Political polling has become a central instrument of contemporary democracies. Surveys measuring approval ratings and vote intentions are conducted with increasing frequency and circulate widely across media platforms. In times of declining party identification and growing party fragmentation, these indicators increasingly structure public debate and political decision-making.
Project C07 investigates whether this intensified presence of polling reflects a transformation of the politically popular itself. We examine two interrelated dynamics: the increasing temporal instability of political popularity as captured by polls, and the growing feedback effects through which polls shape the very attitudes they claim to measure. In this sense, polling becomes both an instrument of observation and a driver of political popularity – a recursive process at the heart of contemporary political communication.
At the same time, the project addresses the democratic implications of this development. If political actors respond ever more directly to short‑term fluctuations in measured popularity, does democracy risk losing the productive distance between electoral authorization and day‑to‑day governance – a distance that traditionally enables learning, deliberation, and long‑term decision‑making?
By combining empirical analyses of polling dynamics with democratic theory, Project C07 explores how the expanding role of political surveys transforms the conditions under which political popularity emerges, circulates, and gains authority in modern democracies.

Picture: 1936 Election Weekly Poll. Copyright The Gallup Organization