Issue Attention in Public Opinion Polls: Pollsters as Agenda Responders and Agenda Setters

ABSTRACT Polling organizations, like other policy actors, must prioritize certain issues. We argue that, for normative and financial reasons, pollsters prioritize issues that are viewed as important by other institutions and the public, leading them to focus survey questions on issues that are on congressional and media agendas, and which are public priorities. We also argue that it is possible that polling issue agendas shape the issue attention of those actors. Which issues pollsters survey and whether they lead or follow other institutions has important implications for understanding agenda setting, representation, and the use of poll results in research. Thus, we examine which issues are more likely to be surveyed and whether polling agendas predict or respond to the issue agendas of the New York Times, the U.S. Congress, and public priorities. The analysis uses an automated approach to code over 600,000 survey questions fielded from 1980 to 2015 into Comparative Agendas Project topic codes. We find wide disparities in how much attention polling organizations devote to different types of issues. While relationships are generally small, we also find evidence that topics in polls respond to public issue priorities, while also preceding issue attention in Congress and the New York Times.