Fishkin collab deliberation
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</font></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/a-rigorous-experiment-in-deliberative-polling-finds-civil-discourse-over-civil-war"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/a-rigorous-experiment-in-deliberative-polling-finds-civil-discourse-over-civil-war</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A rigorous experiment in ‘deliberative polling’ finds civil discourse over ‘civil war’</font></div><div>
</div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Paul Rosenberg / Salon October 6, 2019</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Just
as Donald Trump’s fears of impeachment were leading him to tweet
threats about “civil war,” a real-life microcosm of the American
electorate that gathered just outside Dallas, dubbed “America in One
Room,” has produced a diametrically opposite picture of highly
functional civic dialogue. “By the end of their time there, they
referred to each other as friends,” one facilitator, Amy Carl, said of
her group of 14 people.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Think “New England town meeting” rather than “civil war.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Even
with our differences in opinion, we were able to constructively
converse, to be polite to one another,” said Raymond, an older white man
from Colorado. “I really believed our country was divided — I don’t
believe that anymore.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But
it wasn’t just a feel-good exercise, although 98.2% found it
“valuable.” Suggestions that entertainment would be needed to break
things up were politely ignored. Instead, there were reams of briefing
materials to digest, informative large-group plenary sessions with
experts on exciting subjects like tax policy, intensive deliberations in
small groups of 14 or 15 people, like the one Carl facilitated, and
rigorous polling before and after, with a control group for comparison.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">All
the polling, as well as recruitment, was done by NORC at the University
of Chicago, one of the oldest public opinion research institutions in
America, drawing on its 35,000-household AmeriSpeak Panel, through a
multi-step selection process. It’s arguably the best-curated polling
panel in America. NORC did preliminary polling to identify the issues
covered as well.</font></div><div>
</div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In short, it was a rigorous experiment in democracy, testing the soundness of the process called “<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">deliberative polling,” which Stanford political scientist James Fishkin first came up with more than 30 years ago,</span>
and which has been used more than 100 times around the world. (See
previous Salon story here.) This effort was perhaps the most ambitious
ever, made possible with sponsorship from the Helena Foundation. which
focuses on identifying solutions for significant societal problems.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">“We
have a control group that didn’t change appreciably at all on the
issues,” Fishkin told Salon, while the America in One Room participants
“changed dramatically.” He added, “This is a pilot for a more
substantive form of public opinion, and a more substantive form of
democracy.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“There
are thousands and thousands of polls that show what the public is
thinking when it’s not thinking,” Fishkin said. “Because most of the
time the public’s not thinking very much, and my colleagues wrongly
conclude that the public is not capable of dealing with complicated
important issues.” But that’s mistaken, he believes.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“They
are certainly capable, they just normally don’t do it, because they
think their voice doesn’t matter, and they know everybody’s trying to
manipulate them. They’re ‘rationally ignorant,’ they’ve got other things
to do with their time,” Fishkin explained. ”So if there’s so many polls
showing what the public is not thinking, why not have some that show
what they would think and insert that into the public dialogue and the
policy process?”</font></div><div>
</div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“We
got very considerable movements in each of the five issue areas,”
Fishkin noted, even though some skeptics thought that five issues would
be too much, that “the public would just be overwhelmed — you’ll get
absolutely nothing.” Instead, it turned out just as Fishkin’s theory and
past experience predicted, even perhaps exceeding his expectations.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On
the question of undocumented immigrants being “forced to return to
their home countries before applying to legally come to the U.S.,” for
example, Republican support dropped from 78.7% before deliberations to
40.3% afterwards — a shift so dramatic it surprised even Fishkin.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“My
expectation about that was that the support and the opposition was
entrenched by this point,” he said. “So to get a big change in
Republican support on that issue is just stunning.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There
were also drops on the Democratic side — support for “baby bonds,” a
key plank in Sen. Cory Booker’s presidential campaign, dropped
dramatically from 61.6% to 21.3%. Aside from that, none of them matched
the largest GOP shifts on immigration-related proposals. On a set of
five immigration policies, Republican views shifted an average of just
over 30 points, while the average Democratic shift was just half that on
a set of five economic issues, which included Medicare for All and free
public college for those who can’t afford it.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“I
think what happened is they listened to the other side,” Fishkin said
of the GOP immigration shifts. “Of course there were also children of
immigrants and other immigrants in some of the rooms,” he added, “But
most importantly, they listened to the other side of the argument, and
they thought about the consequences.” They also learned some facts. By
far the largest knowledge gain was the increased percentage who could
correctly identify the number of undocumented immigrants in the U.S.
(roughly 10 million). That percentage rose from 20.5% to 74%, accounting
for roughly half the total knowledge gain across seven items.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><b>
</b></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>“The
most polarizing proposals, whether from the left or the right,
generally lost support, and a number of more centrist proposals moved to
the foreground,</b>” as the executive summary of the event noted. But
the shifts were somewhat asymmetrical, as noted above, and the more
centrist proposals tended center-left. Support for Medicare for All
dropped by 7.6% overall (13.5% among Democrats) to 39.9%, while support
for repealing the Affordable Care Act dropped by 9.2% (20.9% among
Republicans) to 25.6%. Support for a Medicare buy-in rose almost 4
points (similarly among Democrats) from 67.3% to 71.2%.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Similarly,
support for taxing income above $2 million at a higher tax rate rose
slightly from 70.4% to 71.8%. On the statement, “Cooperation between the
countries of the world is necessary to fight climate change,” agreement
rose from 80.4% to 92.9% overall (which is pretty much “mom and apple
pie” territory), and from 65.2 to 89.4% among Republicans.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Those
numbers highlight something else: There was bipartisan support for some
“far left” positions as Fox News would have it, even before
deliberations began. And not just on those that were on the official
menu.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div>
</div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In
the very first group discussion, which was just supposed to be a meet
and greet occasion, gun control came up. Carl joked, “I had a moment of,
‘Oh my God! I don’t want to do this! I do not want to have this
conversation with these people I do not know, that I am trying to
establish rapport with.’” But to her “delight and surprise,” she said,
“the group went around the table and immediately came to a consensus
that guns should be should be regulated like cars.” In this case, the
preconceived division lines didn’t need to be bridged, since they didn’t
exist in the first place.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>As
noted above, Fishkin has been promoting deliberative polling for over
30 years, and has a long string of success stories he can point to.</b>
But this approach has yet to receive the kind of broad acceptance that
its track record so clearly deserves. The reasons may reflect a deeper
sociopolitical reality: Fishkin’s idea was first floated in the late
1980s, roughly coinciding with two other proposals I highlighted in my
earlier story that share in common a concern for giving common citizens a
greater voice. The timing of all three roughly corresponded with an
early wave of mass discontent, reflect in the popular independent
candidacy of Ross Perot in 1992. But that discontent was largely not
shared by elites — a situation that has now changed.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Elites
as much as anyone else now seem to realize there are profound problems
with our democracy. This awareness lag can be explained in terms of
Peter Turchin’s “structural demographic theory” (Salon story here),
which explains why elite distress tends to lag behind mass immiseration
by about a generation or so across civilizations and centuries. Solving
the problems we face is far from a given, but an end to denial is a
start.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Still,
elite intransigence, and the tendency to blame-shift onto the mass
public remain serious impediments. One such strain of thought is
reflected in the idea that “human brains aren’t built for self-rule,” as
Politico recently summarized the argument of a controversial paper
that nonetheless echoes a widespread preoccupation with the failures of
democracy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But
the problem isn’t individual citizens, Fishkin argues, it’s the lack of
proper settings in which democracy can flourish. America in One Room
vividly shows what he means, and the results it produced should
influence the 2020 campaign — that’s one reason it was held when it was,
months ahead of the Iowa caucuses. But this was less an answer in and
of itself than a high-profile proof of concept, meant to inspire
emulation and repetition, both throughout the election cycle and beyond.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“It’s
very obvious there are problems with liberal democracy in the world,”
said Henry Elkus, Helena’s founder and CEO. “There is not in our
discourse, politically, a space where the will of the American people
can actually be ascertained or understood.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“From
my standpoint as a democratic theorist, the whole point of democracy is
to connect the will of the people with what is actually done,” Fishkin
said. But that’s easier said than done.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“On
a debate stage there’s only 30 seconds or 40 seconds per candidate for
them to get their point across,” Elkus noted. “They aren’t able to have a
nuanced discussion about the issues, because there’s not enough time.”
With a nod to Fishkin’s “rational ignorance,” he made a similar point
about citizens. “If you’re a coal miner in West Virginia, you simply
don’t have the time to sit with a strategic briefing document and
understand with nuance what your beliefs are on NAFTA. You have to put
food on the table,” Elkus said. “<b>There are simply not platforms for
folks to come together and understand what they actually believe about
the critical issues,. This event is a direct antidote to that.”</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Helena
is a new model foundation, not focused on any particular subject area,
Elkus explained. “Our purpose is to do individual, one-by-one projects.
The one goal of the organization for these projects is to identify
societal problems we feel should be solved and have feasible solutions,
find those solutions, turn them into these projects, and then do
whatever is necessary to make the project successful.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">For
Helena’s first project, “We identified and helped launch the first-ever
technology that can suck carbon dioxide out of the air, and then sell
it as a product in order to fight climate change,” Elkus explained. The
second project was to protect the national electric grid from multiple
forms of threat. Helena sees America in One Room as a way to
significantly improve democracy both immediately, in this election
cycle, and long-term at every level of government.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Not
only can the deliberative polling results influence political campaigns
and the media, the questions asked by participants can help as well —
along the lines of the “public agenda” model for campaign coverage, long
championed by NYU’s Jay Rosen as a substance-based alternative to the
media’s horse-race model. The full model calls for media organizations
to investigate what questions their audience wants candidates to answer,
and to ground their coverage in that. Doing it properly calls for an
intense front-end investment, but America in One Room provides a
virtually no-cost approximation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">NORC’s
preliminary poll identified the issue areas of greatest public concern.
Then, in the process itself, the small groups came up with questions
they posed to experts in the plenary sessions.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Those
questions were “astoundingly good,” said Helena’s COO and executive
director, Sam Feinburg. They were “very nuanced, very detailed, very
on-the-nose, not ‘gotcha’ questions. Almost every single one of our
speakers remarked on how high-quality the questions were.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Helena
is already talking to CNN and the New York Times about using those
questions for the next round of Democratic primary debates, since “a
representative sample of the country came together to decide that these
are the most important things we the American people want to hear the
answers to.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Beyond
that, this model is producing data on something “far more important
than the short-term, ‘Who’s going to be president?’-type data,” Elkus
said. “It’s producing data on ‘What are the fundamental beliefs of our
country?’ And that data doesn’t really spoil like milk. Whether a
representative sample of the entire country believes America should be
interventionist as a foreign policy power — whether we should be the
global police force or not — is permanently important data. It’s going
to be permanently important data next November, but also the November
after that.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Elkus
and Feinburg are both in their early 20s. “We are about to go through a
lifetime of critical changes in the world, and our country is going to
be at the helm of those changes one way or the other, whether negative
or positive,” Elkus said. “The data that this event produces will be
very important to how America is going to tackle or not tackle climate
change. How it’s going to handle climate refugees, how it deals with
China, and ongoing shifts in global power in the decades to come. These
are the critical issues of my generation. We’re doing this event to
understand what the American public believes about those critical
points.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At
the same time, Helena isn’t looking to this one event for all the
answers. “There should be a deliberative democracy poll of the entire
country every quarter, four times a year,” Feinburg said. “The American
people should be advised on what the American people believe on the
issues all the time. We should be as a country acting upon the best
information we can, and every other country should have this kind of
process as well.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>In the meantime, Fishkin has also been involved in developing a streamlined version. “</b>A
cheaper way of doing it is to do the deliberate poll online and we have
done some deliverables online using video-based software,” Fishkin
said. “You have 300 people in the plenary session and you have 20 small
groups of 15 people, and you see everybody in your small groups, and we
go through one, two or three days in the same way as we do
face-to-face.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While
balanced, representative samples are essential for polling purposes,
the deliberative process is actually somewhat distinct. There was no way
for a 15-person small group to be representative of the whole country.
So the essentials required for deliberation to work were less rigorous.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The
experimental treatment if you will, is a moderated discussion with
diverse others in a context where you have good information and can get
your questions answered,” Fishkin said. “That’s a mouthful, but that
doesn’t require a random sample, it just requires diversity… . So with
that insight, we’ve been talking about spreading the deliberation to
much larger numbers in order to allow the deliberation to change opinion
right now.”</font></div><div><b><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></b></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Working with engineering colleagues at Stanford, they’ve developed special software with an automated moderator function</b>.
“So we could do thousands or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands
of these groups,” Fishkin said. “We hope to scale this sometime during
this presidential election on the issues, maybe using some of the same
briefing materials, and use social media to recruit diverse others,”
using an algorithm to create politically and demographically diverse
small groups.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In
the meantime, Amy Carl reflected on perhaps the most basic takeaway
from the experience. “We are not as woefully divided and beyond hope as
we are made out to be,” she said. “I really feel that in my bones. I
think if people are forced to step out of their bubbles, their comfort
zones, people would be amazed at how fundamentally not different we
are.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">==</font></div>