Keywords: pubemocracylic opinion, polls,

A fundamental expectation in a representative democracy is that elected officials and policymakers will take public opinion into account when formulating new laws and policies or when considering whether to revise them. For empirical social scientists, this can raise questions about how public opinion is measured and the interpretation of citizens’ attitudes about how it might be useful in such processes. At the start of the public polling industry, Gallup and Rae (1943) suggested the regular collection of public opinion data with polls between elections would serve an important role in informing elected officials and policymakers about public preferences.
Earlier work (Traugott 2003) identified two dimensions of public interest in polls – learning about what other citizens think about important issues of the day as well as informing government officials about their preferences. These two dimensions were only mildly correlated. In a 2024 data collection, the measurement of these two sets of attitudes was replicated. A measure of Interest in Others’ Opinions and of Government Attention to Polls were identified with modest correlation between them, and the correlates of each measure were studied in terms of personal demographic characteristics; attitudes like personal efficacy, party identification, and affective political polarization; and a general belief in the reliability of polls and an understanding of how polls are conducted. These findings will be presented and discussed.