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CONSULTING THE PUBLIC THROUGH DELIBERATIVE POLLING

James S. Fishkin

Who speaks for the people? What sorts of opinions do they represent? These are twobasic questions that any form of public consultation must answer. For some yearsnow, I have been engaged in a research program I call Deliberative Polling. It isbased on a distinctive combination of answers to these two questions. As comparedwith self-selected forums or samples of convenience, it employs scientific randomsamples. And as compared with the snapshots of an inattentive public often offeredby conventional polls, it assesses informed public opinion produced through delib-eration. In this way, the Deliberative Poll attempts to represent everyone in a givenpopulation—through a statistical microcosm empowered to think about the issuesin question under favorable conditions. Of course, a lot depends on what we meanby favorable conditions.

At its core, a Deliberative Poll is a survey of a random and representative sampleof respondents, both before and after they have had a chance to deliberate. An ordi-nary poll offers a representation of public opinion as it is—even if that representa-tion reflects no more than the public’s impressions of sound bites and headlines onthe issue in question. A Deliberative Poll, by contrast, attempts to represent whatthe public would think about the issue if it were motivated to become moreinformed and to consider competing arguments.

But why go to all the trouble to conduct Deliberative Polls when a conventionalpoll can also solicit opinion from a good statistical microcosm, i.e., a scientific ran-dom sample? A great deal of public opinion research has established that the pub-lic is often not well informed about complex policy or political matters. Only smallpercentages of the population can answer even the most basic questions. And otherresearchers have shown that policy-specific information can lead to dramaticchanges of opinion under experimental conditions.1

The low information levels among the mass public should not be surprising.Anthony Downs coined the term “rational ignorance” to explain the incentives fac-ing ordinary citizens. If I have one vote in millions, why should I spend the time andeffort to become well informed on complex issues of politics and policy? My indi-vidual vote, or my individual opinion, is unlikely to have any effect. And most of ushave other pressing demands on our time, often in arenas where we can, individu-ally, make more of a difference than we can in politics or policy. From the stand-point of democratic theory, this lack of effective incentives for individual citizens tobecome well informed is regrettable but also understandable.

A second difficulty is that many of the opinions reported in conventional pollsmay not even exist. They may be what Philip Converse in a classic study termed“non-attitudes” or phantom opinions (Converse, 1964). Many respondents do not

1 For a good overview on the state of the public’s knowledge see Carpini and Keeter (1996). For the effectsof policy specific knowledge see Gilens (2001).

DOI: 10.1002/pam.10101

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answer “don’t know” (when they don’t) and are more inclined to pick an alternativealmost randomly.2 And even those opinions that are not quite non-attitudes may bevery much “top of the head” in that they reflect little thought or sustained attention.

Among methods of consultation, the Deliberative Poll is the most ambitious inaspiring to get informed opinion from a scientific random sample.3 Since 1994,19 Deliberative Polls have been conducted in various parts of the world. Nine ofthese have been national—five in Britain (on crime, Britain’s future in Europe, themonarchy, the 1997 British general election, and the future of the National HealthService on its 50th anniversary in 1998), one in Denmark (on the Euro rightbefore the referendum in 2000), two in Australia (one before the republic refer-endum in 1999 and one on reconciliation with the aboriginals in 2001), and onewith the Public Broadcasting Service in January 1996 at the start of the Americanpresidential primary season. Ten have been local or regional in the UnitedStates—eight on integrated resource planning for electric utilities in and aroundTexas, one on educational issues with the Nike Foundation in Oregon, and, mostrecently, a “regional dialogue” on economic cooperation between city and suburbsin New Haven, Connecticut.4

OBSERVATIONS

Here are some summary observations about Deliberative Polling, as we judge itthus far, from those projects for which we have completed detailed data analysis.First, in every case, we have managed to gather a highly representative sample ofthe population in question to come for an extended face-to-face deliberation. Wecan judge the representativeness of the sample by comparing the people who comewith those who do not. Since we invite people only after they have taken a conven-tional survey, we can compare the participants with the non-participants both atti-tudinally and demographically. We can also, of course, compare the participantsdemographically to census data as well.

Second, in every case, opinions on politics and policy change significantly, oftento a large degree. For the most part, the considered judgments revealed by Deliber-ative Polling differ significantly from the respondents’ initial responses.

Third, we can demonstrate that the respondents become much more informed bythe end of the process, based on information questions asked before and after.

Fourth, we have found, in further analysis, that information gain explains a lot ofthe opinion change. It is primarily those who become more informed on the issueswho also change their views about them.

2 The vast literature published since has not changed the relevance of the basic insight of Converse’s sem-inal article (1964).3 It is not quite unique in this dual aspiration. The “choice questionnaire” attempts to provide randomsamples with more information, but only in the context of the survey process itself. This is a much moremodest intervention than a weekend of discussion. Another strategy, Televote, sends respondents a brief-ing document after a telephone survey and then calls them back at a later time. This strategy alsoachieves far more modest opinion changes than the Deliberative Poll and probably suffers from the prob-lems discussed here with imbalanced information when people are just stimulated to talk more about anissue at home. Hence it seems fair to say that the Deliberative Poll, while not unique, is clearly the mostambitious effort thus far to achieve these two goals—deliberative or more informed opinion from a sci-entific random sample. For more on the choice questionnaire see Neijens (1987). For more on Televote,see Slaton (1992).4 For an overview of the process and its rationale see Fishkin (1997). For a detailed analysis of the firstDeliberative Poll, see Luskin and Fishkin (2002).

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Fifth, change of opinion in the Deliberative Poll does not correlate with any of thestandard sociodemographic factors, such as education, income, class, or gender.Virtually everyone seems capable of deliberating.

Sixth, in cases with ranking questions, we have found a higher degree of prefer-ence “structuration” making cycles less likely, after deliberation compared with theviews in initial questionnaires. In other words, a higher percentage of the samplehas single-peaked preferences. Respondents may not agree on a single answer butthey agree about what they are agreeing—or disagreeing—about. Deliberation cre-ates a shared public space for public opinion (List et al., 2000).

Seventh, we have not found the debilitating patterns of group “polarization” CassSunstein (2000) and others have recently alleged to be a necessary artifact of thedeliberative process. Unlike jury discussions, our deliberative process does notrequire an agreed verdict and it has, with trained moderators, elements of balancethat seem to inoculate it from reaching conclusions as a predictable artifact of theinitial group composition.

There are some other key results as well, but these should suffice to fill out the pic-ture of a deliberative consultation that plausibly represents the entire public, inmicrocosm, under conditions where it can think seriously about the issue in question.

A great deal depends on the good conditions that facilitate the sample becom-ing more informed on the issue in question. Respondents, knowing that they areto participate in a visible (usually televised) event, begin, from the moment theyare asked, to discuss the issue with friends and family and to become more atten-tive consumers of the media. We view this information effect in anticipation ofthe event as part of the experimental treatment. However, learning in anticipationis likely to be unbalanced. The respondent, when talking to friends and family, islikely to talk with people who have similar opinions and who come from a simi-lar social location. The diversity that facilitates balanced deliberation can be bet-ter furthered in the environment of the Deliberative Poll with balanced briefingdocuments, balanced panels, and random assignment to small groups withtrained moderators. For example, in Denmark, in the Deliberative Poll before theEuro, we happened to have some information questions that specifically identi-fied facts supporting either the “yes” case or the “no” case. In the period leadingup to the Deliberative Poll, “yes”-supporting respondents learned the “yes” factsbut not the “no” facts; “no”-supporting respondents learned the “no” facts but notthe “yes” facts. However, after the weekend of face-to-face deliberation, the gapclosed (Hansen and Andersen, 2001).

After the respondent agrees to participate in the Deliberative Poll, he or she is senta carefully balanced briefing document on the issue. The document, which is alsomade available to the press and observers, and which is sometimes posted on theWeb to help inform other citizens, is meant to offer a reasonably accessible digestof competing arguments and relevant facts on the issue to be deliberated. It ismeant to provide a starting point for the discussions on the weekend. Typically, anadvisory board of stakeholders scrutinizes the document for balance and accuracy.The same advisory board may also supervise the selection of competing experts andpoliticians who answer questions from the sample on the weekend.

When the respondents arrive, they are randomly assigned to a small group with atrained moderator. The groups discuss the issue, initially on the basis of the brief-ing document, and clarify key questions they wish to raise in plenary sessions withpanels of competing experts and, later, with panels of competing politicians or deci-sionmakers. In the larger sessions, the experts and politicians do not give speeches.They only respond to questions from the sample. The weekend gathering, which

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usually meets from Friday evening until midday Sunday, alternates the small groupand large group sessions until, at the end of the weekend, the respondents take thesame questionnaire as the one they answered on first contact.5 At the same time,the television partner has either been broadcasting the large group sessions live orhas been taping and editing the proceedings, usually including the small group dis-cussions, for later broadcast. The Deliberative Poll has been called “a poll with ahuman face” because it puts a human face—and a human voice—on the process ofinformed opinion change. The weekend combines some of the qualitative charac-teristics of focus groups or discussion groups with the possibility of studying theopinion changes quantitatively at the individual level.

CONCLUSIONS

In sum, the basic idea has proven eminently practical. We use social science togather a representative microcosm and then facilitate its deliberation underfavorable conditions. Ideally, all citizens would participate, but under normalconditions, citizens in mass society are not effectively motivated to do so, for rea-sons we have already rehearsed. Hence, the idea is to engage a microcosm, in agood social science experiment, and then use that to represent what informedpublic opinion would be like—to fellow citizens, to policymakers and politicians.The considered judgments of the microcosm offer a basis for an informed andrepresentative public voice.

The process produces several different outputs. The most obvious is the before-and-after questionnaire responses—the net opinion changes. These are made avail-able to the media and are usually part of the television broadcast. A second outputis more qualitative. The small group discussions, as well as the questions in the ple-nary sessions, provide a public voice that can be caught in qualitative as well as inquantitative form—through taped and edited accounts of the small group discus-sions for broadcast, through qualitative research on the recorded sessions, andthrough observation by decisionmakers. A third key output is the effect on expertsand decisionmakers who participate. We have found that many policymakers aresurprised by the serious engagement and knowledge level of ordinary citizens asthey participate in the process. Deliberative citizens offer a useful contrast to theself-selected intense groups and lobbyists who tend to dominate “town meetings”and similar open forums. A fourth key output is the effect on the mass public whowatch the broadcasts. In some cases, such as the Deliberative Poll before the 1999Australian referendum, we can clearly see from other polls that the broadcasts andnewspaper articles had a significant effect.

Studying the effects of these outputs is a complex process. In one series of cases,however, we can clearly see results. In Texas, we conducted a series of DeliberativePolls on “integrated resource planning” for the regulated public utilities of the state.State law required the utilities to consult the public and to take account of thoseconsultations in the plans they submitted to the Texas Public Utility Commission(PUC) for how they were going to provide electricity in their service territories in

5 On some occasions, intermediate waves of the questionnaire have helped determine the effects of dif-ferent portions of the treatment. In Denmark, questions were posed on arrival as well as at the end ofthe weekend, to assess the effect of learning before the weekend. In New Haven; there was an interme-diate wave after a random half of the sample had discussed one of two issues but not the other. This per-mitted us to assess the effects of discussion, by comparing those who had discussed a given issue withthose who had not.

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the future. In conjunction with the PUC and with advisory committees representingall the key stakeholders, we conducted Deliberative Polls for all eight investor-owned utilities. The commissioners participated in the Deliberative Polls, respond-ing to questions from the sample at the end of the proceedings. Their enthusiasmfor the process, expressed during the process and on the broadcasts, made it clearto everyone that they were going to take the results seriously. And based on theresults of the Deliberative Polls, they implemented plans that yielded the largestinvestments in renewable energy in the history of the state. Later the legislature,when it de-regulated the utility industry, used the results of the Deliberative Poll tojustify including a substantial renewable energy portfolio in the legislation.

Does this lead to better public policy? It depends, of course, on your criteria for“better” and on what the Deliberative Poll’s results are compared with. If it is com-pared with the advice of experts, then it is certainly arguable that experts are vast-ly more informed, even than our “informed” citizens. However, there are issues ofvalue trade-offs, of what distributions of benefits and burdens the public is will-ing to live with. In essence, these are questions of collective political will. Suchquestions are suitable for public consultation, I believe, because it is the publicthat will have to live with the results and finance the expenditures of one policychoice or another.

If democratic theory suggests an issue is appropriate for public consultation, thenmy position is that this is the best practical method available. Compared with all itsrivals, it combines representativeness and deliberation to a high degree. Top-of-the-head polls offer representative but (usually) uninformed opinion. Focus groupsoffer depth, but are too small to be representative. Self-selected forums such as“town meetings” are typically dominated by those who feel intensely or can bemobilized to participate. Other deliberative forums, such as the consensus confer-ence or the citizens jury, are both too small to be representative and push consen-sus by their decision–making structure. We believe, that by soliciting opinions inconfidential questionnaires, we find whatever consensus or genuine opinion changemay occur through deliberation, without subjecting participants to social pressuresproducing a false consensus. For all of these reasons, we believe that if publicpolicymakers are interested in the informed and representative voice of the peopleon a given issue, then this method, or something very much like it, offers the mostcredible and practical alternative.

JAMES S. FISHKIN is Professor of Government and Director of the Center for Delib-erative Polling, Department of Government, the University of Texas at Austin; and aFellow (2001–2002) at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences,Stanford University.

REFERENCES

Carpini, M.D., & Keeter, S. (1996). What the American public knows and why it matters. NewHaven: Yale University Press.

Converse, P. (1964). The nature of belief systems in mass publics. In Apter (Ed.), Ideology anddiscontent (pp. 206–261). New York: Free Press.

Downs, A. (1957). An economic theory of democracy. New York: Harper and Row.

Fishkin, J.D. (1997). Voice of the people: Public opinion and democracy. New Haven: YaleUniversity Press.

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Gilens, M. (2001). Political ignorance and collective policy preferences. American PoliticalScience Review, 95, 379–396.

Hansen, K.M., & Andersen, V.N. (2001). The deliberative poll: Opinion formation in theexperimental context of deliberative polling. Presented at meetings of the American Polit-ical Science Association, September.

List, C., McLean, I., Fishkin, J., & Luskin, R. (2000). Can deliberation induce greaterpreference structuration: Evidence from deliberative opinion polls. Presented atmeetings of the American Political Science Association, September. Available at:http://www.la.utexas.edu/conf2000/papers/PreferenceStructuration.pdf. Accessed July 2002.

Luskin, R.C., & Fishkin, J. (2002). Considered opinions: Deliberative polling in Britain.British Journal of Political Science, 32, 455–487.

Neijens, P. (1987). The choice questionnaire: Design and evaluation of an instrument for col-lecting more informed opinions of a population. Amsterdam: Free University Press.

Slaton, C.D. (1997). Televote: Expanding citizen participation in the quantum age. NewYork: Praeger.

Sunstein, C.R. (2000). Deliberative trouble: When groups go to extremes. Yale Law Journal,110, 71–119.