asked for their opinions on matters of interpretation and judgment as well as on matters of fact)
as they become more familiar with the party as a client and come to be viewed as a trusted part
of the campaign operation. Some no doubt results from the same process in reverse, as political
leaders distance themselves from advisors who are felt to have become too close, preferring to
move in new directions. In this way, the question of the appropriate division of labor and
authority is negotiated and re-negotiated over time as a succession of pollsters, party officials,
and political leaders work to make the arrangements that will serve them best.
Polling and Its Discontents
Introducing polling and other opinion-research techniques is not only a matter of improving a
campaign’s information base – although it is that. There will always be those who have private
incentives to embrace the new approaches and those who do not (and who will recognize that
change is not in their interests). Technique, professional expertise, is not a neutral instrument; it
serves the interests of some over others. Campaign decision-makers often have reasons, above
and beyond considerations of effectiveness, to support or to resist the introduction of a particular
technical innovation – something that can be clearly seen in the case of opinion polling.
Take the Conservatives. At the time of his early work for the party, Humphrey Taylor
naturally had goals of his own – not insignificantly, getting his new firm off the ground as a
provider of market research to a variety of clients. In this excerpt from our conversation,
however, he is describing the goals of those in the party who hired him:
The first impact of the work ORC did for the Conservatives from 1966 was to reduce the
power and influence of the party activists. The agency system at that time was still very
powerful: party agents had a strong organization of their own, and they would tell the
party leaders what they thought the party was thinking. In fact, some of the people who
participated in bringing us in did so specifically because they felt that the activists’ voice
within the party was too loud, and wanted to see their influence reduced. … I can
remember going to many meetings where an organizer would stand up and say, ‘The
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Convention