Word: fishkin
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Enter the man who may have finally invented a better mousetrap: political scientist James Fishkin, chairman of the government department at the University of Texas. He calls his innovative method for bridging the chasm between electors and the elected "a deliberative opinion poll." The voters will get a chance to see how it works on national public television next January...
...Fishkin begins with a telling critique of political polling, the main tool that the candidates and their handlers use to divine the will of the voters. As he argues in his forthcoming book, Democracy and Deliberation (Yale University Press; $17.95), "On many issues, about four out of five citizens do not have stable . . . opinions; they have what the political psychologists call 'non-attitudes' or 'pseudo-opinions.' " Fishkin's point is that traditional sampling does not allow those polled to discuss the issues, nor do the polltakers provide more than cursory information. The result, all too often, is a statistically impeccable...