Troubled Birth: The 1930s and American Public Opinion

Pollsters and pundits failed to predict the election of Donald Trump in 2016, according to Susan Herbst's book "A Troubled Birth." She argues that we need to return to earlier meanings of public opinion to understand our current climate, as the idea of a public-whose opinions mattered-emerged during the Great Depression. Herbst contends that public opinion about issues is a messy mixture of culture, politics, and economics and that we must reckon with the politics and culture of the 1930s before we can ask the most important questions about public opinion in American democracy today.

Format: Hardback
Length: 296 pages
Publication date: 08 November 2021
Publisher: The University of Chicago Press

Pollsters and pundits, armed with the most accurate public opinion polls, were unable to predict the election of Donald Trump in 2016. Is this because we no longer understand what the American public is? In her book, A Troubled Birth, Susan Herbst argues that we need to return to earlier meanings of public opinion to understand our current climate.

Herbst contends that the idea that there was a public whose opinions mattered emerged during the Great Depression, with the diffusion of radio, the devastating impact of the economic collapse on so many people, the appearance of professional pollsters, and Franklin Roosevelt's powerful rhetoric. She argues that public opinion about issues can only be seen as a messy mixture of culture, politics, and economics—in short, all the things that influence how people live. Herbst deftly pins down contours of public opinion in new ways and explores what endures and what doesn't in the extraordinarily troubled, polarized, and hyper-mediated present.

Before we can ask the most important questions about public opinion in American democracy today, we must reckon yet again with the politics and culture of the 1930s.

Weight: 620g
Dimension: 158 x 235 x 28 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780226812915