Mutterings to the effect that the Government is contemplating a ban on opinion-polling in the 10 days before an election is to be welcomed as a first step in safeguarding our eroding democracy from further decay. To suggest that opinion-polling has no effect on elections, as many politicians and commentators sought to do for a long time, is a bit like saying that the invention of the looking-glass had no effect on grooming.
Now, it appears that a growing number of politicians are concerned about the so-called bandwagon effect of polling on voter choices. Others are worried that overestimates of support, particularly for the larger parties, may be distorting the outcomes of elections. Some opinion polls before the recent European election put Fianna Fail at close to, and one poll at more than, 50 per cent of the total poll, whereas the party's vote on the day was well under 40 per cent.
It is alleged that the higher figure arose from the fact that polls based on a notional 100 per cent turnout were rendered meaningless when the turnout was just half that.
This is a reasonable analysis in as far as it goes, but it omits the possibility that the low turnout may itself be in large part due to opinion-polling: why bother voting if we know the result? I heard the chairman of the polling company MRBI, Mr Jack Jones, on radio recently saying that, while he did not agree with a ban on opinion-polling, he would accept the right of politicians to impose such a ban. He acknowledged the existence of a bandwagon effect, but also maintained that the effect of opinion polls on elections was much less than that of political promises, and much more "democratic". At least, he said, we are being influenced by our peers. However, the influence of opinion polls is not a democratic phenomenon, but a scientific procedure which at best runs parallel to democracy. The people surveyed in opinion polls are not in any sense our democratic "peers", but anonymous cyphers selected on the basis of probability theory.
The dangers of opinion polls may be greater than was previously believed, with more than a significant probability that they may yet negate the electoral process entirely. It is beginning to occur to some of our smarter politicians that the alarming decreases we are now observing in electoral turnout may not be to do with voter apathy in the traditional sense, but to a form of ennui arising from the usurpation of the outcome of elections by polls which are either all too accurate or not at all so.
There are many plausible arguments against opinion-polling, and not just those conducted in close proximity to elections. It might be said, for instance, that the constant sampling of public opinion is having a detrimental effect on the independence of public representatives, who are so afraid of registering as unpopular that they will do or say nothing that is not in accord with the orthodoxies of the public mind. Belief, integrity, judgment, courage, have all been replaced by public opinion.
The most convincing argument against the use of opinion polls, however, must be the fact that nobody understands how they work. Most people do not trust polls because neither themselves nor any of their relations or friends have ever been polled. They are right: over an average voting lifetime, the individual voter has less than a one-in-four chance of being consulted by an opinion pollster.
Of course, the polls are based on tried and trusted sampling techniques which have a mathematically-calculable level of accuracy. My argument is not that the theory does not work, but that it has no place in the democratic process. Democracy should be visible, participatory and accessible, and opinion-polling is none of these things.
Although allegedly capable of divining what "we" are thinking, opinion-polling is incomprehensible to those whose views it is said to assess. Do those people who are surveyed in the course of a particular poll, on hearing the results discussed, say proudly: "That was me!" They do not.
Are they ever asked, in the course of the debates which follow such polls, to elaborate on their views? No. And since one of the fundamental tenets of democracy is participation, opinion polls are, from this perspective, inimical to the spirit of democracy.
The irony is that the more polls tend to usurp the true democratic process, the less accurate they become in terms of the voting intentions of those who might have voted if no opinion-polling had taken place. In the context of the undoubtedly solid scientific foundations of opinion-polling methodology, such doubts about the polls will always be seen as "irrational", but it all depends on what you think rationality is.
In a sense, opinion polls are a form of voodoo, because they operate according to a theory and a methodology which is beyond the ken of most of those on whom they might be said to impinge. How many of those whose view of the world is created and defined by the consensus of the public view as expressed in opinion polls could tell you that the margin of error in a poll is calculated by multiplying by two the square root of the result obtained when the figure in question is multiplied by 100 minus itself and the answer divided by the sample?
DOES the fact that we all accept at face value the reliability of the methodology make us more or less rational? The inventor of opinion-polling, George Gallup, summarised his theory like this: "Suppose there are 7,000 white beans and 3,000 black beans well churned in a barrel. If you scoop out 100 of them, you'll get approximately 70 white beans and 30 black in your hand, and the range of your possible error can be computed mathematically." Does that give you a warm feeling about the democratic process, old bean?
We take on trust that opinion polls do what the media witch-doctors say they do, and only their previous accuracy caused us to maintain this faith. Now that they are becoming less reliable, is it not time to question our faith? And all the while we feel free to sneer in our modern hubris at the notion of a greybeard like de Valera "looking into his heart" when he wanted to know what the people were thinking, as though our own dependence for self-awareness on the science of opinion-polling denoted a vastly superior aptitude for logic or common sense.
The one constant and seemingly immutable belief of our society is the idea that those "traditional" beliefs we have eradicated were mistaken, superstitious and wrong. The new beliefs, by contrast, are irrefutably more intelligent, by virtue of being rational, scientific, modern and successful, but to "believe" in opinion-polling is not a mark of superior intelligence or capacity for logical thought; it is simply to believe in an alternative form of magic.