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With “Le Sacre de l’opinion”, Frédéric Micheau puts into perspective the usefulness of past polls in an attempt to derive sums on the present and the future. They are, according to him, an important link between the rulers and the ruled.
They are the barometer of the presidential campaign. We scrutinize them and spin their data, these are the polls. Frédéric Micheau, director of OpinionWay and professor at Science Po signs “Le Sacre de l’opinion”, a history of the presidential election and the polls. “When we think of polls we think of the immediate future, of the predictive dimension. But we think very little of the past, when it says a lot about how campaigns are going”he explains.
If the polls have become “a sometimes obsessive tango between the candidates and the president”it is also a gauge for French citizens, which allows them to be heard very regularly. “It is one of the modes of expression of the citizens, in the same way as the demonstration. We can clearly see this expectation of proximity and very strong listening expressed by the French. For the rulers, reading the polls is a way to recreate proximity at a time when distrust is extremely broad”finally specifies Frédéric Micheau.