The image that will endure after this week’s parliamentary elections in India is not of incumbent prime minister Narendra Modi claiming victory in the world’s biggest democracy but of an opinion pollster breaking down in tears on live television for getting the result spectacularly wrong. When challenged on the India Today television channel about his company’s failure, Pradeep Gupta splayed his fingers over his face and started to sob so pitifully that the studio presenter handed him a hanky.
Gupta’s company, Axis My India, had forecast a harvest of up to 401 seats for Modi’s party, which only managed to win 240 – 32 seats short of a simple majority – but it was not the only pollster to misread the electorate’s mood. At least four other polling firms got it wrong too. Nor was it the first plebiscite in the world to leave polling companies with egg and tears dripping down their faces.
Before the UK’s Brexit referendum in 2016, more than two-thirds of the total 168 opinion polls that were conducted predicted the majority of voters would opt to remain in the EU. As it turned out, 51.9 per cent ticked the “leave” box. That same year produced what was probably the most sensational polling flop of all when Donald Trump was elected president of the US following forecasts that his Democratic Party rival Hillary Clinton’s probability of beating him was as high as 99 per cent. Based on those opinion polls, if anyone had ammunition to malevolently fire off accusations of a “rigged election”, she did.
There are as many reasons why opinion polls get it wrong as there are reasons to elect anybody but a sex offender and convicted felon as your country’s president. One is the “shy” factor, when those polled are too embarrassed to admit which candidate or party they really prefer. In Ireland, opinion poll shyness has been attributed to an underestimation of Sinn Féin’s support in the past because of the party’s association with the IRA. Other quirks of human nature conspire against accuracy, such as the instincts to back either the winner or the underdog, to switch allegiances at the last minute, or, among anti-establishment voters, to refuse to co-operate with pollsters.
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While getting the result wrong can be embarrassing, it is a far less serious consideration than polling’s potential to influence the outcome of an election. This year, nearly half of the global population gets to vote in elections, including in the US, the UK and the EU. We hear dark forces are at work to queer the pitch. The American Senate has been told that Russia and China are primed to exploit advances in AI technology to interfere in the presidential election there. French security officials have alerted the Department of Foreign Affairs here that Vladimir Putin’s propaganda machine has been spreading false information in Ireland since March in an effort to diminish support for Ukraine in the European Parliament.
Opinion polling is not a dark force. It is a science based on transparent methodology and, mostly, it proves accurate. Politicians routinely dismiss polls as irrelevant, citing the ballot box as the only poll that matters. Don’t believe a word of it. Once they get a whiff of an impending opinion poll, politicians are straight on the phone to political journalists begging for “a heads-up”. Their interest is not nosiness. They want to know what voters are thinking so that they can respond quickly, possibly shaping their policies to gain support. As Mark Twain saw it: “Public opinion is held in reverence. It settles everything. Some think it is the voice of God.”
This country has been awash with opinion polls for the last few weeks. All the major news organisations, including The Irish Times, have commissioned them, as have regional, local and digital outlets. You have to wonder if, had they not been conducted, would voters in today’s local, European and Limerick mayor’s elections make different choices. The answer is: Yes, probably. Research says so, but it also says the difference polls make to election results is so slight it doesn’t warrant banning them. A study in Erie County, Ohio after the 1940 US presidential election recorded that a small number of people who changed their voting intentions during the campaign said opinion polls had changed their minds. In our system of proportional representation, even a small difference can make a big difference, as former Labour Party leader Dick Spring learned when he clung on to his Kerry North seat by just four votes in 1987.
A subtle way poll findings can exert an influence on elections is by changing voters’ perceptions of candidates. When someone who had been regarded as no-hoper starts to climb the rankings, they are taken more seriously. Enda Kenny in 2011 was a perfect example of this phenomenon. In 2010, he survived an attempted putsch against his Fine Gael leadership, prompted by his low ratings in the polls but, as they began to rise, he came to be seen as a credible alternative leader of the country and, within a year he was the taoiseach. Conversely, a candidate can become so utterly demoralised by a low ranking as to lose all enthusiasm for the campaign. Some candidates are rendered virtually invisible when news media concentrate their coverage on those the polls project as winners.
Studies have shown that, when polls predict a landslide result, voter turnout is lowered by the presumption that the result is a foregone conclusion. Thus it is plausible to argue that opinion polls can be self-fulfilling prophesies.
In Italy, it is illegal to publish poll findings in the final two weeks before voting day. In Cyprus, it’s a seven day ban and five in Spain. Other countries eschew any prohibition in favour of freedom of expression and of information. Generally, Ireland has been well served by its polling companies but, as the population grows and advances in technology make polling more complex, its impacts on democracy need to be examined. The Taoiseach has waxed lyrical about introducing media literacy to the school curriculum to counteract fake news. He should do it, urgently, and incorporate into it the effects opinion polls have on how we choose our political leaders.