Reviews

Public op

MARGIN OFERROR. By Claire Hoy. Key
Porter Books, Toronto, 1989, 228 pages.

Are you one of those who have some
doubts about the authenticity and use of
public opinion polls? Especially during elec-
tion campaigns? Join the club! Youw’reon -
solid ground.

Public opinion polls have become the
New God of Politics. No politician, no polit-
ical party would today enter an election
campaign without one. They have become
dangerous weapons when used unscrupu-
lously by politicians and special interest
groups.

Claire Hoy’s book Margin of Error on
how public opinion polls are used is an
eye-opener.

Hoy does not deny that public opinion
polls are and have been legitimately used to
ascertain public opinion on many issues and
in that sense can perform a useful public
service, He notes, however, that they have
also been abused. He is concerned about the
major role they play in elections and the
way in which they have distorted the whole
electoral process.

He emphasizes that political parties and
politicians are increasingly relying on public
opinion polls for issues to feature rather
than advancing clear-cut programs of their
own,

Some months before the 1988 federal
election, the Mulroney government com-
missioned a $90,000 poll at public expense
which found that Canadians were demand-
ing stronger pollution laws, cleaner water,
better housing, and programs to deal with
illiteracy.

Mulroney, ever the opportunist, two
weeks before the election announced “a
$110 million national literacy program, a
$110,000 million five-year clean-up plan for
the St. Lawrence River and a $196 million
joint federal-provincial program to clean up
Halifax harbour.”

A June 1987 Tory Decima poll found
that Canadians wanted a day-care pro-
gram. With an eye to the upcoming elec-
tions, Health Minister Jake Epp followed
up by introducing a $6.4-billion child care
program in the Commons just before the
election. It wasn’t passed because the House
adjourned for the election. Then in his Feb-
ruary 1990 budget, Finance Minister
Michael Wilson announced that the pro-
gram had been shelved. But it had made
good election propaganda for the Tories in

* the meantime.

“No prime minister,” observed Hoy,
“has ever been so enthralled and so influ-
enced by them (public opinion polls) as
Mulroney.”

When Liberal leader John Turner sup-
ported the action of the Liberal-dominated
Senate before the last election in blocking
passage of the Canada-U.S. free trade deal,
Turner was not acting out of conviction or
principle but rather as a result of a secret
poll which showed wide public support for
the action of the Senate.

“The public was unaware,” says Hoy in
his book “that private opinion polls, not
overriding principles, had governed this
seemingly bold decision.”

NDP public opinion polls, taken Six
months before the election was called, indi-
cated that the NDP was weak in the eyes of
voters in its economic policies, but strong
on Broadbent’s personal popularity and the
NDP’s social service and environment poli-
cies. Asa result the NDP backed off the free
trade issue until it was too late. In its first
election statements it did not even mention
free trade.

The Liberals were smarter. They sensed

34 « Pacific Tribune, April 30, 1990

inion polling:
the ‘new god of politics’

that free trade would be the issue and took
the initiative in attacking it. The NDP
became a weak Johnny-come-lately on free
trade, much to the dismay of the trade
union movement and other opponents of
free trade.

“In opting for power instead of princi-
ple,” says Hoy, “and losing both, the NDP
had sacrificed its soul.”

He adds: “The evidence shows that
today’s successful, political ‘leader’ is, by
definition, the first person with the results of
the latest poll in his back pocket. Metho-
dology has replaced ideology as the new
god of politics.”

He notes further that “the essence of par-
liamentary democracy is that we elect poli-
ticians to lead, to take risks, to stand for
something more than the latest popular sen-
timent or the collective public wisdom,
which may be based more on short-term
emotional or outright ignorance than .on
anything else.

“The escalation of polling has changed
our political process drastically. The old-
time political insiders, often serving the
party out of genuine conviction, have been
replaced by the technocrats, men and
machines with the latest tabulations.”

Hoy is also concerned with the way the
media uncritically accept public opinion
polls as facts and news when in reality they
are often neither, charging that this is a great
disservice to the public.

That wrong is compounded when the
media themselves commission public opin-
ion polls and accept the results in the same
uncritical way.
| a eens a aman eRe eS

‘Media polls, in addition to
helping the media manufacture
their own news, enjoy the
distinction of being the only
area where journalists are
routinely uncritical.’

— Claire Hoy

“Just as polling results direct the politi-
cians, the media, who often decry that
trend, are now themselves regularly guided
by the polls. Whether they commission their
own — which has become the prestigious
thing to do — or rely on other polls, the
media regularly look to the results to decide
not only what issues or persons to cover, but
what approaches to take. Media polls, in
addition to helping the media manufacture
their own news, enjoy the distinction of
being the only area where journalists are
routinely uncritical.”

Are public polls an accurate reflection of
what people are thinking?

Hoy says that polls “have become larger
than life itself in many ways, often por-
trayed as absolute, take-it-to-the-bank indi-
cators of what is about to happen, rather
than simply an imperfect measure of how
people felt, at one particular time, about
something they may or may not have
understood or cared about.”

And he cites many instances of when they
have been wildly inaccurate.

“Journalists,” he notes, “will blithely
report the pronouncements of “name”
pollsters regardless of how much or how
often they contradict themselves. Angus
Reid, for example, was widely quoted
between the two (federal) elections as pre-
dicting with considerable certainty and flair,
a minority Liberal government, a minority

Opinions on the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement,
before the fact and, in 1989, under the FTA:

ce ae A

Decima polls
conducted for
Maclean’s
magazine in
1989.

ica A good/very good idea

ea A bad/very bad idea

What is the most important issue facing Canada today?
And in the 1990s?

ISSUES

~ | 1985| 1986 | 1987| 1988 | 1989 1990s

ENVIRONMENT

“4 2 2 10 18° 238

GST

* * * * 15

INFLATION/ECONOMY 1Oscoyb2s| 292 5 10

DEFICIT/GOVERNMENT 6 10 10 6 10

9

e NATIONAL UNITY
- FREE TRADE

8 ABORTION

5 EMPLOYMENT

5 .

*not cited by a significant number of poll respondents

a wlaja olole

7:
* * * * 6
45 39 20 10 6

NDP government, the death of the Liberal
Party, and a Tory government to boost.
Anyone in another field with this sort of
track record would be justifiably ignored or
ridiculed, but the every utterance of the
pollsters became true wisdom — they have
numbers, after all — and journalists suffer
a collective amnesia in not reminding read-
ers, viewers and listeners of the excesses of
past predictions from the same pollsters. All
this is a wonderful thing for the pollsters.
But it makes for poor journalism, and
short-changes the public.”

Hoy also quotes the well known Globe
and Mail journalist Jeffrey Simpson on this
subject:

“Just as love is often wasted on the
young, so polls are often wasted on the
media. The substantial increase in the
number of pollsters has been matched only
by the explosion in the number of journal-
ists reporting them. Many journalists,
including those who write about political

matters, are unschooled in Canadian his-

tory, in polling methodology, in an under-
standing of any part of the country but their
own. Yet the beguiling simplicity and easy
accessibility of polling data emboldens all
journalists to become instant pundits, or
worse still, experts. They can pontificate on
the meaning of this, the likely outcome of
that, the significance of everything, on the
basis of a few stark numbers.”

Hoy also asserts that pollsters can get any
answers they want by asking the right ques-
tions.

“Not a single reputable pollster,” he says,
“will argue against the fact that the question
itself, both its wording and its placement in
the questionnaire, is of key importance in
the ultimate success of the survey. Pollsters
acknowledge, without exception, that ques-
tions can easily be designed to elicit a par-

ticular answer, and the key to getting good
survey results is to ask good questions.”

Hoy also charges that public opinion
polls are used to:

@ Influence election results by providing
misleading information on who is winning
and who 1s losing prior to the vote.

@ [nject issues into election campaigns,
issues that the voters may know little abou!
but which a party wants to popularize fori
own partisan reasons.

Reading this book one quickly becomes
convinced that public opinion polls arent
by any means the neutral, objective fac
finding operations that we have been led 10)
believe, interested only in finding out wha
the public is thinking on selected issues
They can and are used to manipulate publit
opinion and the voters in many ways.

They don’t come cheap — the cost coult —
be anywhere from $10,000 to $200,000. —

Should public opinion polls be banned
especially at election time? The author sa
no. :

“There are four traditional argume
used for banning public opinion polls, pat
ticularly during election campaigns: the!
unduly influence the electoral process; the)
invade the privacy of respondents; the
oversimplify the issues and thus undermin
the democratic process; they are unreli
ble.”

He admits that all of these arguments al
substantially correct but then points ol
that politicians and the media are guilty 0
the same shortcoming and nobody sugges
they be banned. He’s got a point there. Th
faults of our electoral system and our fo
of democracy go much deeper than tha)
including as they do corporate control ¢ j
the media and both major federal politi”
parties.

— Ben Swai Ke

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on
May Day

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Owner/ Manager P,
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