Time Essay: How Not to Read the Polls

The writer is president of Yankelovich, Skelly & White Inc., the New York-based public opinion research firm that since 1972 has conducted polls on various subjects for this magazine.

In the 1976 presidential election, the catch phrase was "voter apathy." Journalists and politicians cited the public opinion polls to "prove" a mass defection from the electoral process. But while millions of voters stayed away from the voting booths, apathy was not the phenomenon at all. Voters were angry, frustrated and irritated at what they felt was the futility of their participation in elections. Something...