(The comment was first published on Agendamagasin.no)
“I have no explanation for that,” the Labor Party leader Jonas Gahr Støre recently answered NRK questions about the party’s low turnout. The State channel has looked at all the polls since Støre took over the leadership position. In February 2015, Ap was above 40 per cent, while turnout this spring has been between 23 and 25 per cent.
It is refreshing to read an interview with a party leader who replies “don’t know”
“If I had the button or measure that showed you do it, you get 26, 29, 31, 33 percent, so believe me, I had pressed that button. The policy is not so. Here it is business cycles. Things are changing. I believe that it is hard work, results that you build up over time, that gives you confidence. ”
No one can predict the future, fortunately, so there is no reason to guess the outcome of the election next fall, especially not in an emergency like now. But it is refreshing to read an interview with a party leader who answers “don’t know”, who insists on stamina and that it is the party’s policy that lays the groundwork for his work.
Namely, it is often the polls that determine what politicians mean and that actually change their policies as well
Because according to a new study in the journal American Journal of Political Science, it is often the opinion polls that decide what politicians mean, and that actually change their policies as well. This is something we have suspected for a while, but now it is confirmed in a comprehensive study from Germany.
Read the comment: On the other side of the corona
Author and political scientist Henrik Thune took this development on pulse in his essay “The Triumph of the Moment” from 2015, where he showed how the media set the agenda for what politicians should think. We are in a time where “political parties are no longer strategic social laboratories, and where politicians and ministers hire hundreds of communications advisors, and look for the news, from case to case, from moment to moment,” he wrote.
The material in the German survey consists of thousands of speeches, press releases, interviews and 125 polls over four years, and shows specifically how politicians in Angela Merkel’s government constellation change their speeches and politics, after reading a poll which shows that people are more concerned with asylum and immigration policy.
Divide politicians into two types: Those in charge and those in charge
This has led the two researchers behind the report, Anselm Hager and Hanno Hilbig, to divide politicians into two types: those who lead and those who are led. The leader does not change his opinions but tries to convince the voters, while the other variant tries to satisfy the voters by assuming what they want to hear.
The German chancellor belongs to the latter group, according to the researchers – and Merkel has systematically tried to put rhetoric and politics at the center: “Angela Merkel and her ministers are listening to what the people want, and then they say something similar”, they say in an interview with Weekendavisen.
Read the comment: One country, two realities
After all, everyone cannot be at the center, because then voters will have no reason to vote for one over the other
But everyone cannot be at the center, because then the voters have no reason to vote for one over the other. And society can suffer long-term harm. “Governments and ministers are measured primarily in terms of compelling communication and short-term measures, not implementation and long-term. Politics that are irrational in the long run make political sense. Politics that are rational in the long run become politically pointless, ”writes Thune, citing the climate threat as an obvious example.
The change that is needed is going to hurt here and now, and at that price not many politicians are willing to pay, here and now. Better to leave it to the next generation of leaders. And so on.
Politics that are irrational in the long run make political sense
Therefore, Støre is right that it is wise to start at home. The Labor Party was actually well underway in the New Year. In mid-January, Storting representative Arild Grande gave the site frifagbevegelse.no an interview under the headline: “The Labor Party will listen more to workers”. Then the question naturally arises: Who did they listen to earlier then, at the expense of workers? Polls? Media? Downtown?
In the New Year, snus should at least shoot. Arild Grande is part of a project where they will have “listening posts at every workplace in every community”, which will be “the ears and eyes of the party”.
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Grande turns to a sports metaphor to explain why adversity fans have been missing lately, especially after the conflict over the EU Energy Union (Acer): The team gap has been too great. “If it happens to a football team, you let go of goals. Now we’re putting in a big device to get listening posts out in the workplaces and in communities just to catch up on such issues early, “Grande said.
It opens a space for opposition politicians and parties who want to lead instead of being led.
But then a pandemic got in the way and those who were supposed to be listening posts have become unemployed.
Prime Minister Erna Solberg’s role model is Angela Merkel, who is thus best at turning her head around the wind. It opens a space for opposition politicians and parties who want to lead instead of being led. In that case, you might find that opinion polls can change most when you ignore them at best.
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