The Polling Debate – Successes and Failures

By Antonis Anzoletou

Much has been written about polls and usually the “first” invoke them and the “second” question and excommunicate them. They are a useful tool, they are not a panacea and they are scientific tools for recording and analyzing public opinion.

Voting intention shows the trend that exists in society, the show of victory who will cut the thread first (extremely rarely contested), while qualitative data is the main subject of study. Based on these, the parties shape their priorities to a large extent. For this reason, they also constantly carry out their own investigations. Even for the popularity of the persons they will choose for their ballots.

The successes of the pollsters are many, as are the failures. In Greece they almost never fell out in relation to the winner of the elections. In the Cypriot polls held in 2008, the polls predicted with certainty the winner, as well as the order of the candidates.

A typical example of unsuccessful assessments were the polls conducted in the USA in 2016. Everyone expected a comfortable victory for Hillary Clinton, but finally Donald Trump entered the oval office of the White House. Neither the 2015 referendum in Greece was measured correctly, nor was the Brexit one that took place a year later.

Of course, referenda are a separate piece of study. The most recent example that has been discussed a lot has to do with early elections in Portugal. It was not, after all, a head-to-head battle between Socialist Prime Minister Antonio Costa and his centre-right rival Rui Rio. Costa came out strong with a 12 point difference. This is perhaps the result when large social strata are underestimated.

Their role as a tool for analyzing social and political reality is highlighted by experienced analysts regardless of the failures that have been recorded. They are not a method of manipulation or influencing public opinion, but the means of capturing reality. They record the views and attitudes of public opinion exclusively at the time they occur. It is a global phenomenon, and unpredictable political developments that can move voters from their original choice must always be accounted for.

And of course the fact that about 25% of citizens decide what to vote for when elections are announced and about 10% when they are in front of the screen. How could a poll predict this? For this, after all, the parties are fighting to penetrate the “pie” of the undecided or those who avoid answering the phone calls of the measurement companies.

The deterioration of the government every time is taken for granted, but a crucial factor is the tactics used by the opposition. National issues or major crises usually rally the world around the “flag”. This has also happened in Greece in recent years where, apart from the Greek-Turkish ones, the pandemic crisis did not give SYRIZA room to develop or even shake off the period of governance with ANEL. The opinion poll lead of New Democracy has been stable and hardly disputed since 2016, when the party of Alexis Tsipras was still in government.

Epimythio: “Don’t shoot the pollsters.”

The only thing that is certain is that the real poll takes place at the time of the ballot box.

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