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Opinion polls are bad for DemocracyBy Jason Loewenthal on September 30, 2014

Jason Loewenthal explains the adverse e3ects of Opinion Polls on elections and the democraticprocess.In Politics, it is often said that the only poll that matters is on Election Day, yet this is becomingincreasingly untrue. Democracy has been taken over by regular opinion polls that are supposed toreflect the mood of the electorate at a certain time or on a certain issue, yet all they’ve done is madethe business of governing a full-time popularity contest. They aren’t a part of the democraticprocess, only a way for the media to influence politics. The government shouldn’t be pandering tothe media to make policy, it should be doing what it has a mandate to do, not something that mediaowners feel would be a good idea.

A political party uses the results of opinion polls to gauge public opinion on a certain issue, leadingpoliticians to make decisions based on what’s popular, rather than what they were elected to do, orindeed something that is deemed unpopular even though it is a good policy. A politician is supposedto serve the population, not change policy to stay in power. If a policy is deemed unpopular by theelectorate, the electorate can decide. Politicians should be allowed to make decisions based on themandate they have, not what the latest opinion poll says they should do.

Opinion polls can also influence voters, if they see that their party or candidate is doing well or badlyin the polls, they may change their vote or simply choose not to turn up on Election Day. Granted, itis a voter’s right to decide whether they want to vote or not, but that decision should be based onpolicy or their own opinion, not on what they have been told other people are thinking or will bedoing.

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An opinion poll is only relevant if it is accurate, if it is inaccurate it loses credibility and people willignore it. A polling company wouldn’t be taken seriously if the results aren’t proven in an election.The most accurate polls, in theory at least, should be the ones that are taken just before an election,yet by this point in time they only serve to give the media something to discuss until results from anelection become available. The same holds true when they are published regularly, even whenthere is no election on the horizon; they are a side effect of 24 hour news and create a permanentelection cycle. The most irrelevant opinion polls are the ones taken a few weeks or a month after anelection, but because of this constant cycle of polls, they are deemed necessary. Rather thanfocusing on finer details or discussing an issue in depth, opinion polls are an easy option for themedia: they create a discussion, but they adversely influence politics.

There is an easy way to make opinion polls redundant, namely for a respondent, or a large amountof respondents, to lie. Even if a small proportion of people decided to lie – say 10% – the accuracyof the poll would fall outside the margin of error and be too unreliable to be used or taken seriously.If greater numbers of people decided not to tell the truth, the polls would lose all relevance as itwould be unwise to base policy decisions on something so unreliable. It would only be a white lieand the only ones that would suffer would be the organisations that conduct these polls and thepoliticians and parties that put too much emphasis on them and not enough on the business ofgoverning. It would require politicians to talk to people in their constituencies much more and worryless about what the latest opinion poll says. That would only be a good thing for democracy.

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