Canadian Public Policy

The New Act Has Merit If Enforced: Exactly What I SaidAuthor(s): Claire DurandSource: Canadian Public Policy / Analyse de Politiques, Vol. 29, No. 3 (Sep., 2003), pp. 373-375Published by: University of Toronto Press on behalf of Canadian Public PolicyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3552293 .

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Reply/R~ponse

The New Act Has Merit if Enforced -

Exactly What I Said

CLAIRE DURAND

Department of Sociology University of Montreal Montreal, Quebec

De Clercy et Ferguson d6clarent que mon analyse du reportage des sondages lors de l'61ection canadienne de l'an 2000 pose des problemes. La m6thodologie utilis6e est une des sources de d6saccord. J'ai analys6 les rapports de premiere main des sondages B l'6chelle nationale publi6s par tous les journaux canadiens, en

franqais et en anglais. Je soutiens que mon choix de m6thode est pr6f6rable au leur, lequel consiste en une 6tude de tous les rapports publiCs dans un seul journal. Je conviens que le problkme majeur que pose la Loi

l1ectorale est son application, mais je pretends que si cette Loi 6tait plus claire quant a l'information requise, elle serait plus facile ' imposer.

De Clercy and Ferguson state that there are problems with my analysis of poll reporting during the 2000 Canadian election. One disagreement is with the methodology used. I analyzed first-hand reports of the national polls published in all Canadian newspapers in French and in English. I maintain that this is a better choice than theirs: a case study of all reports in one newspaper. I agree that the major problem with the Elections Act is enforcement, but I contend that if the Act were clearer about which information is required, it would be easier to enforce.

n a paper presented to Canadian Public Policy/ Analyse de Politiques, de Clercy and Ferguson

state that there are four central problems in my

analysis published in the December 2002 edition, namely (i) it does not address a large number of cases within the purview of the law, (ii) it overesti- mates the quality of reporting under the

self-regulation regime, (iii) it underestimates the po- tential effects of the 2000 amendments, and

(iv) proposed remedies ignore the basic question of enforcement.

I want first to clarify what seems to be a mis-

interpretation of my paper. I do not think and never said that the new provisions of the Canada Elections Act were not good, or that the Act should not have been promulgated. In fact, in an article published in this journal in 1999 (Vachon, Durand and Blais

CANADIAN PUBLIC POLICY - ANALYSE DE POLITIQUES, VOL. XXIX, NO. 3 2003

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374 Claire Durand

1999), I, with others, called for more specific pro- visions regarding response rates in the bill, then under discussion. Furthermore, in a recent article in La Presse (23 April 2003) concerning the polls of the 2003 Quebec election, I concluded that Que- bec's Election Act should be amended to include the same provisions as the Canadian Act. I have been and remain in favour of the legislation. And like de

Clercy and Ferguson, I think it should be enforced; unlike them, however, I think it should also be made more specific, which would make both compliance and enforcement easier.

De Clercy and Ferguson state that since I chose to analyze only first-hand reports, I did not address a large number of cases within the purview of the Canada Elections Act because the Act applies to all

reports made in the first 24 hours after the poll is released. They oppose their own analysis of one

newspaper. In short, they state that it is better to

analyze all 22 reports - first-hand and second-hand alike - in one newspaper (ignoring five other news-

papers and two Web sites) than to analyze all the first-hand reports in all the newspapers. Their pro- posal has two fundamental methodological problems.

First, the authors seem to argue that to examine

compliance with the Act at the national level, using a single case study (i.e., reporting in The Globe and

Mail) is a more reliable methodology than one based on a study of the whole population. It is unlikely that many social scientists would agree. In the

present case, such a proposal is even less valid since

poll reporting has traditionally differed in the French and English media, and any analysis of compliance would have to take this into account.

Second, since second-hand reports rely upon first- hand reports for their information, it is methodo- logically questionable to examine both types of ar- ticles as if they were on the same level and to base any statistics on them globally, unless, as they do, one examines only a single newspaper. In this latter

case, second-hand reports are not dependent on first- hand reports because they do not normally report on the same polls. However, one assumes that it would be appropriate to make the distinction be- tween first-hand and second-hand reports in the

analysis.

The authors go on to state that I overestimate the

quality of poll reporting under the self-regulation regime in 1997. The data used for my analysis of

poll reports in 1997, though not provided in the ar- ticle, are available upon request. The authors offer their own analysis of The Globe and Mail. How- ever, since the number of articles (24 and 22) is low, it would be preferable to present the data in real numbers rather than percentages. In doing so, a more modest interpretation of their findings emerges: in 2000, 22 out of 22 articles presented who conducted the survey, compared with 21 out of 24 in 1997; for the dates the survey was conducted, it was 14 (out of 22) in 2000, compared with 13 (out of 24) in 1997. Such improvements (de Clercy and Ferguson cat-

egorized any increase over 5 percent as an improve- ment) are not exactly substantial. In fact, the situa- tion in The Globe and Mail presented by the authors

supports my own analysis. The only major improve- ment was in the presentation of the question wording (from one article in 1997 to nine in 2000). Even so, it must be pointed out that under the Act, all 22 ar- ticles were required to publish the question wording.

The authors focus on section 326 (1) of the Act, which makes clear what information is to be pub- lished along with the polls. I presented data showing that this section of the Act has been rather well com-

plied with (though for the uninitiated reader, it may be difficult to make sense of the information in the form in which it is provided). They do not present any analysis of the contents of the reports that the

newspapers were supposed to make available. My detailed analysis shows that in fact the main prob- lem was with these reports. Most pollsters did not provide the information they were required to pro- vide, and not one newspaper was willing to ask them

CANADIAN PUBLIC POLICY - ANALYSE DE POLITIQUES, VOL. XXIX, NO. 3 2003

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The New Act Has Merit if Enforced - Exactly What I Said 375

to do so. Furthermore, nobody at Elections Canada seems to have checked to ensure the Act was being complied with.

In short, first-hand reports are a much clearer and a methodologically sound basis for analysis, and it is always better to base conclusions about compli- ance on the whole population of cases than on a

single case study. If the particular case examined

by de Clercy and Ferguson had not complied with the Act at all, would they have concluded that no one had complied with the Act? Everyone agrees that the Act did no harm. The question is, did it do much good, and if not, why not? My conclusion, drawn from the analysis, is that the situation either

stayed the same or improved only slightly (mostly in the publication of the exact question wording). One could say that without the law, the situation

might have worsened, so passing the Canada Elec-

tions Act was a very good thing. However, the main reason why the improvement was less than expected is that the Act was not enforced. I maintain that it would be easier to enforce the Act if it was clearer about which information is required and provided specific instruc- tions on the form and content of the report.

REFERENCES

Durand, C. 2002. "The 2000 Canadian Election and Poll Reporting under the New Elections Act," Canadian Public Policy/Analyse de Politiques 28 (4):539-45.

2003. "Les sondeurs ont vu juste," La Presse, 23

April, p. A21. Vachon, S., C. Durand and A. Blais. 1999. "Les sondages

moins rigoureux sont-ils moins fiables ?" Canadian Public Policy /Analyse de Politiques 25 (4):557-61.

CANADIAN PUBLIC POLICY - ANALYSE DE POLITIQUES, VOL. XXIX, NO. 3 2003

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