Using the communications media in these ways to shift politician incentives is the main thrust of their strategy. My own experience in public-opinion research over the past half century supports the authors' analysis of trends, but not their proposed remedies. One should be skeptical about whether using the media to shame politicians into being more responsive will be effective. Fiddling with communications to counter structural defects, especially if it involves the mass media, easily becomes an exercise in futility. Ironically, opinion polls, despite their proliferation, rarely reveal the public's real preferences on complex issues.
Polls work best when people know what they want.
But on most complex issues most of the time, people haven't worked through what they want, especially when painful trade-offs are involved. As a result, polls often mislead and confuse politicians. The authors present the Clinton health care plan as a striking example of how polls can mislead even the most astute of politicians. When the Clinton plan was first introduced, polls showed majority-level support, encouraging Clinton to believe that his powers of persuasion could vanquish all public doubts. But over a period of months, a huge chunk of this support vanished, partly as people became more familiar with the plan's drawbacks and partly for political and media-driven reasons on which the authors elaborate in detail.