous weapons?
- And much more
Get this episode by subscribing to our podcast on the world’s most pressing problems and how to solve them: type 80,000 Hours into your podcasting app. Or read the transcript below.
Producer: Keiran Harris
Audio mastering: Ben Cordell
Transcriptions: Katy Moore
