Stetson University

Deliberative Opinion Polling Project

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Welcome to Stetson’s Deliberative Opinion Polling Project! 

Through a course I started teaching in January 2009 titled “Community Organizing for Social Change” (see sidebar for the course syllabus) Stetson students are helping to advance participatory democracy in Florida.  Specifically, since January 2009, students have been working to organize “deliberative opinion polls” (DOPs), the first right here at Stetson on Monday, April 13, 2009, 6-9pm in Elizabeth Hall’s Doug Lee Chapel.    

Conceived by political scientist James Fishkin in the late 1980s, DOPs are a relatively new and participatory form of democracy designed to improve on conventional opinion polls, and town hall meetings. 

While town hall meetings too often attract only the most interested and outspoken, DOPs gather face-to-face a statistically random sample of citizens, which helps improve the diversity of experience and opinion. 

While conventional opinion polls simply aggregate the top-of-the-head opinions of disconnected individuals, DOPs bring those individuals together to consider each other’s views, listen to experts and partisans on the issues, then form their opinion. 

The result is a much more informed public opinion, and a much more diverse deliberation between citizens who would otherwise likely never come together to talk about common issues, from local school funding to global warming.

Deliberative polling is being practiced in a growing number of places, from local utility districts in Texas to cities and states in Europe and China.  To learn more, visit Stanford University’s Center for Deliberative Democracy at http://cdd.stanford.edu/.  

In the coming months and years, look for more information from us right here as we move forward with deliberative polls at Stetson, in Volusia, and beyond.  And if you have any questions or comments, do not hesitate to contact me at placheli@stetson.edu, or at 386-822-7247.   

Sincerely,

Paul Lachelier

Assistant Professor

Dept. of Sociology & Anthropology   

Stetson University              

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