Why opinion polls keep getting it wrong

May 23, 2019 by

by Frank Furedi, spiked:

The more we demonise certain opinions, the less likely people are to express them.

In recent years, opinion polls have developed a reputation for failing to capture the views of the electorate. That is, for failing to do what they are meant to do. The failure of the polls to predict the outcome of the election in Australia is the latest in a series of bad missteps by polling organisations.

If we had believed the figures published by pollsters, we would have expected a victory for the Australian Labor Party (ALP). That is why virtually everyone, including supporters of the governing Liberal-National coalition, believed a Labor victory was inevitable. Since the last federal election in 2016, not a single Newspoll had the coalition in the lead. Newspoll pollsters predicted a defeat for the coalition in 56 successive polls.

The flipside of this failure of polling is the emergence of ‘shock results’ and ‘surprise victories’. This happened in the UK in 2015, when, contrary to the predictions of pollsters, the Conservative Party won a governing majority in the General Election. Similarly, in 2016 almost everyone who had relied on polls – including most media organisations – was shocked by the result in the EU referendum. The election of Donald Trump surprised the American political and cultural establishment, too. They were similarly ‘shocked’ by the failure of the polls to call the election result.

[…]  One of the most disturbing developments in Western societies in recent years has been the rise of self-censorship. In a world where language is systematically policed, where people are continually warned ‘You can’t say that!’, it is inevitable that many people choose to keep their opinions to themselves. A Pew Research Center survey in 2014 reported that if social-media users think their followers do not share their opinions on newsy issues, then they are less likely to post their true beliefs. In 2017, a report for the US-based Foundation for Individual Rights in Education found that the majority of students on American university campuses self-censor in classrooms. My own research indicates that a similar pattern is at work on UK campuses.

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