ABSTRACT
The focus in this chapter, however, is on the many criticisms Americans have of pollsters and their polls, whether the criticisms are legitimate or not. Many Americans dislike, distrust, and even hate polls for a large number of reasons. Many of those reasons, as we shall see, have been articulated and made painfully clear in feedback to pollsters and to those who use and tout their polls. However, there seems to prevail among the American public a deeply embedded attitude toward pollsters that somehow their polls are simply un-American. Pollsters have been the targets of frequent and emotional attacks by Americans who charge that polling is not only un-American and sometimes unlawful, but very damaging to our democratic institutions and practices as well. Possibly American politicians are the most visible hypocrites in our society when it comes to their attitudes toward public opinion polls.
