Public Opinion and Opinion Polls in Spain

Abstract

This work, in its organization and content, responds to a series of stimuli that I wish to make explicit. The immediate stimulus has been the need to tell the history of the surveys in Spain to a group of Venezuelan colleagues. On the other hand, and on the edge of the situation, I have tried to formalize a series of answers to questions that, in the last eight years, have raised me on the subject of surveys and in different contexts: the media, the University classroom or professional advice.
Reviewing notes and files, I have again visualized the very diverse interlocutors of discussions on opinion studies. The product of these dialogues in absentia is this work. And I invoke them as justification. There are little basted sections and important issues that are briefly addressed. Since it was not about doing something original, but about telling things that others have done or said, I have felt the pressure of having to talk about everything a bit. And, above all, I have felt the need to not be able to tell the history of surveys in Spain without previously articulating a discourse, perhaps excessive, about the theory of public opinion and the nature of opinion polls.