Educational Research - the Ethics and Aesthetics of Statistics

64 N. Grube
Pollsters therefore ask the opinions of a representative sample of the population.
This data is used to survey these opinions in order to govern the people efficiently,
reliably and rationally. This will supposedly generate security and reduce risk. With
this in mind, the German press officer of the chancellery, Werner Krüger (1969),
outlined the need for poll-driven government. In 1948, an advertising leaflet from
the Allensbach Institute put forward the view, ‘Only the one who knows the market,
will avoid [economic – NG] mistakes. Every mistake of production can destroy the
basis of subsistence. (...) In this [risky – NG] situation we offer to you our service.
We are able to create reliable poll analyses with scientific methods of market
research that gives you advice of right behaviour. We know the consumers and we
discover the wishes you are interested in.’ 3
Though pollsters served governmental policy by predicting the outcome of elections
in order to calculate the political future and help avoid the shock of unexpected
changes in the balance of power (Schmidtchen, 1965, p. 96), this was not their only
function. At the same time polls were seen as an instrument to gain and retain political
power, as an instrument for orchestrating as well as controlling the political
conflict during election campaigns. Pollsters such as Erich Peter Neumann from the
Allensbach Institute became increasingly active as advisors in election campaigns.
They collaborated with political propagandists who were using rhetoric to try and
sway public opinion (Spicka, 2007). In this context polls have been both instruments
of the right and left camps. With implicit reference to the political theory of
Carl Schmitt (1932/2002), the Allensbach pollsters classify the voters into these two
camps. The respondents have to rate themselves on a scale from zero to hundred,
in order to identify the strength of the right and left camps in the ‘battle for the
climate of opinion’ (Noelle-Neumann, 1998, p. 324). This dualistic division of the
national population should serve for an efficient election campaign and relates to
the dichotomic political propaganda in the bipolar Cold War. In this sense pollsters
contrasted the advantages of the social market economy or the European unification
with the socialist command economy and national neutrality (Grube, 2007). In contrast
to Dewey’s vision of a community of public communication, Neumann (1966)
supported governmental and even dualistic propaganda that instructed the people in
order to close the gap between political leaders and the masses therefore creating
acceptance and trust towards the government.
In the period of the Cold War pollsters and the conservative government regarded
the creation of social coherence as necessary to compete with the socialist nations.
In their view socialist collectivism was superior to the social diversity of the western
world. Therefore, ‘political polls could serve to minimize currently dominating
misunderstandings between the government and the governed people and add to
agreement and a process of integration’ (Noelle-Neumann, 1957, p. 17). Despite the
various classifications of the respondents into different social groups, polls should
generate national unification.
At first glance it seems to be a paradox that the dualistic division of the population
into left and right, workers and employees, democrats and non-democrats,
protestant and catholic should help to form the nation as a whole. But it is exactly