Once you probed the atmosphere to understand what one’s expectations were. Now surveys have changed. A club, a scimitar, a hot gun. They are used to silence the opponent, the enemy, the interlocutor, to show as liars those who do not have the same ideas. They cancel the key point of a conversation, its ethical. Surveys have undergone a real metamorphosis, but public opinion is still not aware of that. They have acquired charisma, credibility, power.

They present themselves

as the champions of democracy, because they hand over to the majority the responsibility of judgement, but most of the time they do not help to choose the best solution.

 

The polling organizations, the ones in charge of opinion surveys, have become precious allies of the leadership. It is enough that leadership has a good one on its side, that can tell the entire world what it wants. A survey in fact gives to truths the charisma of an objective and faultless research. So some things must be kept in mind.

 

The questionnaire is created by people who, even if they have the best possible intensions, can make mistakes or lead to particular results instead of others. Nowadays surveys do not suggest prevailing orientations but just consolidate the positions of powerful people. Surveys have become a form of communication, on the same level as the radio, TV, newspapers and the web. The “media” make the opinion, the surveys consolidate it. Some recent research warns that 70% of the judgements given by a community are modelled by the information that comes from television. The most honest survey can only collect this result.

 

Translated by Chiara Nunnari from John Milton Institute