Opinion Polls across Boundaries: The Early History of Northwestern European Opinion Polling beyond National Borders and Disciplinary Frameworks

This article focuses on the early history of Northwestern European opinion polling (1940s–1950s), specifically the cases of the Netherlands and Sweden. The evolution of opinion polling and its influence on post-war politics and society should be understood in light of processes of international transfer and entanglement. The Dutch-Swedish comparison brings into focus the ways in which the national experiences of the Second World War influenced how opinion pollsters discursively linked the practice to ideas about democracy. Furthermore, the article highlights entanglements across the boundaries of science, as commercial survey methods were picked up by social scientists, and across national borders, as opinion pollsters across Western Europe were in frequent contact with each other.