If you feel like there’s a disconnect between what the American people want, and the policies they’re receiving, you’re not alone.
Over the last several months, the Supreme Court has operated from the center of a political and cultural tornado. From the release of a Second Amendment decision that’ll loosen gun restrictions mere weeks after dozens of children were gunned down in an elementary school, to the overturning of Roe v. Wade after 50 years of precedent, the court has radically changed the fabric of American life. And while many aspects of these decisions warrant examination, it’s also worth noting how disorienting these decisions feel when you compare them to what the American public generally supports.
For example, the support for gun laws like mandatory background checks is consistently high in polls, with 80-90% support in multiple recent polls. As for the right to access a safe, legal abortion, a majority of Americans in recent polls support it, and are opposed to the decision the Supreme Court made to overturn Roe.
In spite of the apparent support for gun control and reproductive rights, numerous policies have been passed in the exact opposite direction of that support.
So what gives? Is popular opinion not relevant to politicians and Supreme Court justices? Why does a popular opinion so rarely translate into actual policy and legislation?
A matter of money
In 2014, a joint study conducted by researchers at Princeton University and Northwestern University revealed a shocking hypothesis about how policy creation in America actually works. After analyzing decades of public opinion across a range of topics, and then comparing that public opinion to the actual policy outcomes of those given topics, researchers concluded that the United States very rarely awards a popular opinion with an actual policy reflecting the will of that opinion. Instead, the researchers maintained, the government more frequently rewards the will of the “elite class,” even when that will is at odds with what the majority of Americans actually want and believe.
The researchers wrote, “Economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.”
The conclusion of the paper was that the U.S. government was actually closer to an oligarchy than a democracy.
Given the explosiveness of this suggestion, a battle over this study has been waged ever since. One more recent study argued that the middle class and elite class actually tend to agree on political topics more frequently than you might think. Out of 1,779 bills and correlating policy issues analyzed, the wealth and the middle class were found to have agreed on 1,594. This suggests that the notion of “popular opinion” might be less of a class issue than we often think.
Why polling can mislead us about “popular” opinions
If one study argues that popular opinion doesn’t align with policies, and another study suggests it does more frequently, which is correct?
This confusion might have to do with the inaccuracy of polling as a means to gage public opinion to begin with. You might remember the polling disaster that was the 2016 presidential election: Nearly no polls reflected the level of support that Donald Trump had leading up to the presidency, which was partially why his Election Day victory was so shocking for many.
There are a number of reasons why polling, and the resulting perception of popular opinion, don’t always reflect actual outcomes, like votes in an election or laws passed in Congress. As The Brooking Institute notes, polls are often conducted over phone calls or in moments where people are put in a position to make a quick decision about a topic they might not clearly understand. As a result, people can often answer speedily as a means of being polite, or because they’re in a rush, not necessarily because they believe what they’re saying.
One strange example of how polling can distort opinions can be found in the gun control debate. In recent months, there’ve been countless articles, news panels, and podcast episodes dedicated to understanding why America has passed so few gun control laws when the public support for them is so high. In a recent episode of The Daily, a podcast for the New York Times, columnist Nate Cohn offered an explanation for this apparent contradiction: The public support for gun control is nowhere near as high as polling leads us to believe.
“Some polls show that over 90% of Americans support expanded background checks,” Cohn said. “But when states have put gun control policies up to a vote in referendums and initiatives, the public has returned less than unanimous support. In fact, the support has been about as divided as the presidential election.”
Cohn explained that background check bills actually fail to get enough support in state elections frequently, which would seem to prove that public approval for them isn’t as high as one might think.
Another reason that polling isn’t always accurate involves what Cohn calls acquiescence bias. “It’s just the tendency for people to sort of say yes to things,” he said.
So when it comes to policy, there’s solid reasons that the Venn diagram of what people want and want they get might not overlap. If you feel like an opinion that you hold strongly needs to be heard by your elected representatives, then you should simply call them directly. That way, you know your voice will be heard.
