"You have to look at polls not as a neutral,
transparent measuring instrument," says Bob Hanke, peering
through his red-framed glasses. "They're shaped by journalists
who think that knowing who's ahead and who's going to win - the
whole emphasis on prediction - is more important than actually
describing what you or I think or feel."
It's
less than a week before January 23, Election Day, and Hanke is
sitting in a Second Cup near his home office in Toronto. The
assistant professor at York University's Communication Studies
program is also co-founder of CAMERA, the Committee on
Alternative Media Experimentation, Research and Analysis, a
collective dedicated to democratizing the media by debunking the
techniques it commonly uses. Conventional public polling is a
prime target because it pre-empts the normal process of debate,
deliberation and reflection. At this point in the campaign, he
says, "We should still be looking at competing ideological
viewpoints and seeing which make sense according to our interests
in health, education and the environment."
The
debate over the media's use of polls during campaigns is ongoing
and heated. One camp, in which Hanke has pitched his tent,
derides the media's use of polls, claiming it distorts reality
and influences outcomes. Proponents, however, consider polling a
valuable tool that informs the public. The argument goes back and
forth, and even with no end in sight, Canadian media outlets
commissioned and covered polls more ambitiously than ever this
time around.
As Alan Bass, chair of journalism
at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, B.C., says, "It's
ironic, but at a time when the reliability of public opinion
polls is being questioned as never before, polls have dominated
coverage of this campaign to an unprecedented
extent."
Public polling emerged in Canada in
the 1940s, but media did not consider the results worthy of
publication until the '60s, and it was only in the '80s that
polls began to form the basis of election coverage. It did not
take long for criticism to follow as the many flaws became known.
The chosen sample, the way questions are worded, the range of
possible answers, the sequence in which questions are asked and
the length of the survey are just some of the many factors
critics use to cast doubt on public polling.
In
addition to questioning their accuracy, critics also charge that
polls influence electoral outcome by creating a "bandwagon
effect" (in which people decide to vote for a party because they
believe that party is going to win), an "underdog effect" (in
which people cast a sympathetic vote because they believe that a
party might lose), or a strategic voting effect (in which people
decide to vote for one party in order to keep another party out
of office). The fact that some studies disprove this notion while
others support it only adds to the never-ending
debate.
The 2006 general election was marked by
new innovations and polling samples of unprecedented numbers.
CanWest Global Communications Corp., for one, teamed up with
Ipsos-Reid and utilized online polling based on the same
parameters as telephone polling. "It was our most ambitious
polling program ever," says Darrell Bricker, president of
Ipsos-Reid public affairs in North America. From a panel of
100,000 Canadians who answered a 60-question survey on their
demographic backgrounds, Ipsos-Reid selected 12,000 people they
believed formed a representative population of voting Canadians
based on factors like language background, age and regional
distribution. Ipsos then sent them electronic surveys over the
course of the campaign.
Online polling allowed
Global National to broadcast results within
minutes, says Jason Keel, the program's broadcast producer, and
to measure how voter opinions changed not only on a daily basis,
but even during the leaders' debates. Keel says he was
particularly impressed by the commitment of the poll's
respondents to not only watch the whole debate, but to answer
questions both before and immediately after it. "Those Canadians
obviously found that polling is something they want to
participate in," he says. "The Internet is changing polling
because it makes it more interactive and
easy."
The Globe and Mail
and CTV, together with Strategic Counsel, also conducted "the
most ambitious polling in its history," says
Globe managing editor Colin MacKenzie. By
using a "rolling tracking" method that involved polling 500
people a day and providing every three-day's worth of sampling
for a combined total of 1,500, they were able to raise sample
sizes while polling continuously throughout the campaign.
"Rolling gives you a sense of continuity," says MacKenzie. "Had
we done it last time we would have detected an uptake," referring
to the grossly off-beam prediction of a Conservative victory in
2004. The Globe, like most media outlets,
polled through the final weekend this election, "just to not get
caught by last-minute changes."
Even the CBC,
which vowed not to cover election polls unless they showed a
dramatic shift in public opinion, bowed somewhat by sampling the
week's major poll results every Sunday night during the
campaign.
Despite the refinements, though, not
all problems have been eliminated. The increased sample sizes may
decrease margins of error, but rolling tracking generates
problems of its own. A company may be able to produce larger
sample size by grouping three day's worth of polling, but the
results from days one and two can change by day three because of
events in the campaign. And even if more polls are conducted more
quickly, they may still be the kinds of polls critics
condemn.
Hanke is deeply opposed to "horse-race
coverage," in which the media focus on leadership and strategy to
predict election outcomes. He says he's not opposed to polling
entirely, but wants the media to focus more on policy-preference
polls and less on leader- or party-preference polls. "It would
show a whole other side of public opinion," he says, using Kyoto
and Conservative Party of Canada leader Stephen Harper as an
example. "If you asked people, 'Do you support Kyoto?' probably
you'd find 95 per cent of people say 'Yes.' But look, they're
about to elect a prime minister who wants to scrap Kyoto." On
that particular issue, he says, approval or disapproval of a
leader is in no way connected to the policy that person
prefers.
But "the horse race is the key
component of the election," counters MacKenzie. Elections are all
about who's going to win, he says, which is why he has faith in
survey research.
And Keel believes the media
are justified in covering polls. "Polling actually is reflected
in the results when you look at the polls closest to the
election," he says. "It's important to know how Canadians feel
because without that, you're really just
guessing."
One journalist says the media's
insatiable appetite for polling data is not entirely editorially
driven - it's also a bottom-line imperative. "Polls are cheap and
easy headlines," says Antonia Zerbisias, media critic for
The Toronto Star. "With them come dramatic
headlines, colourful graphics and reaction." The media also use
polls to differentiate themselves from competition, says
Zerbisias, with each news organization striving for its own
unique, poll-based story.
Whether or not polls
are informative or coercive, Canadians will simply have to get
used to the media's infatuation with the kind of up-to-the-minute
horse-race coverage mega-polling inevitably produces. This time,
at least, they came close to predicting the actual
results.