Reprinted from University of Florida Today, September,
1988
If politics is the machinery that keeps American moving, University of Florida alumnus William Hamilton is the person monitoring the gauges.
For the past quarter century, the national pollster has advised dozens of politicians, ranging from state representatives to recent presidential hopefuls John Glenn and Bruce Babbitt.
Political polling, Hamilton says, is not witchcraft, nor is it designed to change or determine a politician's ideology. "It serves the system much like an old New England town meeting in that you can get unbiased feedback from a wide variety of voters, not just what your brother-in-law thinks or what your pastor says."
An Orlando native, Hamilton came to UF as a liberal arts major in 1958. An active student in numerous campus groups, Hamilton was a member of Florida Blue Key, Phi Delta Theta fraternity, and was voted into UF's Hall of Fame.
"My big brother in the fraternity was Hyatt Brown, who went on to become speaker of the Florida House," Hamilton recalls with a gleeful smile. "Hyatt wasn't any different as speaker than when he was at the University."
After earning his bachelor's degree in political science from UF in 1962, Hamilton went to work as a personnel officer for metropolitan Dade County, giving typing tests to prospective employees. After seven months, he returned to UF and began work on his master's degree.
"That was during the period when (national pollster) Lou Harris had gotten so much credit for what he had done for John F.Kennedy," Hamilton says. "So I came back to UF's political science department and asked for a vocational education."
After earning his master's degree in political science in 1963, Hamilton went to work for a local politician who dropped out of his race after the novice pollster's first three surveys indicated such a move would be prudent. Hamilton established his firm the following year.
"In the early years, even up through the late 1960s, you had to sell the idea to politicians that they needed polling before you could sell them on the fact that you were the one to do it," Hamilton says. "And you did your polling late in the campaign as opposed to doing any early strategic polling. In those days, there was a lot of seasonality to our business. We were really busy during the last five months of every campaign period. Today, polls are done for politicians even when they're not running for office so that they won't have to do them later during campaigns."
Hamilton says he is suspect of polls conducted by the media and doesn't think they really influence the majority of voters, although they do have the ability to influence contributors and elite supporters.
"The press has begun to play a game with consultants," he says. "They play the fight. 'Was it a left jab? A one-two punch? How was it done? How did they train?' They focus on the conflict rather than the broader kinds of issues such as 'Is the candidate in shape?' and 'Which is the better man?'"
Hamilton says private polls aren't designed to encourage political candidates to switch their positions on issues, only to help them identify which issues are important to their constituents. "It helps them decide which issues to focus their communication resources on," he says.
There has been a growing feeling among voters, Hamilton says, that political institutions are not capable of solving the nation's problems. "What we're finding is that while alienation is rising against national institutions, there seems to be an upsurge in confidence on the local level. People feel they can work together on the school board, build a sewer system or extend the city limits."
Hamilton says people from various backgrounds have, over the past two decades, amassed a large body of knowledge that special interest groups and trade associations as well as political parties and candidates are now using to understand political public opinion.
"And yet, this information is not grafted onto the academic system anywhere with the exception of two or three places," he adds.
Hamilton, who is scheduled to come to UF in the spring and teach Advanced Campaign Strategy and Planning and a course on the use of the media in campaigns, is helping to change that. In addition to donating much of his previous research to the Florida Institute for Research on Elections, he is helping UF expand a new program in which students can earn their master of arts degree in political campaigning.
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