"I Don't Know"
I am re-reading Pierre Bourdieu's Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, and there is an interesting section on public opinion polling:
Political science long ago began to register the fact that a large proportion of the persons surveyed 'abstained' from answering questions on politics and that these 'non-responses' varied significantly by sex, age, educational level, occupation, place of residence and political tendency. But no conclusions have been drawn, and the psephologists merely deplore this culpable 'abstention.'
As soon as one sees that the inert "don't know" category is largely recruited from what others call "the masses" or "the people," one begins to suspect the function it performs in the operation of "liberal democracy" and the contribution it makes to maintaining the established order. Abstentionism is perhaps not so much a hiccup in the system as one of the conditions of its functioning as a misrecognized -- and therefore recognized -- restriction on political participation.
What needs to be questioned is the very notion of 'personal opinion.' The opinion poll, by urging all its respondents, without distinction, to produce a 'personal opinion' -- an intention underlined by all the "according-to-yous", "in-your-views" and "what-do-you-personally thinks" in the questionnaires -- or to choose, by their own means, unaided, between several pre-formulated opinions, implicitly accepts a political philosophy which makes political choice a specifically political judgement, applying political principles to answer a problem that is presented as political, and which credits everyone with not only the right but also the power to produce a judgement.
This was a provocative assertion that was just dying for an empirical illustration. The newly released survey on the Hong Kong Chief Executive election from the Hong Kong University Popular Opinion Programme will serve just fine.
Here is the basic table of recognition rates of the three declared candidates, given separately by socio-demographic sub-groups (source: HKU POP).
| Donald Tsang Yam-kuen | Lee Wing-tat | Chim Pui-chong | |
| TOTAL | 98.1% | 89.4% | 85.5% |
| Gender Male Female |
97.9% 98.3% |
91.7% 87.2% |
89.5% 81.7% |
| Age 18-29 30-49 50 or above |
99.8% 98.5% 97.0% |
92.5% 93.5% 82.8% |
84.2% 90.5% 81.6% |
| Education Attainment Primary or below Secondary Tertiary or above |
94.3% 99.4% 99.7% |
69.1% 92.5% 96.0% |
67.1% 87.8% 92.6% |
| Occupation Executives and professionals Clerical and service workers Production workers Students Housewives |
99.6% 99.5% 100.0% 98.9% 96.8% |
94.7% 95.0% 94.1% 89.6% 87.0% |
94.2% 85.5% 90.4% 82.9% 83.8% |
| Class (self-defined) Middle or above Lower-middle or grassroots |
99.6% 97.9% |
94.8% 87.7% |
92.4% 82.6% |
| Political inclination
(self-defined) Pro-democracy Pro-China Moderate No preference |
99.2% 99.1% 100.0% 95.5% |
94.0% 95.7% 92.5% 79.1% |
87.8% 94.5% 89.1% 76.6% |
What do these data show? I continue to quote from Bourdieu's book, published in English translation in 1984 and about French data. Here he is talking about the probability of people being able to produce an opinion (as opposed to "I don't know" and its other variations).
This probability is greater for men than women, greater for the young than the old; greater in large towns (especially Paris); and rises with educational capital (measured by qualifications) and economic capital (measured by income) and with social position.
... one finds that those who cannot reply to the question of their political allegiance or preference (indicating the party to which they feel closer) are those who are also most inclined to leave the other questions unanswered -- especially when the question posed is clearly located in the register of professional politics.
The variations linked to these variables are that much more marked when the questions are more remote from experience, more abstract and detached from ordinary realities in their content and phrasing (and also, but secondarily, when they have only recently appeared in the field of ideological production) and when they require more insistently a response produced on the basis of specifically political principles (a demand that is perceived in the very syntax and vocabulary of the question).
You can literally cut-and-paste Bourdieu's comments and apply them to the Hong Kong data (technical note: some of the small differences are not statistically significant).
Why was Bourdieu so interested in the 'Don't know's? Here are the logical consequences:
The act of producing a response to a questionnaire on politics, like voting, reading a party newspaper or joining a party, is a particular case of a supply meeting demand.
On one side is the field of ideological production, a relatively autonomous universe in which amidst competition and conflict, the instruments for thinking the social world are created and where, through this process, the field of the politically thinkable, or to put it another way, the legitimate problematic, is defined.
On the other side are social agents, occupying different positions in the field of class relations and defined by a greater or lesser specific political competence -- a greater or lesser capacity to recognize a political question as political and to treat it as such by responding to it politically, i.e., on the basis of specific political principles. This capacity is inseparable from a more or less strong feeling of being competent, in the full sense of the word, that is, socially recognized as entitled to deal with political affairs, to express an opinion about them or even modify their course.
If the legitimate problematic is selected and circumscribed by a small group of self-appointed opinion producers (the political parties, the politicians, the media and the special interest lobbies), then you can choose among those limited choices or else you can abstain. In either case, you are maintaining the established order.