Opinion poll
An opinion poll, often simply referred to as a survey or a poll (although strictly a poll is an actual election), is a human research survey of public opinion from a particular sample. Opinion polls are usually designed to represent the opinions of a population by conducting a series of questions and then extrapolating generalities in ratio or within confidence intervals. A person who conducts polls is referred to as a pollster.
History[edit]
The first known example of an opinion poll was a tally of voter preferences reported by the Raleigh Star and North Carolina State Gazette and the Wilmington American Watchman and Delaware Advertiser prior to the 1824 presidential election,[1] showing Andrew Jackson leading John Quincy Adams by 335 votes to 169 in the contest for the United States Presidency. Since Jackson won the popular vote in that state and the national popular vote, such straw votes gradually became more popular, but they remained local, usually citywide phenomena.
In 1916, The Literary Digest embarked on a national survey (partly as a circulation-raising exercise) and correctly predicted Woodrow Wilson's election as president. Mailing out millions of postcards and simply counting the returns, The Literary Digest also correctly predicted the victories of Warren Harding in 1920, Calvin Coolidge in 1924, Herbert Hoover in 1928, and Franklin Roosevelt in 1932.
Then, in 1936, its survey of 2.3 million voters suggested that Alf Landon would win the presidential election, but Roosevelt was instead re-elected by a landslide. George Gallup's research found that the error was mainly caused by participation bias; those who favored Landon were more enthusiastic about returning their postcards. Furthermore, the postcards were sent to a target audience who were more affluent than the American population as a whole, and therefore more likely to have Republican sympathies.[2] At the same time, Gallup, Archibald Crossley and Elmo Roper conducted surveys that were far smaller but more scientifically based, and all three managed to correctly predict the result.[3][4] The Literary Digest soon went out of business, while polling started to take off.[3] Roper went on to correctly predict the two subsequent reelections of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Louis Harris had been in the field of public opinion since 1947 when he joined the Elmo Roper firm, then later became partner.
In September 1938, Jean Stoetzel, after having met Gallup, created IFOP, the Institut Français d'Opinion Publique, as the first European survey institute in Paris. Stoetzel started political polls in summer 1939 with the question "Why die for Danzig?", looking for popular support or dissent with this question asked by appeasement politician and future collaborationist Marcel Déat.
Gallup launched a subsidiary in the United Kingdom that was almost alone in correctly predicting Labour's victory in the 1945 general election: virtually all other commentators had expected a victory for the Conservative Party, led by wartime leader Winston Churchill. The Allied occupation powers helped to create survey institutes in all of the Western occupation zones of Germany in 1947 and 1948 to better steer denazification. By the 1950s, various types of polling had spread to most democracies.
Viewed from a long-term perspective, advertising had come under heavy pressure in the early 1930s. The Great Depression forced businesses to drastically cut back on their advertising spending. Layoffs and reductions were common at all agencies. The New Deal furthermore aggressively promoted consumerism, and minimized the value of (or need for) advertising. Historian Jackson Lears argues that "By the late 1930s, though, corporate advertisers had begun a successful counterattack against their critics." They rehabilitated the concept of consumer sovereignty by inventing scientific public opinion polls, and making it the centerpiece of their own market research, as well as the key to understanding politics. George Gallup, the vice president of Young and Rubicam, and numerous other advertising experts, led the way. Moving into the 1940s, the industry played a leading role in the ideological mobilization of the American people in fighting the Nazis and the Japanese in World War II. As part of that effort, they redefined the "American Way of Life" in terms of a commitment to free enterprise. "Advertisers", Lears concludes, "played a crucial hegemonic role in creating the consumer culture that dominated post-World War II American society."[5][6]
Failures[edit]
A widely publicized failure of opinion polling to date in the United States was the prediction that Thomas Dewey would defeat Harry S. Truman in the 1948 US presidential election. Major polling organizations, including Gallup and Roper, had indicated that Dewey would defeat Truman in a landslide; Truman won a narrow victory.
There were also substantial polling errors in the presidential elections of 1952, 1980, 1996, 2000, and 2016: while the first three correctly predicted the winner (albeit not the extent of their winning margin), with the last two correctly predicting the winner of the popular vote (but not the Electoral College).[44]
In the United Kingdom, most polls failed to predict the Conservative election victories of 1970 and 1992, and Labour's victory in February 1974. In the 2015 election, virtually every poll predicted a hung parliament with Labour and the Conservatives neck and neck, when the actual result was a clear Conservative majority. On the other hand, in 2017, the opposite appears to have occurred. Most polls predicted an increased Conservative majority, even though in reality the election resulted in a hung parliament with a Conservative plurality: some polls correctly predicted this outcome.
In New Zealand, the polls leading up to the 1993 general election predicted the governing National Party would increase its marjority. However, the preliminary results on election night showed a hung parliament with National one seat short of a majority, leading to Prime Minister Jim Bolger exclaiming "bugger the pollsters" on live national television.[45][46] The official count saw National gain Waitaki to hold a one-seat majority and retain government.
Social media as a source of opinion on candidates[edit]
Social media today is a popular medium for the candidates to campaign and for gauging the public reaction to the campaigns. Social media can also be used as an indicator of the voter opinion regarding the poll. Some research studies have shown that predictions made using social media signals can match traditional opinion polls.[8][9]
Regarding the 2016 U.S. presidential election, a major concern has been that of the effect of false stories spread throughout social media. Evidence shows that social media plays a huge role in the supplying of news: 62 percent of US adults get news on social media.[47] This fact makes the issue of fake news on social media more pertinent. Other evidence shows that the most popular fake news stories were more widely shared on Facebook than the most popular mainstream news stories; many people who see fake news stories report that they believe them; and the most discussed fake news stories tended to favor Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton. As a result of these facts, some have concluded that if not for these stories, Donald Trump may not have won the election over Hillary Clinton.[48]
Influence[edit]
Effect on voters[edit]
By providing information about voting intentions, opinion polls can sometimes influence the behavior of electors, and in his book The Broken Compass, Peter Hitchens asserts that opinion polls are actually a device for influencing public opinion.[49] The various theories about how this happens can be split into two groups: bandwagon/underdog effects, and strategic ("tactical") voting.
A bandwagon effect occurs when the poll prompts voters to back the candidate shown to be winning in the poll. The idea that voters are susceptible to such effects is old, stemming at least from 1884; William Safire reported that the term was first used in a political cartoon in the magazine Puck in that year.[50] It has also remained persistent in spite of a lack of empirical corroboration until the late 20th century. George Gallup spent much effort in vain trying to discredit this theory in his time by presenting empirical research. A recent meta-study of scientific research on this topic indicates that from the 1980s onward the Bandwagon effect is found more often by researchers.[51]
The opposite of the bandwagon effect is the underdog effect. It is often mentioned in the media. This occurs when people vote, out of sympathy, for the party perceived to be "losing" the elections. There is less empirical evidence for the existence of this effect than there is for the existence of the bandwagon effect.[51]
The second category of theories on how polls directly affect voting is called strategic voting. This theory is based on the idea that voters view the act of voting as a means of selecting a government. Thus they will sometimes not choose the candidate they prefer on ground of ideology or sympathy, but another, less-preferred, candidate from strategic considerations. An example can be found in the 1997 United Kingdom general election. As he was then a Cabinet Minister, Michael Portillo's constituency of Enfield Southgate was believed to be a safe seat but opinion polls showed the Labour candidate Stephen Twigg steadily gaining support, which may have prompted undecided voters or supporters of other parties to support Twigg in order to remove Portillo. Another example is the boomerang effect where the likely supporters of the candidate shown to be winning feel that chances are slim and that their vote is not required, thus allowing another candidate to win. For party-list proportional representation opinion polling helps voters avoid wasting their vote on a party below the electoral threshold.[52]
In addition, Mark Pickup, in Cameron Anderson and Laura Stephenson's Voting Behaviour in Canada, outlines three additional "behavioural" responses that voters may exhibit when faced with polling data. The first is known as a "cue taking" effect which holds that poll data is used as a "proxy" for information about the candidates or parties. Cue taking is "based on the psychological phenomenon of using heuristics to simplify a complex decision" (243).[53]
The second, first described by Petty and Cacioppo (1996), is known as "cognitive response" theory. This theory asserts that a voter's response to a poll may not line with their initial conception of the electoral reality. In response, the voter is likely to generate a "mental list" in which they create reasons for a party's loss or gain in the polls. This can reinforce or change their opinion of the candidate and thus affect voting behaviour. Third, the final possibility is a "behavioural response" which is similar to a cognitive response. The only salient difference is that a voter will go and seek new information to form their "mental list", thus becoming more informed of the election. This may then affect voting behaviour.
These effects indicate how opinion polls can directly affect political choices of the electorate. But directly or indirectly, other effects can be surveyed and analyzed on all political parties. The form of media framing and party ideology shifts must also be taken under consideration. Opinion polling in some instances is a measure of cognitive bias, which is variably considered and handled appropriately in its various applications. In turn, non-nuanced reporting by the media about poll data and public opinions can thus even aggravate political polarization.[54]
Regulation[edit]
Some jurisdictions over the world restrict the publication of the results of opinion polls, especially during the period around an election, in order to prevent the possibly erroneous results from affecting voters' decisions. For instance, in Canada, it is prohibited to publish the results of opinion surveys that would identify specific political parties or candidates in the final three days before a poll closes.[56]
However, most Western democratic nations do not support the entire prohibition of the publication of pre-election opinion polls; most of them have no regulation and some only prohibit it in the final days or hours until the relevant poll closes.[57] A survey by Canada's Royal Commission on Electoral Reform reported that the prohibition period of publication of the survey results largely differed in different countries. Out of the 20 countries examined, 3 prohibit the publication during the entire period of campaigns, while others prohibit it for a shorter term such as the polling period or the final 48 hours before a poll closes.[56] In India, the Election Commission has prohibited it in the 48 hours before the start of polling.
Opinion poll in dictatorships[edit]
The director of the Levada Center stated in 2015 that drawing conclusions from Russian poll results or comparing them to polls in democratic states was irrelevant, as there is no real political competition in Russia, where, unlike in democratic states, Russian voters are not offered any credible alternatives and public opinion is primarily formed by state-controlled media, which promotes those in power and discredits alternative candidates.[58] Many respondents in Russia do not want to answer pollsters' questions for fear of negative consequences.[59][60] On 23 March 2023, criminal case was opened against Moscow resident Yury Kokhovets, a participant in the Radio Liberty street poll. He faced up to 10 years in prison under Russia's 2022 war censorship laws.[61]