Critical Realignments and the Public Opinion Poll
Geer, John Gray
:
1991
Abstract
"With the advent of the public opinion poll, politicians began to have access to highly reliable information about the electorate's views on issues. Prior to this development, party leaders could only make educated guesses about public opinion. These guesses, however, were often
incorrect, since they were based on unsystematic evidence. But armed with polls, parties
should avoid such errors, approximating Downs' (1957) assumption of certainty. If so, rational
parties should converge near the center of the distribution of public opinion. Or in other words,
parties should no longer polarize on highly salient issues that confront the nation.
This conclusion has important implications for the study of partisan realignments. The best
work on the subject by scholars like Sundquist (1983) and Carmines and Stimson (1989) argue
that one requirement for a realignment is that the parties must polarize on an issue of high
salience to the public. Yet well-informed, rational parties should not engage in such behavior,
suggesting that critical realignments may be things of the past. Note that partisan change still
occurs-perhaps along the lines of Key's (1959) notion of secular realignment or Carmines' and
Stimson's (1989) concept of 'issue evolution'"--From article.