Survey research has a relatively short history, since the systematic practice of aggregating preferences dates back only to the nineteenth century. Scholars, statesmen, and businessmen had an interest in the nature of public opinion long before the nineteenth century, of course, but technically sophisticated attempts to quantify popular sentiment trailed far behind theorizing and discussion of it. In the twentieth century, most Western democracies witnessed a tremendous surge in survey research with the emergence of large commercial firms devoted to counting individual opinions, preferences, and attitudes. This chapter will focus on three moments in the development of survey research: the proliferation of the straw poll in mid nineteenth-century America, the vital period between 1930 and 1950 across several national settings, and contemporary debates over the uses of opinion research in a democratic state.

The meaning of the term “public opinion” itself is tied to historical circumstances, as are methods for measuring it. These days, we have all become accustomed to the constant flow of polling data in our mass media, and to their underlying assumption – that public opinion can be defined as the aggregation of individual opinions. But public opinion has not always been conceptualized or measured in an aggregative fashion. For example, Jacques Necker (1732–1804), the finance minister of France, proposed that public opinion was equivalent to the “spirit of society.” Public opinion was a wise court, embedded in communication and conversation, which made societies stable, rising up slowly and rationally when necessary in response to important events. Necker viewed the salons of the period (elite drawing-room discussions of politics, art, and religion) as manifestations and indicators of public opinion – a far cry from the polls and surveys of today.