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.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

Creating an Index of Public Opinion Questions

Until now researchers interested in knowing what public opinion data existed on a particular topic had a problem. There was no single source of information about survey work being done in this country. Now for the first time the American Public Opinion Index collects all the questions asked of the general public in national, state and local polls and arranges them in a topical index so that researchers will have a comprehensive and thoroughly cross listed reference for finding polling information that might be useful for their work.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

M{a} Angeles Cea D'Ancona (2005). Metodos de encuesta. Teoria y practica, errores y mejora. [Survey Methodologies. Theory and Practice, Errors and Improvement.] Madrid, Espana: Sintesis, 493 pp., ISBN 84-9756-250-X.

We may say that, up to now, surveys are the research methodmost commonly used and checked in social science and publicopinion studies. The predominant use of surveys in social researchis almost universal. This is demonstrated by the constant increaseof publications and research studies about or based on surveys,coming from all latitudes. But, above all, surveys and opinionpolls play an essential political role in the development ofour democracies. They have become the accepted way experts andlegislators can get to know what people think in general, howthey feel about specific topics and, finally, what their reactionis to political decisions. The measurement of public opinionby opinion polls is the main tool politicians have     

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.     

The Role of Political Identity and Media Selection on Perceptions of Hostile Media Bias During the 2012 Presidential Campaign

Viewing a hostile media bias against one’s group (e.g., political party) is a perceptual effect of media use. When it comes to the portrayal of political parties in the United States, prior research suggests that both Democrats and Republicans see mainstream media coverage as favoring the other side, regardless of the orientation of the political news coverage. Although prior research has not identified all factors that make this perceptual bias more likely, or at explaining how or why this perceptual effect occurs, we do know that it is related to one’s group identity. In this study, we examined salient predictors of hostile media bias during the 2012 presidential campaign. Individual (i.e., political cynicism) and group identity related (i.e., group status, intergroup bias, political ideology) differences of media users predicted such perceptions. But, the medium selected for political information about the campaign also mattered. The use of two media in particular—TV and social networking sites—appear to have blunted hostile media bias perceptions, whereas the use of two other media—radio and video sharing sites—appear to have accentuated perceptions that the media were biased against one’s party     

ACCURACY AND ERROR IN ELECTORAL FORECASTS: THE CASE OF MEXICO

Forecast errors in preelectoral polls are common. Since theNicaraguan Election in 1990, a common assumption is that wheredemocratic practices are not equal to those of the developedcountries (authoritarian, in transition, etc.), the errors inpredicting electoral outcomes with the help of pre-electoralpolls result mostly from contextual effects related to the authoritariannature of the political systems. Forecast errors in developeddemocracies have been explained by flaws in sampling (GreatBritain), last minute changes in preferences (Spain, UnitedStates, and France) and a social desirability bias in the UnitedStates. The intention of this paper is to show that in Mexicoboth the accuracy and the sources of error in predicting electoralresults are very similar to those confronted by pollsters elsewhere:mostly sampling and allocation of nonrespondents and those whoare undecided. An extensive data set of pre-electoral pollsconducted in Mexico shows an average error in the order of 3–5percentage points. Some of this error could be related to sociallydesirable answers derived from contextual effects, but thiseffect is small and must not be generalized.     

All the Polling (Data) That’s Fit to Print? An Analysis of Online News Coverage of 2016 Primary Polls

As U.S. news outlets grapple with the challenges of delivering news in a digital era, journalists cover elections with tighter deadlines and fewer resources. Consequently, we are seeing an explosion in coverage of polls, which require little original reporting and attract readers through their “horse race” appeal. As the number of polls increases, news professionals are culling data from a wider spectrum of sources that vary in methodology and credibility. What remains unclear is how effective the news media are in providing polling context in their online coverage that is less limited by the space and time constraints of more traditional mediums. Utilizing the 2016 U.S. primaries, this exploratory study examines online news articles focused on polls to evaluate the quality of digital coverage across national news outlets.

Keywords: Campaigns and Elections; Content Analysis; Journalism; News Media; Political Communication     

THE CHALLENGES OF SURVEYING PUBLIC OPINION IN AN EMERGING DEMOCRACY

Based on interviews with political party officials and journalistsas well as a content analysis of election poll stories, thispaper discusses opinion polling in Ghana's emerging democracy.Highlighted in the discussion are the relevance of surveyingpublic opinion in a neo-democracy and the journalistic reportingof poll results. The paper describes the surveying of publicopinion in a political climate in transition from long historicalexperience of authoritarianism and dictatorship including aperiod of a ‘culture of silence’, to freedom ofexpression, as a challenge. In an examination of local ‘polls’conducted by newspapers during the 1996 presidential and parliamentaryelections, it characterizes those exercises as unscientificand inaccurate. Technical details about surveys were mostlymissing in the stories, suggesting lack of poll reporting knowledgeamong journalists as a major challenge. There is an attemptto address these challenges for the purpose of strengtheningthe enabling role of political polling and journalistic reportingof poll results in Ghana's new democracy. Adequate responsesto these challenges would, it is proposed, contribute to a scientificand an objective assessment of issues in political decision–makingincluding measuring voter support for political parties andcandidates.     

Is the Confirmation Bias Bubble Larger Online? Pre-Election Confirmation Bias in Selective Exposure to Online versus Print Political Information

The Internet era has often been blamed for a predominant engagement with attitude-consistent information among citizens (labeled confirmation bias), which is thought to hurt political deliberation. This study offers the first rigorous evidence suggesting that online news fosters greater confirmation bias than traditional media. A 2 × 2 within-subjects experiment presented political articles, varying stance (conservative vs. liberal) and medium (online vs. print); selective exposure was logged or taped. Data were collected during the U.S. 2016 presidential primaries. As expected in the preelection context, partisans whose party was anticipated to lose the election (conservatives) did not exhibit confirmation bias. Liberals showed confirmation bias, but only online, suggesting print contexts reduce confirmation bias.     

POPULARITY IN A FREEFALL: MEASURING A SPIRAL OF SILENCE AT THE END OF THE BUSH PRESIDENCY

This study measures a spiral of silence in the context of actualopinion change during President George Bush's popularity declinein one of his political strongholds. Willingness of voters topublicly express their opinions about Bush were analyzed overthree pre-election surveys (N = 1,800) sponsored by a prominentlocal newspaper in Orange County, California. Respondents wereasked whether or not they would be willing to be reinterviewedby a reporter and have their names and views published in thepaper. The hypothesis that Bush supporters would be less willingthan others to agree to be reinterviewed during the period inwhich the president's ratings were dropping sharply is supported.This trend was most in evidence at the beginning of the presidentialcampaign, when Bush's ratings were in the steepest decline.These findings indicate the importance of actual opinion shiftsin spiral of silence research, and suggest several issues forfuture research on opinion change.     

Modal Expressions in Refusals of Friends' Interpersonal Requests: Politeness and Effectiveness

Researchers theorize that modal expressions (e.g., can, may, could, and should) serve politeness functions in discourse, particularly in requests and refusals. This study sought to empirically determine whether requesters perceived refusals containing modal expressions as more polite than their non-modal counterparts. The results showed that refusals containing modal expressions are judged as more polite but they are mixed when examining whether refusals containing modal expressions are perceived as more effective than their non-modal counterparts. The discussion section addresses the implications of these findings for the study and creation of refusal messages.     

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.