I agree with the importance of “choosing the right avenue.” I still don’t think public opinion polling is very useful for that purpose (especially if some polling data is already available). In fact, I think public opinion polling would have been unlikely to clearly identify the key issues because the general public has much less pronounced and well-informed opinions than politicians and other stakeholders.
At least for Swiss initiatives, getting reactions/opinions from the responsible legislative body and the people they trust (like local charities in this case) seems much more useful because it shapes the legislative bodies’ official recommendation to voters. I think it was a mistake not to do more of that type of stakeholder engagement in the early stages of the initiative, and that mistake almost led to a complete failure of the initiative.
Also noteworthy: Talking to local politicians is much cheaper still than doing public opinion polls (costs a couple of hours rather than thousands of dollars plus a lot of work to get the polling right).
That said, I think doing some polling before launching an initiative could also be somewhat helpful.
Thanks for your response. I think I should make clear (as I really didn’t do in my initial post) that I mean my comment more broadly: when EAs think about doing ballot initiatives, they should strongly consider doing public opinion polling. In a setting where an EA advocacy group is trying to select (a) which of X effective policies to advocate and (b) in which of Y locales to advocate it, it seems (to me, at least) that polling is cost-effective, since choosing between X*Y potentially large number of independent options is a nontrivial problem that requires a rigorous approach.
In your setting, however (making the binary choice of whether or not to advocate for policy P in location L), I understand why you chose the strategy you did. Your point about the relative cost-effectiveness of talking to local politicians versus conducting an (arguably) expensive poll is well-taken. I don’t have any idea how Swiss referenda work and I conclude from your comment that voters largely follow the lead of their representatives.
I’m not sure how you’re thinking about future efforts along these lines, but if you’re planning on selecting from a longer list of policies and cantons, I think polling—in a cheap way—could challenge your legislative strategy for cost-effectiveness, at least as a guide for initial research investment.
To further clarify: I think in many circumstances (e.g., for a ballot initiative in Switzerland on the federal level), public opinion polling would be crucial. But for this specific type of city-level initiative, I don’t think it would help much.
I agree with the importance of “choosing the right avenue.” I still don’t think public opinion polling is very useful for that purpose (especially if some polling data is already available). In fact, I think public opinion polling would have been unlikely to clearly identify the key issues because the general public has much less pronounced and well-informed opinions than politicians and other stakeholders.
At least for Swiss initiatives, getting reactions/opinions from the responsible legislative body and the people they trust (like local charities in this case) seems much more useful because it shapes the legislative bodies’ official recommendation to voters. I think it was a mistake not to do more of that type of stakeholder engagement in the early stages of the initiative, and that mistake almost led to a complete failure of the initiative.
Also noteworthy: Talking to local politicians is much cheaper still than doing public opinion polls (costs a couple of hours rather than thousands of dollars plus a lot of work to get the polling right).
That said, I think doing some polling before launching an initiative could also be somewhat helpful.
Thanks for your response. I think I should make clear (as I really didn’t do in my initial post) that I mean my comment more broadly: when EAs think about doing ballot initiatives, they should strongly consider doing public opinion polling. In a setting where an EA advocacy group is trying to select (a) which of X effective policies to advocate and (b) in which of Y locales to advocate it, it seems (to me, at least) that polling is cost-effective, since choosing between X*Y potentially large number of independent options is a nontrivial problem that requires a rigorous approach.
In your setting, however (making the binary choice of whether or not to advocate for policy P in location L), I understand why you chose the strategy you did. Your point about the relative cost-effectiveness of talking to local politicians versus conducting an (arguably) expensive poll is well-taken. I don’t have any idea how Swiss referenda work and I conclude from your comment that voters largely follow the lead of their representatives.
I’m not sure how you’re thinking about future efforts along these lines, but if you’re planning on selecting from a longer list of policies and cantons, I think polling—in a cheap way—could challenge your legislative strategy for cost-effectiveness, at least as a guide for initial research investment.
Fully agreed, thanks for the clarification!
To further clarify: I think in many circumstances (e.g., for a ballot initiative in Switzerland on the federal level), public opinion polling would be crucial. But for this specific type of city-level initiative, I don’t think it would help much.