Interview with Mervin Field - Insights on Polling and Public Opinion From a Master

Many of us dream of becoming the best at whatever we choose to do. Pollsters, especially those of us who conduct surveys of voters for news organizations, know that our work will be scrutinized for accuracy and compared with the results of each election.

Last year, Nate Silver, a respected political analyst whose 538 blog does a great job of breaking down polling and election numbers, conducted an extensive nationwide analysis that measured the comparative accuracy of thousands of political polls since 1998. In the #1 spot was the Field (California) Poll, which has long been the gold standard for measuring the opinions of Golden State residents.

The poll's founder, Mervin Field, now 90 and still involved with the poll's preparation and anal ysis, graciously agreed to be our first special guest on Informed & Engaged. A longtime resident of Tiburon, California, Mr. Field gave I & E an interview on the deck of his home, which overlooks a scenic lagoon off San Francisco Bay.

When I asked how it felt to be rated #1, at least by Mr. Silver's measurement, he replied with a mix of modesty and pride that typifies how he handles his well-established professional renown: "Well, there really wasn't much difference between first and many of the others." But you could also tell that he was proud of the results, though he expressed it in his usual understated way.

His self-deprecating humor was on full display when describing his brief high school baseball career as a backup outfielder and first baseman: "One day I was sent into a game to replace our injured first baseman, Murph McCarthy. In two innings, I made three errors and that was it." Fortunately, he found other worthwhile interests to pursue.

Born in New Brunswick, New Jersey in 1921, Mr. Field became interested in survey research early in life when as a teenager, he went to work for Dr. George Gallup at his pioneering polling firm, then located over a 5 & 10 cents store in Princeton, New Jersey. He said his work as an interviewer for the Gallup organization helped him to learn about public opinion and some of the factors that can cause inaccurate survey results.

This was in the early era of modern-day survey research, before enough households had telephones to make surveying people that way, a viable option. He explained that back then, "Survey questionnaires were mailed to resident interviewers in fifty or so randomly selected areas. Each was expected to conduct about twenty in-person interviews." He wryly noted the need to be watchful for signs of interviewer fatigue: "Believing they were hearing the same opinions over and over, a few would just fill out some of the questionnaires themselves."

In 1945, after his service in the merchant marine during World War II, he founded the research firm that still bears his name, at first with a partner in Los Angeles. In 1948, he moved to the Bay Area where his San Francisco-based firm became well known its for high-quality research conducted for news organizations and other entities. 

Though playful and engaging in manner, Mr. Field takes seriously the benefits that well-executed polls can have on our society. "Systematic public opinion polling is one of the greatest social inventions of the twentieth century.  Election polls get a lot of attention and frequently are misused, and occasionally manipulated. However, in the day-to-day function of our society, properly conducted, unbiased and objective polls provide an important link between the public and its governmental, business, and institutional leaders."

When asked what he thought were some of the most important factors that went into conducting an accurate poll, he mentioned "experience" first. He went on to explain that "you learn by making a lot of mistakes", and that it was critical to develop "the ability to detect unintended bias", which could influence a poll's results from things such as the wording or ordering of questions.

Field Research still employs rigorous practices that some polling firms have abandoned due to cost or the pressure to get polls done quickly, in order to meet the demands of the 24/7 news cycle. This includes taking time- and labor-intensive steps like making repeated call-backs to those respondents who were unavailable on the first call, increasing the likelihood that the sample of people who take part in a survey, is representative of the entire population in the area or group being polled.

Mr. Field credits poll director Mark DiCamillo for maintaining the poll's high standards and accuracy. Mr. DiCamillo, who has been with Field Research 33 years, is widely recognized for his professionalism and skill as a survey methodologist.  He and his assistants are backed by a full-time staff of 30 professionals and operations people. Though some competitors outsource the actual interviewing to other firms in the U.S. and abroad, Field Research maintains its own large interviewing facility and state of the art data processing capabilities.

Asked what he thought had changed the most about public opinion over the years, Mr. Field said he felt that "Voters are more enlightened now." He went on to explain that "with barriers such as gender and race going down," he viewed political correctness as "a sign of progress."

Somewhat wistfully, he added: "People are losing the ability to weigh and evaluate sources from different points of view." He noted that although there are now vastly more resources from which to obtain information, many people tend to use only those whose point of view they agreed with, reinforcing their existing beliefs and biases.

He put it best when I asked if there was anything else he would like to say to the worldwide audience of the Internet. He paused thoughtfully for a few seconds, then said something I think should be food for thought for all of us:

"In order for us to survive, we have to adapt to a way of looking at all sides of questions, and don't take the easy way out by just listening to one point of view or ideology. Keep an open mind, question authority. No one person, group, or political party has all the answers. The answers come from evaluating evidence that may be conflicting."

Where to Find the Links Between Money and Politics

"A government for protecting business only, is but a carcass, and soon falls by its own corruption and decay" - Amos Bronson Alcott (Educator, Writer 1799 - 1888)

In order to help reduce the influence special interest groups have on lawmakers, the single most important step individuals can take is to learn more about which groups are financially supporting the candidates they’ll be voting on.

Recent US Supreme Court decisions now effectively permit anonymous and unlimited campaign contributions. As critics feared, this has set off a whole new political arms race.

But even though an increasing percentage of campaign contributions are more difficult to identify, it is still no secret where a lot of money and free everything comes from and goes to. Though they are by no means the only good sources for learning about the financial links between interest groups and candidates, the websites below do an outstanding job of making those connections:

OpenSecrets.org does a great job of categorizing campaign contributions made to those running for President and Congress.

FollowtheMoney.org provides similar summary information on candidates for statewide offices, state legislative seats and ballot measures.

Legistorm.com is the go to site to see which Members of Congress accept the most free travel and gifts from special interests and foreign governments. All of these websites also provide other vital information about money and politics.

Summarizing campaign contributions into categories is important because otherwise the information would be meaningless to the average voter. Here are two links to the type of summary information available on opensecrets.org. Clicking on Barack Obama will let you see which industries or groups were his biggest contributors in his 2008 Presidential campaign. This John McCain link shows the same information for his campaign. Pretty straightforward, right?

Now [here] is a link to the California Secretary of State website. Pick any candidate and see if you can figure out the same summary information we saw on opensecrets.org. This would be very time consuming because the contributions are listed individually and in multiple reports. It would be like trying to describe what a beach looks like one grain of sand at a time.

In the ancient times before the Internet, when a news organization wanted to analyze the main sources of a candidate's campaign contributions, they had to send reporters into the bowels of government buildings armed with adding machines for days at a time.

That's why websites like the ones I mentioned are so valuable today. Unfortunately, most voters don't know about them. Also, many believe that all politicians are captives of special interests so examining which industries or groups support a particular candidate to them seems unnecessary.

It is unnecessary, as long as we don't mind more of the same special interest-driven policies that got us here. But if we want representatives who are less indebted to special interests, checking out who financially supports candidates must become a more important part of our election decision-making.

Money and Politics: Who are Some of the Big Special Interest Groups?

"Politics: A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage." - Ambrose Bierce (Journalist, Writer 1842 - 1913)

Since this blog will focus a great deal on money in politics, you have a right to know exactly whom I'm talking about when I refer to special interest groups.

Actually, it's not the special interests that are at the heart of our political problems. Ever since early civilizations began, people quite naturally have been looking out for their own hides. It's not hard to imagine the back-cave dealings between those who controlled access to the local water supply and tribal leaders who no doubt found a way to channel a little extra flow into their personal cisterns.

There have always been people or groups seeking to influence government for their personal gain. The problem today is soliciting campaign contributions and doing the bidding of special interests has become lawmakers’ main focus. Meanwhile the huge problems facing the country and most Americans are ignored.

So while acknowledging that the demand for campaign donations and other perks is largely driven by lawmakers, let's nonetheless pull back the curtain and see who some of the biggest contributors are.

Click [here] and you'll see a list of the interest groups that, according to the Center for Responsive Politics [opensecrets.org], donated the most money to those running for President and Congress in the 2011 - 2012 election cycle.

In just the first ten months of this period, the finance, insurance and real estate industries made over 120 million dollars in contributions to candidates for federal offices. And that is just from those industries, for only part of one non-election year.

So it is hardly surprising that we have laws that overwhelmingly favor large banks and others in this group, usually at consumers' expense.

But if we look around a little further on opensecrets.org, we'll see that big corporate interests are not the only ones investing a lot of money into our political system. Clicking [here] will bring up a list of individual groups or companies that as opensecrets.org calls them, have been the heavy hitters when it comes to making campaign contributions since 1989.

As you'll see, most, but not all of the top 15 in this group are unions or groups likely to be sympathetic to the concerns of labor. In that light, it is not surprising that many experts feel the pension obligations made to some public employees are unaffordable and are a ticking time bomb for many municipalities and states.

This is another example of how special interests with very diverse interests can receive favorable treatment from lawmakers dependent on them for large contributions and other forms of support.

Don't get me wrong. Everyone should have the right to petition or lobby their representatives and donate to whomever they like. The problem is lobbying government officials has become an entire industry, with a huge revolving door shuttling lobbyists into public office and public officials into lobbying jobs.

Can you believe there was actually talk a few years ago, about lobbying firms going public? What would their stock market ticker symbols have been, GFT, CRK, INF? Thank goodness, there's a three-character limit. Spelling out graft, crooks or influence would probably have been bad for business.

That's all for me right now. However, it's worth a few minutes of your time to become familiar with websites like opensecrets.org, followthemoney.org and legistorm.com. They tell the story well, if we're willing to listen, learn and act.

Fixing America's Political System — Where Do We Begin?

"I never vote for anybody, I always vote against." --- W.C. Fields

Where to begin in order to make America's political system function more like the founders had in mind? There are no easy answers but I'll take my swing at ringing the reform bell by identifying the three biggest challenges I think we need to address:

•    Reducing the influence of money in politics
•    Reducing the importance of political parties in decision-making
•    Reducing the level of apathy and anger many have towards politics and government

Notice I say reduce rather than eliminate, because realistically, a reduction is probably the best we can hope for. I also say we need to address because if we want meaningful political reform, then we, as voters, need to be better informed and reconsider our priorities for evaluating candidates.

Let's face it, special interest money will always find a way to ooze under capitol doors. Many will cling to political parties to avoid having to think for themselves, and there will never be a highly rated TV show based on Americans' love of politics and government.

But knowing voters are paying more attention would give elected officials a reason to pause before casting votes that could be seen as harmful to constituents. They might also become more fearful of the consequences of accepting large contributions and freebies from special interests.

On this blog, I'm going to conduct an ongoing Consumer Politics 101. We'll look at these and other problems with the goal of identifying specific steps individuals can take do something about them. I also want to show people how they can follow the political debate without taking up a lot of their time.

We'll do this through several means:

•    Posts that explain how critical parts of our political system work or are supposed to work
•    Links to informative news stories about special interests and the actions of lawmakers that benefit contributors or enrich themselves
•    Providing a road map to great websites (which many are unaware of) that connect the dots between money and politics
•    Online quizzes you can take to make sure you are not living in a current events blackout zone
•    Interviews with those in the political know to whom you will also be able to post questions
•    And written posts or short videos that take you behind the scenes to see how things really work in the political world

The focus of this blog will be different than that of most other political analysis or commentary. While I believe there are some significant differences between the two major parties, the bigger problem that makes government so dysfunctional is the institutional corruption that has become an entire industry.

Making the endless solicitation of campaign contributions from special interests politically unacceptable behavior, and shuttering the revolving door between elected officials and lobbyists, are both important prerequisites to achieving meaningful political change in the U.S.

I'm not undertaking this to convince anyone with deeply held views that they are right or wrong about any specific issue, candidate, political party, or ideology. Rather, it is intended for people with busy lives and open minds who would like to be better informed and come to their own conclusions.

This blog's for you! Thanks!