The concept of polling…

Polling is the crack cocaine of politics…

We constantly get bombarded with polls, most days through media and one needs to ask… do these polls actually work and do they form or change someone’s opinion.

And the best question for me is… “what really is a poll and what goes into one?”

Polls are a powerful – they can influence emotions and shape political fortunes. They can be used to drum up support for campaigns and reveal how closely aligned or far apart the general public is on consequential (or not so important) topics. Likely, every election has a riptide of numbers as pundits and voters alike try to grasp their significance. We will try and explain not only how these polls work, but how they affect your decisions.

Rather than conduct a census of every single person to find out where the public stands on an issue or candidate, surveys sample opinions and can distill information that helps us better gauge our world. At their best, polls can empower the broader public to help influence crucial decisions. But it is important to recognize the limitations of surveys, in addition to the strengths. In most elections it has reminded us how problematic it is when we think polls as forecasts of the future rather than a glimpse at where people stand at a given moment in time.

Polls are estimates–ideally, very good estimates. The margin of error is a range that tells you how close that estimate gets to reflecting the results that would have happened had we interviewed everyone, generally speaking, the smaller the margin of error, the better the estimate. But not as polls include a margin of error, including non-probability polls such as those you opt into online. Participants for these polls self-select, or opt in, and there is a risk that these samples will not resemble the larger population. When you’re reading the results of a poll, the absence of that estimated range is a red flag that a poll may not tell you much about the world beyond the exact people who responded to it.

Short of conducting a census every time someone wants to know what’s on people’s minds, a sample of that population, or a poll, can be used to understand people’s attitudes on things like the price of gas or job performance of a political leader or candidate for a particular office. Similarly, pollsters take a representative sample of the Canadian population when conducting a survey to gauge how the country feels about a particular issue. The one major issue that l personally have with pollsters is this, do folks really tell the truth to a pollster. When high-profile political outcomes haven’t matched what polls showed, it’s fuelled speculation that people taking surveys have deceived the pollsters. Sometimes, people will say what they think another person wants to hear, even it it’s not true. In polling, that behaviour is called social desirability, and the way a person hears or sees a question can influence how they respond, as well as the way questions are framed and organized in the survey itself.

A dear old friend of mine, who has been a backroom political operative for over forty years, has always said to me that “polling is the crack cocaine of politics”, this phrase when you stop and analyze it, makes a lot of sense. Just observe and listen to most conversations when it comes to politics these days… one never asks about the topics or where a candidate stands on issues, rather where is that person sits in the polls.

The continuous obsession with polls is very addictive and dawns on our decision making. When these constant numbers are flashed at us on our televisions and social media outlets, you have no choice but to consistently keep hearing these statistics—good, bad or indifferent.

Many opinion polls are published during an election campaign. When the everyday punter sees or hears these estimates, many might believe that their fellow punters are indeed evenly split on their voting intentions. The effect of political opinion polls on the individual voter is a complex matter, not least because the accuracy of polls themselves is now a matter of serious debate, given problems of access to the voters for comment. If the social and media environment gives the impression that the election is already won, then the bandwagon effect is even greater.

Some countries impose an election silence that halts polling because of a belief that the bandwagon effect tilts the democratic process. For this reason, these countries ban the publication of polling results either outright or halt them several weeks before polling day.

Contagion and the bandwagon effect are not simple phenomena. There are a range of variables at play during an election and the assumption that voters are not particularly smart is not one of them. There are two types of effects… strategic voting and contagion. Strategic voting is motivated by the intention of voters to affect which party wins the election. The move of voters to the perceived majority view is called contagion. When the political opinion polls and the media climate appears to support one political party over another, there can be little doubt there will be a contagion effect.

Political opinion polls are not always an accurate reflection of public opinion. This does not mean, though, that political opinion polls do not have an effect on voter intentions or on those trying to influence the outcome of elections. These are similar traits to the gaming and sport betting influences with the same effects… try to encourage someone to vote or bet on a particular horse… pardon the pun.

Get out and vote in the advanced poll or exercise your right to vote on June 26, 2023 and in all elections that you are eligible to cast a vote.

At the end of the day…the only poll that counts is election day.

Vince Nigro/MS