Strategic polling for politicians.

• Author: Dresner, Richard

Richard Dresner is Chairman and Founder of Dresner, Wickers and Associates of New York. He has served as a consultant, strategist and pollster for several US governors, senators and mayors. In 1996, he was special advisor to Boris Yeltsin's election team. This article is based on remarks to a November 21, 1996 seminar organized by the Library of Parliament in co-operation with the cultural Affairs Division of the United States Embassy.

Much has been written on various aspects of the public opinion polling that finds its way into the headlines of daily newspapers and television. But less is known about the kind of private polling done for political candidates. This article sheds some light on this facet of electoral politics.

There are certain distinctions between public opinion polling and strategic polling for politicians. For many years I was a public opinion pollster. I did work for ABC, for Louis Harris, and for various government departments. The purpose of such polling is to compile "objective" information about what people are thinking about a specific topic. Then I became more of a political junkie and began to work as a strategist for political candidates.

As candidate pollsters we do not ask people what is the number one issue facing the country. If we are any good, we know that already. We are hired to put together commercials, to do direct mailing and to advise on what messages are having the most effect in a campaign. We try to find out what issues our opponents are going to bring to the campaign and what issues we should bring.

We give people a list of ten or twelve items and ask which of these would influence their vote. (We do the same thing in jury selection work. We present several versions of the same case to prospective jurors and by asking five or six questions we determine which is the strongest and most likely to influence a group of jurors)

When I worked for Tom Foley, former Speaker of the House of Representatives he said: "Everyone tells me I am going to lose my seat. I am not hiring you to tell me that." Everyone agreed that he did not vote with his district. In fact, he voted against them on everything. He said: "Your job is to find an area where I have something in common with my constituency." We discovered that he did not care about gun control and he became a quick member of the National Rifle Association Hall of Fame. That is what saved his seat in the 1978 election. It was the NRA sending out letters to conservative voters, saying...