[LINK] "How Scotland's Spiral of Silence Unwound"

[rfmcdonald]

Bloomberg View's Leonid Bershidsky's article describes the reasons why Scotland's separatists seemed stronger than they actually did.

For many days, Scotland's independence referendum seemed too close to call on the basis of opinion polls, making the size of the victory for the pro-union campaign -- by 55 percent to 45 percent -- a surprise. German political scientist Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann explained this paradox back in 1974 with a theory she called the Spiral of Silence.

Noell-Neumann started out as a pollster in post-war Germany. The question of German acquiescence to Hitler's savage policies bothered her; she suggested people have a "quasi-statistical organ" assessing how the rest of society feels. That often unconscious reading steers the answers people give to pollsters. Many are reluctant to go against the perceived majority to avoid disapproval or isolation, preferring to stay silent. That silence, accompanied by insincere approval, encourages the perceived majority to become more vocal, forcing more of its opponents into acquiescence. That creates Noell-Neumann's spiral.

The unspoken doubts can be further suppressed by the press, Noelle-Neumann noted: "The willingness to speak out depends in part upon sensing that there is support and legitimation from the media." The existence of social media competing with, say, television may moderate the spiral by giving people more control over what they see in in their online environments; the theory still works, though, particularly for contentious elections. In Italy last year, polls failed to show the true strength of comedian Beppe Grillo's Five Star Movement, and a recent study shows convincingly that that it was the spiral of silence, working through the online social platforms that were Grillo's chosen campaigning platform, that confounded pollsters.

The spiral of silence suggests the more radical, more vocal side tends to gain the upper hand in opinion polls. In Scotland, that was the pro-independence camp, overwhelming its opponents on Twitter and on Facebook. The more radical activists even threatened (admittedly mild) violence against those opposing secession. Throwing eggs at houses decorated with "No, Thanks" posters may not be particularly smart or effective, but the "quasi-statistical organ" must have registered it, too.