National Issues Convention

January 18

Jim Fishkin thinks his brainchild, the "deliberative poll," could help improve the state of democracy in the U.S. Fishkin, a political scientist at the University of Texas, first presented the deliberative poll concept in a 1988 Atlantic Monthly article. The first to take him up on the idea were the British; Fishkin oversaw BBC-sponsored deliberative polls in Britain in 1994 and 1995. Finally, he's seeing his dream realized in the U.S., with the National Issues Convention convening today in Austin, Texas.

Fishkin spoke with reporter John Biewen.

JB: What's a deliberative poll and why is it better than a regular opinion poll?

Fishkin: I don't say better, it's different. Ordinary polls model what the public's thinking even if it's not thinking very much or paying much attention. A deliberative poll models what the public would think if people really were engaged to think through the issues and behave more like ideal citizens. So it's an attempt to represent the entire country's considered judgments.

JB: You first proposed the idea in 1988, a year when the presidential campaign was notoriously unproductive. What was going on that year that made you think of this?

Fishkin: I'm a political scientist, and I was struck by the limitations both of the primary process and of soundbite democracy. Soundbites were shrinking dramatically, and the public's discourse was being reduced to seven or eight seconds, worthy of bumper stickers or fortune cookies. It seemed to me, 'How could you represent everyone but under conditions where they could really come to grips with the issues?' I had a year off that year, a sabbatical ... and it just came into my head. I thought it was a wild idea, impractical, proposed it in the Atlantic Monthly. And then after a while I realized that if I could get a television network behind it I could do it.

JB: Why is a television network important?

Fishkin: A television network, I realized, would help attract the sample, and it would also help disseminate the results. The idea as it developed was to try to use the two key technologies in modern politics -- public opinion polling and television -- and to unite them in a new and constructive purpose, that is to get a voice of the public that's worth listening to.

JB: Is your primary purpose one of research -- finding out, as you put it, what the people would think if they were informed -- or is it primarily to try to have an influence on the campaign and on the democracy?

Fishkin: It's both a research project and a prototype of a more constructive way to get the public voice on a national basis. Many of the important changes in American democracy are informal. Presidential debates. Public opinion polling itself was proposed by Gallup as a serious democratic reform. The use of television and its role was not a change that required changing the constitution, not a formal change, it just came about. So if you can change the norms and expectations informally, you can sometimes have a great effect. And it seems to me this is a prototype of something that can be replicated.

JB: This has been tried a couple of times in England. What kinds of things did you find?

Fishkin: I proposed it and took it to a British television network, Channel 4, and we did it twice, first on the issue of crime in '94, and then on the issue of Britain's future in Europe in '95. Both times with an extremely representative random sample to come to a single place. And they offered striking changes in their views of both issues. In each case they came to a more complex view of the problem. .. I wouldn't say they moved liberal or conservative; in some issues they moved more liberal and in some more conservative, but they came to very interesting, thoughtful recommendations. You can read it in my book. (Laughs.) One woman who was filling out the poll, interviewed on the program, said the before poll, which was like any poll, she said, 'It should be thrown into the bin because I didn't know enough about it. Now I actually have opinions that are worth listening to." When I heard that I was thrilled.

JB: What are you hoping for from the candidate forums Saturday and Sunday?

Fishkin: I think this will be a distinctive kind of dialogue. Because the citizens will represent everyone but they will have worked out their questions in hours of small-group discussions and they'll be prepared for sustained follow-ups. So it won't be stump speeches ... I think it will look qualitatively different from some other things.

JB: Are you disappointed that the front-runners for president, as of this time, aren't coming?

Fishkin: It's always hard when you start something new, and I know there are terrific scheduling pressures. We think we have a critical mass of important people from both the Republicans and the Democrats, and if it works and has credibility we'll build for next time. (Participating Republicans in a Saturday night forum to be broadcast on PBS include Phil Gramm, Richard Lugar, Steve Forbes and Lamar Alexander. Vice President Gore will appear at the Democratic candidates' forum Sunday morning.)

JB: How would you like to see this process -- you said you'd like to see it replicated.

Fishkin: I'd like to see it replicated at the state and local level, where you don't need an official airline. .. And I think it can be replicated... maybe in an election context, or in a referendum context in some states. Wherever it's important to seek the public voice.

JB: How much more effective do you think our democracy and government could be, if you had the ideal of a truly informed electorate? Wouldn't the deep differences that people have, even when they're informed, give us a kind of messy and sometimes stalemated process?

Fishkin: I don't know. We have a messy and stalemated process now. But what would the public think if it actually became engaged? I don't know, but that's that point of this experiment. Ideally you'd get everybody engaged, not just a national sample. But we can get some sense of what it might look like from the national sample by doing the experiment. Stay tuned.

JB: Thank you. Wish you luck.

With University of Texas political scientist Jim Fishkin, I'm John Biewen in Austin, Texas, for Democracy Place.