Contributions
Informed citizens
Participants can come to learn and appreciate the circumstances and interests of competing arguments through extended discussions and deliberations. This can be achieved by (1) randomly assigning participants into small groups and (2) having impartial moderators to ensure all the major arguments for and against major policy options are covered.
While participants become more engaged and knowledgeable, thoughtful conclusions are expected to emerge, leading to a better quality of public opinion. Furthermore, it is also hoped that such poll can help increase deliberation among all members of the public.
Serve as input mechanisms
Deliberative polling can solicit input from specialized sub-publics and serve as important input mechanisms upstream in the policy making process. However, we should be cautious that such upstream engagement might lead to a lack of tolerance due to the participation of the highly active sub-publics.
Read more about this topic: Deliberative Opinion Poll