The Advent of the Citizen Consumer Opinion Polls and Electoral Experts on Radio and Television in the Netherlands (1965-1989)
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The Advent of the Citizen Consumer Opinion Polls and Electoral Experts on Radio and Television in the Netherlands (1965-1989) Fons Meijer 1 Figure 1: ‘Liesbeth told me this morning: if opinion polls had to keep you up at night, you would never sleep again in your life…’ Cartoon of PvdA leader Joop den Uyl in Het Vrije Volk of 8 January 1986. Research Master Thesis Historical, Literary and Cultural Studies 2015-2017 Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen 20 October 2017 Student: Fons Meijer (s4268253) Supervisor/First Assessor: dr. Harm Kaal Second Assessor: prof. dr. Huub Wijfjes (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen) Word Count (without references): 25167 2 Contents Introduction: Between the Mediatisation and the Scientisation of the Political ...................................... 5 Introduction ......................................................................................................................................... 5 The Bielefelder approach and the culture of elections ........................................................................ 6 The mediatisation of the political ........................................................................................................ 9 The scientisation of the political........................................................................................................ 11 Research question, methodology, and sources .................................................................................. 13 Research outline ................................................................................................................................ 16 1. The Scientisation of the Political in International Perspective .......................................................... 18 Introduction ....................................................................................................................................... 18 The arrival of the sample survey ....................................................................................................... 18 The appropriation of opinion research in Europe .............................................................................. 19 Embedding electoral research in Dutch politics ................................................................................ 20 The early appropriation of opinion polls by the printed media ......................................................... 22 Concluding remarks .......................................................................................................................... 25 2. Broadcasting Electoral Research on Radio and Television ............................................................... 26 Introduction ....................................................................................................................................... 26 Narrating political crisis .................................................................................................................... 26 Broadcasters commissioning their own polls .................................................................................... 30 Professionalisation and institutionalisation ....................................................................................... 32 Polls as entertainment ........................................................................................................................ 35 The debacle of 1986 and thereafter ................................................................................................... 37 Concluding remarks .......................................................................................................................... 40 3. Nieuw Links and the Disclosure of Electoral Research .................................................................... 42 Introduction ....................................................................................................................................... 42 Implementing progressive politics .................................................................................................... 42 Nieuw Links and the use of electoral research .................................................................................. 44 Marcel van Dam and the exit poll ..................................................................................................... 45 Nieuws Links and VARA .................................................................................................................. 48 The NIPO/In de Rooie Haan surveys ................................................................................................ 50 Concluding remarks .......................................................................................................................... 51 4. Establishing Expertise Status, the case of Maurice de Hond ............................................................ 52 Introduction ....................................................................................................................................... 52 Experts in an expert society ............................................................................................................... 52 Electoral experts before Maurice de Hond ........................................................................................ 54 Establishing authority ........................................................................................................................ 56 3 Attracting audiences .......................................................................................................................... 59 Overcoming failure ............................................................................................................................ 61 Concluding remarks .......................................................................................................................... 63 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................. 64 Bibliography .......................................................................................................................................... 69 Summary ............................................................................................................................................... 78 Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................................... 79 List of Abbreviations ............................................................................................................................. 80 4 Introduction: Between the Mediatisation and the Scientisation of the Political Introduction The past year has been tough on the image of political opinion polling. In June 2016, the citizens of the United Kingdom went to the polls to decide about their country’s future in the EU referendum. The eventual Leave-vote did not only leave many Remain campaigners dazzled, it was also a bitter pill to swallow for the British pollsters: only 55 out of 168 opinion polls carried out after the announcement of the referendum predicted this outcome correctly.1 Less than six months later, the same happened in the United States, when most pollsters were not able to foresee that Republican candidate Donald Trump, and not Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, would be elected President.2 The events of November 2016 sparked a fierce debate about the role and reliability of polling. Do polls serve a purpose when the electorate is too evasive to measure? Or should the mass media be more careful and critical when it comes to covering polls, by paying more attention to the margin of error or by emphasising that polls are snapshots and not predictions? These questions were also topic of debate in Dutch news media. Newspaper NRC Handelsblad critically reflected on the nature of opinion research in a two-page article, while VARA talk show De Wereld Draait Door subjected its ‘celebrity’ pollster Maurice de Hond to a ferocious interrogation by political commentator Sywert van Lienden.3 The editors probably had not forgotten about the aftermath of the parliamentary elections of 2012, when numerous observers accused the mass media of influencing the election outcome by boosting a competition between Mark Rutte (leader of the right-wing Liberal party VVD) and Diederik Samsom (leader of the Social Democratic party PvdA). It was later also argued by media scholars that polls had played an indispensable role in this competition narrative. They pointed out the fact that recurring surveys, which showed the margin between the party leaders was too close to call, had encouraged voters to vote for one party to prevent the leader of the other party ending up being Prime Minister.4 In the run-up to the 2017 elections several media outlets changed their policies on reporting on polls and allegedly developed a more critical attitude towards opinion polls. Several news channels, such as state broadcaster NOS and NRC Handelsblad, announced that they would limit the use of polls in their coverage of the elections campaign. This way, the news media sought to avoid not 1 Pamela Duncan, ‘How the pollsters got it wrong on the EU referendum’, The Guardian (24 June 2016), <https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/24/how-eu-referendum-pollsters-wrong-opinion-predict- close> (consulted on 26 September 2017). 2 Jim Rutenberg, ‘A “Dewey Defeats Truman” Lesson for the Digital Age’, The New