ABSTRACT
The inevitability of sample surveys as a means of knowing the outlooks and conditions of the American masses follows from a few elementary considerations. Charles Reich has independent evidence for any of his assertions; it apparently consists of what he was told by Yale students at the Stiles-Morse dining common. Reich's procedures are best described as the method of free fantasy, a method that makes anything possible. Scammon and Wattenberg's The Real Majority is a wholly different kind of book from Reich's. There is, first, the sharp difference in substantive conclusion and, more to the present point, there is an equally sharp difference in method, The Real Majority being packed with survey and poll results. The expressed majority concern over Vietnam revealed in the 28 February poll is simply omitted from the Scammon-Wattenberg listing. The general tenor of Inglehart's discussion aside, the data do not show a substantial penetration of postmaterial thinking into the mass consciousness of the Western societies.
