The promiscuous public? Exploring public opinion and why it matters to political actors
| Author | Nikki Soo,Alexandra Anderson,Charlie Heywood-Heath |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/02633957211007706 |
| Published date | 01 February 2023 |
| Date | 01 February 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/02633957211007706
Politics
2023, Vol. 43(1) 89 –105
© The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/02633957211007706
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The promiscuous public?
Exploring public opinion and
why it matters to political
actors
Nikki Soo
Cardiff University, UK
Alexandra Anderson
University of Sheffield, UK
Charlie Heywood-Heath
University of Sheffield, UK
Abstract
Political actors often cite public opinion to provide support for public policy decisions. This
process is made more challenging with diverse demands and perspectives of the public. How then
do political actors decide which opinion gets heard? In this article, we go beyond the assumption
that the practice of political representation is indistinguishable across various levels of political
actors and ask, why do political actors value public opinion and how does it then influence the
way in which they apply this information? Developing a multi-level approach, we employ semi-
structured interviews with a wide range of political actors, including politicians, pollsters, and
community activists. We find that motivations for defining and applying public opinion differs
according to the hierarchy of political actors, demonstrating that the relationship between public
and political actors is more nuanced and complex than what is often depicted. In particular, we
find that minority views play just an important view in policymaking.
Keywords
interviews, political actors, politicians, public opinion, representation
Received: 2nd July 2020; Revised version received: 26th January 2021; Accepted: 12th March 2021
Corresponding author:
Nikki Soo, School of Journalism, Media and Culture, Cardiff University, 2 Central Square, Cardiff CF10 1FS, UK.
Email: soos1@cardiff.ac.uk
1007706POL0010.1177/02633957211007706PoliticsSoo et al.
research-article2021
Article
Tweet by Richard Graham MP, 12 June 2018, Twitter.
90 Politics 43(1)
Introduction
The difficulties representatives face in channelling diverse demands and perspectives of
a capricious public into policy are well established in the literature (Kolln, 2015: 6;
Urbinati and Warren, 2008: 389). In the above tweet by Richard Graham, MP, a British
Conservative politician representing Gloucester, we glimpse into these often at-odds
requests from people with vastly diverging opinions. This article, therefore, seeks to
explore how political actors confront this challenge in asking, why do political actors
value public opinion, and subsequently, how does this value then influence the way in
which they apply this information? In seeking to understand what the public wants and
feels, previous studies have shown that political representatives and actors from differ-
ent party backgrounds, policy positions, and organisations have long drawn on a variety
of sources that tell them about public opinion, in bids to legitimise their policy positions
and arguments (see, e.g. Blumer, 1948; Burstein, 2003; Lewis, 2001). This article builds
upon this notion by introducing a three-tiered framework for understanding the use and
value of public opinion to different political actors, offering a new nuanced approach for
future studies.
The public was declared ‘promiscuous’ by polling company ComRes founder Andrew
Hawkins, as their voting preferences and behaviours are constantly changing and seem-
ingly impossible to determine (Cohen, 2019). The dilemma around Brexit, despite being
extensively studied, reveals that there is no clear consensus around the value of public
opinion. Gaps still remain as to why public opinion matters to different levels of political
actors, especially in the variety of ways in which views from the public are understood,
employed, and migrated across multiple levels of political actors.
Looking to scholarly work on public opinion, we found a long-standing interest in the
conceptualisation of public opinion in relation to polling but little consistency on how
actors, apart from political elites, within the political system understood and applied it in
practice. To address this, our study posed the following research question:
Why do political actors value public opinion, and how does it then influence the way
in which they apply this information?
In this article, we refer to political actors to mean those who hold political authority
(formally or informally) to influence decisions, policies, and outcomes. Contestations
over who belongs to this seemingly ever-changing group of political actors are wide-
spread (Blumer, 1948; Burstein, 2003; McGregor, 2019). To this end, we created a three-
tiered framework to focus on elite consumers of public opinion, meso-level producers of
public opinion, and grassroots-level advocates of public views. In doing so, we consid-
ered how public opinion is understood by varied actors and how they sought to engage
with these data within their own political tiers and the tiers below or above them. This
article, therefore, seeks to offer a new understanding of public opinion through this unique
three-tiered lens for future studies, extending existing analysis by exploring how those
tasked with the advocacy, measurement, and representation of public opinion perceive
this phenomenon.
In adopting this approach, we found that how public opinion was interpreted and used
was associated with the hierarchical level of political actors. Due to the nature of their
role, political actors in the top tier are unsurprisingly concerned with re-election, which
will therefore affect their relationship with public opinion. Interestingly, we also found
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