Presidential Polls and the News Media
Presidential Polls and the News Media
Edited by
Paul J. Lavrakas, Michael W. Traugott, and Peter V. Miller
First published 1995 by Westview Press, Inc.
Published 2019 by Routledge
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ISBN 13: 978-0-367-28422-0 (hbk)
To Barbara, Santa, and Dianne for their love, friendship, and support
Contents
PART ONE
Introduction
, Paul J. Lavrakas and Michael W. Traugott
PART TWO
Developments in Media Polling
, Susan Herbst
, Paul J. Lavrakas and Sandra L. Bauman
, Michael W. Traugott
PART THREE
The Methodology of Media Polls
, Warren J. Mitofsky
, Warren J. Mitofsky and Murray Edelman
, Robert P. Daves and Sharon P. Warden
PART FOUR
Media Polls in the 1992 Election
, Richard Morin
, Michael R. Kagay
, Michael W. Traugott and Jennifer Means
PART FIVE
Public Reactions to Media Polls
, Andrew Kohut and Limy Hugick
, Diana C. Mutz
PART SIX
Conclusion
, Paul J. Lavrakas and Michael W. Traugott
Guide
This volume is a direct outgrowth of an initiative we began in 1988 to study and improve the way that election polls are used by the news media. This effort has involved a collaboration of faculty and resources from Northwestern University and the University of Michigan. Participating units in Evanston have included the Northwestern University Survey Laboratory, the Institute for Modern Communications, the Medili School of Journalism, and the Department of Communication Studies. In Ann Arbor, the Center for Political Studies at the Institute for Social Research and the Department of Communication have been the collaborating organizations.
As part of our effort, we organized a national conference of media polling experts in 1989, published an edited volume in 1991 that focused on the media's use of polling in the coverage of the 1988 Bush/Dukakis election, gave papers and participated in panel discussions at several professional association meetings, published other articles, and modified our curricular offerings to inform our students in journalism, communication studies, and political science about this important topic area.
The present volume contains chapters from many of the same experts who contributed to the previous edited volume (Lavrakas and Holley, 1991). As explained in , this set of chapters presents more original research than the previous volume, with more of an "academic" bent to several of the chapters. Also, it addresses more applied aspects of using information gathered via election surveys and other related methods, such as focus groups, in the production of election coverage by describing several case studies of actual and potential "stories" in the 1992 Bush/Clinton/Perot election.
We thank the many experts who contributed the chapters in the book. We also extend a special thanks to Jenna Powell of the Northwestern University Survey Lab for her editing and layout skills in bringing this volume to production quality. Unlike its predecessor, this volume is unfortunately missing the insightful participation of I.A. "Bud" Lewis, senior journalist and pollster for the Los Angeles Times, who died in 1990. Bud held very high expectations of the news media regarding the manner in which election polls should be used in political campaign coverage. We share his expectations and hope that this volume will encourage journalists and news executives to make a greater commitment to realizing the tremendous potential that exists for news organizations to contribute positively to democratic political processes through enhanced election coverage.
Paul J. Lavrakas
Michael W . Traugott
Peter V. Miller
Sandra L. Bauman is currently a project director for Roper Starch Worldwide and a Ph.D. candidate in the department of communication studies at Northwestern University. She was the assistant manager of the Northwestern University Survey Laboratory and then exit poll manager for Voter News Service during the 1994 general election.
Robert P. Daves is assistant managing editor for news research at the Star Tribune (Minneapolis/St. Paul), and director of The Minnesota Poll, the newspaper's statewide public opinion poll.
Murray Edelman is currently editorial director of Voter News Service. He had been a director of Voter Research & Surveys and deputy director of the CBS News Election and Survey Unit. He recently published on the subject of lesbian and gay voting and has conducted research on exit poll methodology, race of interviewer effects, crowd estimation, tracking polls and mystical experiences.
Susan Herbst , associate professor of communication studies and political science at Northwestern University, is the author of Numbered Voices: How Opinion Polling Has Shaped American Politics (1993, University of Chicago), and Politics at the Margin: Historical Perspectives on Public Expression Outside the Mainstream (1994, Cambridge).
Larry Hugick is Director of Political and Media Surveys at Princeton Survey Research Associates.
Michael R. Kagay , editor of news surveys at The New York Times, heads the newspaper's polling department. Prior to joining The Times in 1987 he directed large-scale surveys on public policy and social issues as vice-president of Louis Harris and Associates for five years, and was on the faculty at Princeton University for 10 years where he taught public opinion.
Andrew Kohut is Director of the Times Mirror Center for The People and The Press.
Paul J. Lavrakas , professor of communication studies, journalism, statistics, and urban affairs at Northwestern University, founded the Northwestern University Survey Laboratory in 1982 and continues to serve as its director.
Jennifer Means is a graduate student in the Department of Political Science at the University of Michigan,
Peter V. Miller is associate professor of communication studies and journalism at Northwestern University. He is editor of the Poll Review Section of Public Opinion Quarterly , and has written on issues of survey standards and the public opinion industry.
Warren J. Mitofsky is president of Mitofsky International. He had been executive director of Voter Research & Surveys for its first four years and the CBS News Election Survey Unit. He was a founder of those groups and the CBS /New York Times Poll, which he directed for CBS for its first 15 years. He originated CBS's election projection and exit poll analysis systems, and a widely used random-digit telephone sampling procedure (with Joseph Waksberg).
