Opinion polls turn election into sporting event -- expert: ;  Larry Johnsrude; ;  Edmonton Journal   ; 05-23-2004   ;

Opinion polls turn election into sporting event -- expert:
Byline: Larry Johnsrude
Section: News

EDMONTON -- It often looks more like a horse race than serious political discourse.
One day, the Liberals are up a couple points. The next, they're down and the Conservatives are on the move.

With public opinion polls playing a greater roll in the electoral process than ever before, some critics say they're turning elections into a sporting event rather than an examination of the issues.

"When the focus so much is on the polls, that takes away from the specifics of public policy," says political scientist Linda Trimble of the University of Alberta.

"It's all about the game -- who is winning -- rather than the substantive issues that affect voters."

The abundance of polls at election time rekindles the debate whether they are merely gauging public opinion or changing the way people vote.

John Wright, vice-president of Ipsos-Reid, acknowledges polls can influence voters by giving them information they would not otherwise have.

"What polls are good at doing is defining issues," he says. "If a political party has picked an issue that doesn't resonate with voters, a poll will pick that up pretty quickly. As a result, the party will have to change its strategy to appeal to the voters. But that isn't exercising undue or improper influence on the voter."

But Trimble says the media's obsession with polls leaves less room to debate the issues. An analysis she and PhD student Shannon Sampert conducted of the 2000 election coverage by the Globe and Mail and National Post found that each paper ran at least one poll story a day. They also found that between one-third and one-half of the front-page election stories were about poll results rather than issues.

"In an election, it is important to know who is winning," Trimble says. "But that doesn't help someone in knowing who to vote for and why."

Since gaining popularity in the 1960s, public opinion polls done by telephone have become a staple for politicians, public interest groups and media, who live and die by their ability to divine public attitudes. Advances in telecommunications technology and a proliferation in companies specializing in public research have brought the prices down and increased sample sizes to a point where polls can predict outcomes with remarkable accuracy.

But there are also limitations.

Pollsters often refer to polls as a "snapshot," meaning they are a sampling of public opinion at a set time. It takes a series of polls to establish a trend.

"That's how you decide who has momentum and who doesn't," says Janet Brown, a consultant to Environics. "What's important isn't so much where you are at a certain time, it's where you're going."

Other tricky areas are sample size and margin of error.

Sociologist Herb Northcott, executive director of the Population Research Lab at the U of A, says margin of error is a mathematical calculation based on the sample size. The larger the sample size, the lower the margin of error and the more accurate the poll.

"The rule of thumb is to get a sample size of at least 1,000," he says. "A sample size of 400 is still accurate within plus or minus five percentage points, but anything under 400 isn't very reliable."

But he says the sample also has to be representative of the general public, including a mix of male and female respondents, different age and income groups and regional representation. That is becoming increasingly difficult as more respondents hang up on pollsters or, with the benefit of call-display on their phones, refuse to answer.

He questions the reliability of polls which claim to be able to break down national results into regions to predict the number of seats the parties will win.

"They need a very large sample size to do this," he explains. "If you take a national sample of 1,000 and break it down to Alberta, that means you talked to about 100 people, which has a margin of error of around 10 per cent. That's not going to give you very reliable results."

He also doubts the accuracy of the numerous polls done cheaply during election campaigns by using electronic "demon dialers" which call homes at random and ask them to key in the results by touching the dial pad.

"There's no way of ensuring you have the right male-female mix, that you have a regional sampling or that the person answering is even old enough to vote," he says.

Sampert, a former television reporter who specializes in studying the media, blames a misinterpretation of the polls for making the 2000 election look like a tighter race than it was.

"The polls didn't shift any more than three points from the beginning of the election campaign to the end," she says. "That was all within the margin of error, meaning there may have been no change at all.

"In other words, it was news about absolutely nothing."

Q&A: A primer on polls

During the next five weeks, Canadians will be reading and hearing quite a bit about polls. Here's a primer on what they're all about.

Q: What is a poll?

A: A public opinion poll is generally conducted over the telephone to gauge the public's opinion. An election poll will typically asks respondents who they would vote for if an election were that day and how they respond to certain issues.

Q: What can they tell us?

A: Pollsters refer to them as a "snapshot" of how people think on a certain issue at a particular time. Rather than going by the results of one "snapshot," they look at a series to decide if they are part of a trend. That's why it's important not to reach any conclusions from one poll. A party could be several percentage points behind when an election is called but it could be on an upward trend that will put it ahead by election day.

Q: Who is polled?

A: Participants are chosen randomly to provide a broad representation reflecting the diversity of the population. They are also chosen to represent all the regions. That is becoming increasingly difficult, however, as people refuse to answer their phones or hang up on pollsters, lumping them in with telemarketers. Some polling companies call back five to 10 times to maintain the integrity of the sample. Pollsters are also experimenting with Internet polls.

Q: What is a margin of error?

A: It is a mathematical calculation recognizing that the accuracy of polling information is restricted by the number of people surveyed. The larger the sample size, the smaller the margin of error and the more accurate the poll. A sample of 1,000 people has a margin of error of about 3.2 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. That means when a poll shows the Liberals at 40 per cent, their popularity could be as high as 43.2 per cent or as low as 36.8 per cent. And one poll out of 20 may not be that close at all.

Q: Are some polls more reliable than others?

A: Yes. Reputable polling firms usually sample more than 1,000 people, keeping the margin of error down. Polling companies that use automated "demon dialers" with a recorded voice asking the respondent to key the responses in to the phone pad are less reliable because they don't get as representative a sample and have no way of knowing if the respondent is of voting age. Phone-in polls and e-mail polls are not considered accurate.

Q: Can a national poll be used to predict how many seats a party will win?

A: Pollsters Ipsos-Reid and Environics say they have a method this election to predict seat distributions by comparing polling trends to results from past elections. But critics are skeptical, saying you would need a sampling of several hundred voters in each riding to be accurate.

ljohnsrude@thejournal.canwest.com

(Copyright Edmonton Journal 2004)

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