Political homophily on social network sites and users' poll skepticism

Although many studies have investigated citizens' attitudes toward polls and the political consequences, there have been no studies examining the effects of social network site (SNS) users' opinion environments on their poll skepticism. Based on prior studies on poll skepticism, we examine the relationship between perceived SNS opinion environments, poll skepticism, perceived concerns over the negative influence of the polls, and voting intention in an upcoming election. Using the survey data of the 2012 South Korean General Election, this study found that if the published polls are against respondents' political position, their homophilous SNS opinion environments promote poll skepticism, and augmented poll skepticism leads to concerns over the negative influence of the polls on other voters, which in turn increases voting intention.     

How opinion polls affect voting in Bangkok's gubernatorial election

In response to the widely publicized failure of most pollsters to predict the winner of the Bangkok governor election on 3 March 2013, this study examined the published results of opinion polls in the news media to see how they had affected the voter preference and what errors existed. The study analyzed a series of poll results by five major pollsters for the pre-election and exit polls during the governor election campaign from January to March 2013 and, then, compared them with the final results of governor election. The poll results lent partial support to the spiral of silence theory. Among all pollsters, only NIDA Poll projected the right prediction for Democrat candidate M. R. Sukhumbhand Paribatra as the winner. Its pre-election polls showed his final victory occurring in the last leg of the election campaign as a result of the late swing voters against the ruling Pheu Thai Party attaining monopoly on power. Suan Dusit and Abac Polls showed the existence of the bandwagon effect for Pheu Thai candidate Pol. Gen. Pongsapat Pongcharoen. Besides their polling effects, major factors accounting for errors included shy Democrat factor, late swing of voters, sampling error, and nonresponse bias.     

THE PRESS AND THE POLLS IN GERMANY, 1980-1994 POLL COVERAGE AS AN ESSENTIAL PART OF ELECTION CAMPAIGN REPORTING

Since their beginnings pre-election polls have been under attackfrom politicians and journalists. One of the most fundamentalcriticisms of polls is that they can influence the outcome ofelections. This article investigates news media reporting ofpoll results and comments on public opinion research beforeFederal elections in Germany. It presents empirical findingsfor the quantity as well as the formal and substantial qualityof this press coverage. The database is a content analysis of443 pre-election poll articles published in Germany's leadingdailies Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), Frankfurter Rundschau(FR), Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ), and Die Welt (Welt) between1980 and 1994. The quantity of news media reporting of publicopinion polls has improved over the years. Now, poll storiesare a standard feature of German newspapers. The frequency ofreports depends on the conditions of each election—e.g.on the expected closeness of the election outcome. The formalquality could be better—that is the conformity to AAPORstandards. Horse-race journalism isn't found as often as inthe USA. Journalists often use poll results to predict an electionoutcome. Moreover, the analysis revealed an ambivalent relationshipbetween liberal journalists and polls, while the reporting ofconservative journalists is more in favor of opinion research.     

Perception and Emotion: The Indirect Effect of Reported Election Poll Results on Political Participation Intention and Support for Restrictions

This study explores how the perceived effect and bias of reported election poll results are associated with voters' attitudes toward restrictions on polling reports and their political participation intention through emotions. A telephone survey using a representative sample of South Korean voters (N = 597) was conducted prior to the 2012 South Korean presidential election. Results indicate that the third-person perception of reported election poll results was indirectly linked to support for restrictions on polling reports through anxiety. For supporters of Mr. Jae In Moon, the nominee of the liberal Democratic United Party, who was reported to be behind in the polls, the hostile media perception was indirectly associated with support for restrictions through anxiety and directly associated with political participation intention. Implications of the findings are discussed.     

Public Attitudes toward Polls: Evidence from the 2000 U.S. Presidential Election

This study investigates the perceived impact of election polls,focusing on the hotly contested 2000 U.S. presidential election.Survey data from 558 individuals gathered during the final daysof the election campaign are analyzed to examine beliefs thatthe polls greatly affect other voters, general views of pollsas good or bad for the country, beliefs about whether pollstersinfluence their results to come out a certain way, and supportfor banning election-night projections. Results indicate thatmost respondents felt the polls had no influence on themselveswhile still affecting others. Respondents exhibiting these ‘third-person-effect’perceptions were significantly more likely than others to believethat election polls are a bad thing for the country. Negativeperceptions of polls and beliefs that pollsters try to influenceresults were also related to general distrust of the news media.Negative views of polls in turn were associated with increasedsupport for prohibiting election-night projections. In general,the results illustrate the dependency of negative views aboutpolling on fears of untoward effects on voters, in particularthe fear that polls and election projections might lend supportto candidates opposed by the respondent.     

A meta-analysis of the effects of viewing U.S. presidential debates

Televised debates are now an expected component of the American presidential election campaign. A meta-analysis was used to cumulate the research on the effects of watching presidential debates. General campaign debates increase issue knowledge and issue salience (the number of issues a voter uses to evaluate candidates) and can change preference for candidates' issue stands. Debates can have an agenda-setting effect. Debates can alter perceptions of the candidates' personality, but they do not exert a significant effect on perceptions of the candidates' competence (leadership ability). Debates can affect vote preference. Primary debates increase issue knowledge, influence perceptions of candidates' character, and can alter voter preferences (the effect sizes for these variables are larger in primary than general debates). The effect sizes for the dependent variables with significant effects were heterogeneous (except for effects of debates other than the first on vote preference). No support was found for several possible moderator variables on issue knowledge, character perceptions, candidate competence, and vote preference: nature of subject pool (students, nonstudents), study design (pretest/posttest, viewers/nonviewers), number of days between debate and election, or data collection method (public opinion poll or experimenter data). The first debate in a series had a larger effect on vote preference than other debates, but was not a moderator for other dependent variables. The possibility that other moderator variables are at work cannot be rejected.     

Poll Reporting and Journalistic Paradigm: A Study of Popularity Poll Coverage in Hong Kong Newspapers

Opinion polling has become a common feature in news and public discourse in Hong Kong. This study examines how local newspapers cover popularity polls about the government and its leaders. It is hypothesized that newspapers adhering to different journalistic paradigms would cover such popularity polls differently in terms of the inclusion of methodological information, use of news sources, emphasis on negative versus positive results, treatment of polls conducted by different entities, and use of visual means of representations. A content analysis was conducted on four newspapers which represent the professionalism, populism, and propaganda paradigms, respectively. The results show that there are both similarities and differences in the poll coverage of the newspapers, with the differences mostly corresponding to the differences in journalistic paradigms. The results also point to a number of phenomena about news media in Hong Kong and poll reporting in general.     

Another Look at What Moves Public Opinion: Media Agenda Setting and Polls in the 2000 U.S. Election

This study examined two levels of media agenda effects on aggregatepublic opinion from different news sources. The effects wereinvestigated immediately and cumulatively. Content analysisdata from the 2000 U.S. presidential election coverage by fournational news organizations were related to the Gallup pre-electionpoll standings of each candidate. Regression analyses foundthat both the salience of a candidate and the salience of theattributes of a candidate cumulatively, but not immediately,influenced his standing in the polls. An analysis of news sourcessupported the finding that the two levels of agenda-settingeffects seemed mostly cumulative rather than immediate. Newsfrom different sources, however, tended to have effects of differentdegrees and sometimes different directions on candidate pollstandings. Cumulative effects of candidate salience on aggregateopinion change were found for non-partisan and neutral newssources—reporters, poll reporting and public documents—whereasthe effects of candidate attribute salience mostly came frompartisan sources—the candidate himself and members ofthe competing political party. Possible political implicationsof these findings are discussed.     

日本内阁府科学民意调查及启示

论述日本内阁府长达60余年的科学民意调查及对我国的4点启示:①随着科学的发展,科学民意调查的必要性不断增强;②科学与社会的视角是了解真实科学民意的基本视角,而非固定模式、固定内容的调查设计,以日常生活为切入点的设问方式,有利于及时反映民意、挖掘真实民意;③公民科学兴趣度是科学民意的重要内容;④科学民意调查是科技政策出台、实施的重要情报依据。     

Machine learning for predicting elections in Latin America based on social media engagement and polls

The popularity of contemporary social media (SM) has impacted democratic practices, and the success of presidential campaigns is frequently attributed to SM performance. Within this new scenario, many methodological proposals that use SM data have been put forward for predicting election results. However, the most common approach, based on the volume and sentiment analysis of mentions on Twitter, has been frequently criticized and challenged. Thus, recent surveys have indicated new directions, such as the use of data from more than one SM platform, the adoption of nonlinear machine learning (ML) models, and the validation of methodologies and experiments in different elections. In this context, the present paper proposes SoMEN, the Social Media framework for Election Nowcasting, a framework composed of a process and an ML model for nowcasting election results based on SM performance as features and with offline polls as labeled data. It also defines SoMEN-DC, an execution strategy for SoMEN that enables continuous prediction during the campaign (DC). The proposed metrics and framework were applied to some of the main recent presidential elections in Latin America: Argentina (2019), Brazil (2018), Colombia (2018), and Mexico (2018). More than 65,000 posts were collected from the SM profiles of candidates on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram with data from 195 presidential polls. Results have demonstrated that it was possible to achieve a high level of accuracy in predicting the final vote share of the candidates and to make daily predictions, providing competitive or better results than the traditional polls. The strategies put forward in this study have attempted to address several of the current challenges in this research area and have indicated a new manner of how to face the problems. They may also be directly used for predicting future elections in similar scenarios.     

MASS MEDIA, THE ELECTORATE, AND THE BANDWAGON. A STUDY OF COMMUNICATION EFFECTS ON VOTE CHOICE IN GERMANY

The paper addresses two propositions: (1) that by publishingnews stories about the electoral strength of parties or candidates,the mass media contribute to shaping the voters' expectationsabout the likely outcome of an upcoming election; (2) that theseexpectations in turn stimulate a bandwagon effect, i.e. theyinfluence vote choice to the advantage of the apparent futurewinner of the election. Analyzing media content and survey datagathered during the campaign for the first all-German nationalelection of December 2, 1990, it can be shown that (1) interestin the media's political reporting as well as interpersonalpolitical communication contributed significantly to convertingvoters to the view of the election outcome that was constantlypresented by the mass media; (2) this belief in turn causedparticularly unsophisticated independent voters to vote forthe apparent winner of the election. Referring to the conceptualframework of ‘low information rationality’, thisbandwagon effect is interpreted as ‘majority-led proxyvoting’. Since public opinion polls play the key rolein its definition, the media portrayal of the competing parties'electoral prospects can be assumed to be fairly accurate, sothat voters relying on such information in casting their voteare not misled.     

PUBLIC OPINION AS PARADOX: AUSTRALIAN ATTITUDES TO THE RATE OF IMMIGRATION AND THE RATE OF ASIAN IMMIGRATION, 1984-1990

Over the last few years, questions in the Australian polls aboutthe rate of immigration and the rate of Asian immigration havegenerated a remarkably wide range of response. While most ofthe polls conducted since 1984 suggest majority opposition tothe rate at which immigrants, including Asian immigrants, havebeen coming to Australia, other polls suggest majority support.Differences between the 1984 poll figures and some of the morerecent polls may reflect changes over time. Other polled differencesalmost certainly reflect differences in the way the questionswere worded. However, the most remarkable if least obvious causeof the difference seems to be the contexts in which the questionswere asked; more precisely, differences in the length and focusof the various questionnaires in which questions on immigrationwere embedded. Public opinion on the rate of immigration isnot only ‘soft’, it is created in the very attemptto measure it. Under these circumstances there is little pointin trying to isolate ‘majority opinion’ or in attemptingto establish which of the polls provides the most accurate reading.Where different readings are a product of differing contextsthey may be best understood in terms of competing conceptionsof what ‘public opinion’ itself is all about.     

OPINION RESEARCH IN EAST GERMANY A Challenge to Professional Standards

The paper discusses some of the issues complicating opinionresearch in the GDR and considers the effectiveness of a numberof techniques as well as the degree to which they can yieldreliable results. One of the main problem areas is the previouslyinstitutionalized character of public attitude studies duringSED–rule and their role in the sociopolitical advancementof socialist society. Given the enormous shift in voting intentionbefore the first gerneral election in 58 years on 18 March 1990,a comparison of trend data taken from a number of polls conductedbetween the end of November 1989 to 17 March 1990 clearly indicatesthe unstable situation at the outset and subsequent shift inattitudes toward political alternatives. It is argued that overall,poll results were successful in presenting a snapshot of viewsas they were at the time of the interview, and that as the electiondrew nearer, the trend gave a clear indication of the likelyoutcome.     

WHAT THE PUBLIC THINKS ABOUT HOW WE KNOW WHAT IT IS THINKING

In his 1987 presidential address to the annual AAPOR meeting,J. Ronald Milavsky stated that ‘we need to start payingmore attention to the public's estimate of the worth of surveyresearch’ (1987, p. 447), but the literature shows littleresponse to that call. Historically, broad-stroked conclusionsabout public attitudes have been positive, but the data arescanty and there has been little analysis of the structure ofopinions. In this study, we take a step in examining what thepublic thinks about how we know what it is thinking. In additionto standard direct questions about the accuracy and frequencyof polls, we developed indirect measures designed to tap attitudesabout polling as a mechanism in policy representation. Our evidencesuggests that poll confidence is multi-dimensional and thatthe indirect questions provide insights not apparent when peopleare asked directly about polling. We suggest additional researchpaths to explore the nature, sources, and implications of bothpositive and negative dimensions to attitudes about public policypolls.     

The effects of appeal types and candidates' poll rankings in negative political advertising

This paper combines the persuasion knowledge model (PKM) and priming theory to investigate the effects of different appeal types in negative political ads on voters' cognitive responses and candidate responses, and explore the moderating effect of an important candidate-related variable: poll ranking. The results indicate that negative advertising based on rational appeals is more beneficial to candidates who lag in the polls. However, negative ads based on emotional appeals generate better responses from voters when used by poll leaders. These effects are observed regardless of whether the race is between an incumbent and a challenger or two challengers.     

Voting intentions on social media and political opinion polls

Opinion polls play an important role in modern democratic processes: they are known to not only affect the outcomes of elections, but also have a significant influence on government policy after elections. Recent years have seen large discrepancies between polls and outcomes at several major elections and referendums, stemming from decreased participation in polls and an increasingly volatile electorate. This calls for new ways to measure public support for political parties. In this paper, we propose a method for measuring the popularity of election candidates on social media using Machine Learning-based Natural Language Processing techniques. The method is based on detecting voting intentions in the data. This is a considerable advance upon earlier work using automatic sentiment analysis. We evaluate the method both intrinsically on a set of hand-labelled social media posts, and extrinsically – by forecasting daily election polls. In the extrinsic evaluation, we analyze data from the 2016 US presidential election, and find that voting intentions measured from social media provide significant additional predictive value for forecasting daily polls. Thus, we demonstrate that the proposed method can be used to interpolate polls both spatially and temporally, thus providing reliable, continuous and fine-grained information about public opinion on current political issues.     

Polls in an authoritarian space: reporting and representing public opinion in China

The news media’s use of polls is by no means the special preserve of democracies. Using the case of Chinese government’s official medium (i.e. the People’s Daily), this study set out to assess how poll results are communicated to the public in China by examining the presentation of methodological information in its poll stories, and how its web counterpart, the People’s Daily Online website, differs in its coverage of polls from a technical point of view. It then examined the outlets’ interpretations of poll results and the media logic the coverage implies in comparison with the political logic that shapes poll reporting in China. Further critical discourse analysis reveals the use of authoritarian populist rhetoric as a discursive strategy in both outlets’ representation of public opinion. Compared with the print outlet, the online outlet showed a more marked inclination to describe a certain class as ‘the people’ in anti-elite rhetoric.     

DISCRIMINANT ANALYSIS AS A PREDICTION TOOL FOR UNCOMMITED VOTERS IN PRE-ELECTION POLLS

Uncommitted voters in pre-election polls include both thosewho have not yet made their choices (undecided voters) and thosewho have already made their choices but do not disclose them,for any reason (undeclared voters). The voting patterns of theseuncommitted voters are critical, especially in cases in whichthe size of the group is greater than the gap between the twoleading runners in an electoral race. In the present study,discriminant analysis was applied to predict the voting patternsof the uncommitted voters in two different election situations:the 1992 presidential election in the state of North Carolina,USA, and the 1992 presidential election in South Korea. Theadjusted percentage breakdown, which was created after discriminantanalysis assigned the uncommitted voters for each candidate,appeared noticeably closer to the actual results than the simplepercentage breakdown with the uncommitted voters excluded fromthe analysis. Discriminant analysis was also applied to predictthe effect of one candidate's possible withdrawal from electionswith several candidates. By treating the former supporters ofthe withdrawing candidate as another uncommitted group, discriminantanalysis provided a new percentage breakdown among the remainingcandidates; the result was consistent with experts' intuitiveprediction.     

Pre-Election Polls in Portugal: Accuracy, Bias, and Sources of Error, 1991-2004

This article examines the performance of the pre-election pollsin Portugal since 1991 and attempts to determine some of thecommon causes of poll inaccuracy in both National Assembly andEuropean Parliament elections. The analysis of poll resultsin this period reveals marked improvements in poll accuracysince 1991, which have brought it to levels that, today, arecomparable to those found in nations where the practice of bothsurvey research and opinion polling is longer and more established.No evidence of a systematic bias against any of the major partiesis found, and sources of error are congruent with those foundelsewhere. However, large errors remain the norm in polls pertainingto European Parliament elections, suggesting a shared inabilityof Portuguese polling organizations in dealing appropriatelywith the problems caused by low turnout and ‘landslide’elections.     

Public Journalism Through the Lens: How Television Broadcasters Covered Campaign ‘96

Public journalism has had a less measurable impact in local television newsrooms than in newspapers. A study of 1996 election coverage found that broadcasters who committed to practice public journalism devoted more airtime to policy issues and less to election polls than other stations. But the differences in coverage were so small they fell short of statistical significance. In contrast, coverage in newspapers Committed to public journalism was substantively different from other papers.