You Get The Advice You Pay For

I'm afraid to need to be a Mark Penn defender, but I think Ezra's point here, while true, is also a bit unfair. Ezra accuses Penn-the-pollster as miraculously finding the exact same shape of public opinion in every single year -- Democrats must move to the right on economics. And, indeed, that does seem to be Penn's perennial conclusion. That said, finding the same result every time he goes out to do a survey doesn't, as best I can tell, differentiate Penn that much from other big-time political pollsters. Ideology shouldn't matter in the field of public opinion research but, in practice, given pollsters tend to give remarkably consistent advice year after year.

This is actually what makes the fact that Penn is working for Hillary Clinton so significant. Penn isn't the kind of advisor you hire because you wonder what advice he's going to give you. Rather, he's the kind of advisor you hire because you know perfectly well what advice he's going to give and you've decided that's the advice you want to get. Penn is hardly unique in this regard (many people have noted that 2004-vintage John Edwards sounds more like 2008-vintage Barack Obama than he does like 2008-vintage John Edwards and that David Axelrod worked for Edwards in '04 and Obama in '08) but that's just the point -- politicians aren't naive about this stuff, they pick strategists who are going to give congenial strategic advice.

Comments

Hmmm. In many of the books I ve read about political campaigns, a theme that emerges is that pollsters come to clash with campaign strategists because pollsters hidden desire is to formulate strategy, not just do polls; all the same, the political acumen of pollsters isn't exactly respected.

So, the question is. Who is Hillary's campaign strategist? Does Penn have the same role?

Posted by Nick Kaufman | May 9, 2007 9:19 AM

Has anyone ever seen Penn and Kaus together in the same room? Curious.

Posted by Next to Last Pope | May 9, 2007 10:00 AM

So, why do we even hire pollsters to play that role? Why not simply hire someone who isn't political to do polls?

Posted by MDtoMN | May 9, 2007 12:17 PM

Ideology shouldn't matter in the field of public opinion research but, in practice, given pollsters tend to give remarkably consistent advice year after year.

It also explains why there are "Democratic" pollsters and "Republican" ones.

They are paid to find the answer they want, or rather to find the frame that sells their message best. Not to discover fundamentals of public opinion.

Posted by Mikef | May 9, 2007 1:38 PM

The Penn-Axelroad comparison is misguided b/c conflating pollsters and media consultants obscures a fundamental difference between the two jobs. The job of a pollster (Penn) is to understand the electorate; the job of a media consultant (Axelrod) is to package a candidate. Although it's bad consulting to treat all of your clients similarly, it's far worse for a pollster to do it for the simple reason that two candidates are more likely to be similar than two electorates. If Axelrod has a particular talent selling charismatic, intelligent, but somewhat inexperienced Senators, then it makes sense for someone of that ilk to choose him as his or her consultant. If Penn tells all of his clients to move rightward on economics, it either means that this strategy is so obvious that polling sheds no insight into the question OR it means that he's articulating his own policy preferences, instead of those of the electorate.

Posted by Jon | May 9, 2007 6:20 PM