Educational Research - the Ethics and Aesthetics of Statistics

5 Constructing Social Unity and Presenting Clear Predictions 69
for policy decisions related to rearmament or the popularity of the social market
economy. This was conducted on an almost monthly basis. Questions included ‘Do
you agree or disagree with Adenauer’s policy on the whole?’ or ‘Do you think that
prices have generally remained constant during the last three months, or that they
have risen or fallen?’ (Noelle & Neumann, 1967, pp. 256–264, 368–369, 438–439).
These questions again serve to form two camps of supporters and opponents and
implicitly refer to Carl Schmitt’s division of friend and enemy as the main category
of the political. The dualistic data series should enable the government to consider
the political atmosphere and calculate the possible public reactions towards political
decisions. This governmental use of polls promotes the taming of controversial
public communication and the control of democracy. Nothing unforeseen should
happen to the government. Polls and election forecasts should ensure that voters do
not surprise the politicians.
The data series suggest both the possibility of prediction and the prevention
and/or containment of an uncertain future. Data series allow temporally comparisons.
Looking back to the past, the pollster can interpret the present. By the same
token, she can also predict future trends. Clear predictions can, it is argued, be
generated from answers to the question, ‘Is it with hopes or with fears that you
enter the coming year?’ (Fig. 5.3). The results reveal the aesthetic of a reflected
image, as if the two lines of opinion are conditioned by each other and exclude
other possible opinions.
Allensbach pollsters, like Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann (1989), are of the opinion
that answers to this question do not only reveal optimism or pessimism. In addition
to this, they help to predict economic growth in the following year. These
answers are, she argues, more reliable than the predictions put forward by business
researchers. Interestingly, the assumption of the public is a prophet contradicts the
view that human beings are undemocratic and incomplete beings in need of political
and educational leadership. We can therefore detect inconsistencies in pollsters’
assumptions. For example, Gerhard Schmidtchen (1965, pp. 81, 98, 213), a former
member of the Allensbach Institute, describes human beings as ignorant and
resigned. However, at the same time he maintains that they are as interested in and
well-informed as regards political affairs. These inconsistencies alongside the perceived
need to renew models for questioning may explain the recent unreliability of
polls. In 2002 and 2005, election forecasts made by the Allensbach Institute were
wrong. Pollsters failed to anticipate the last minute swing in the vote. The emergence
of new media like the Internet, different forms of mass communication and
new kinds of voting behaviour generated factors that could not be accounted for by
the polls. With these changes it would seem that individuals have adapted elements
of the aforementioned other-directed character (Riesman, 1961) that permanently
observes his environments in order to form and change his opinion.
Though a data series may remind us of a medical fever chart, the empirical social
sciences could not keep up with the natural sciences in regards to validity. This
did not stop pollsters from Allensbach adopting the language of medical science
by using terms such as ‘diagnose’ and ‘therapy’ (Neumann, 1956). 5 George Gallup
even claimed that he could check ‘the pulse of democracy’.