Are opinion polls unfair?

In political context, defective and doubtful on many counts

Two factors ‘science of opinion polls behind sampling’ and ‘voodoo polls’ have been unleashed by IRI and some other self-styled champions of public-opinion surveys whose over-Westernised – or even over-philosophised – hefty questionnaires are beyond the comprehension of a large number of local populace.

Still, these pollsters are continuing with their work without giving due consideration to the education and awareness level of majority of the Pakistanis constituting our electorate. Almost same happens in the case of polls conducted to label Pakistan as corrupt or failed state of such and such serial number on the ‘list of the corrupt and the failed states’.

This, in itself, is horrible and it is adversely affecting our social fabric besides damaging our trust in our own country. It is no less dangerous to our system than rampant terrorism whose consequences we are facing not only in the form of killing of innocent citizens, but also in the form of a huge split in the society’s overall thinking patterns. This split is vividly perceptible in our attitudes and day-to-day interactions, as well. The examples are before us: some people in the society admire and adore militants for their ‘heroic deeds’ while others condemn their acts of bestiality. This is a big social divide and it tends to give birth to discord of the national level that too in a matter concerning the security of citizens’ lives and their peace of mind (difference in routine matters can be tolerated but not in this pivotal area of national life).

This divide also owes to faulty interpretations thrust on the people of Pakistan by ‘too wise’ media persons, TV anchors and pollsters who, in order to prove themselves as Mr Know-Alls, create opinions and fabricate pieces of knowledge that seldom conform to actual realities. The trick works well when the pollsters and surveyors, whether from media or other setups, go for complex sampling and prepare intricate questions that are not readily understood at the level of (most of the) people whose opinion is sought. The people thus contacted also fall into the trap of ‘self-esteem’ and instead of refusing to answer a difficult question, prefer to give wrong answers that are, in turn, made the basis of opinion polls that we read in newspapers most of the times.

In the same context, some senior analysts often suggest that most members of the public are not familiar with the details of complex policies such as those of law, administration of justice and legal issues etc and, so, opinion researchers should not ask questions about such subjects because the results would be meaningless and misleading, since respondents would be reluctant to admit that they are ignorant.

This holds true in the case of Pakistan, the opinion surveyors as well as in the case of responding public. Even in the area of sampling – picking up people for giving their opinion – the pollsters don’t normally make right choices.

As such, the opinion polls, in Pakistan’s political context, have normally remained defective and doubtful on these accounts.

There is another dimension attached to this exercise and that is the timing of opinion polls. Sometimes, these surveys are published at sensitive junctures when the people are in the process of making up their mind as whom to elect to the assemblies in the impending elections? By publishing surveys that place one party at number one, the other at two and yet another at number three is just like prejudging a political party’s popularity on mere speculation. Even if there is no wrong motive behind this act, still these pollsters don’t have any right to prejudge the parties’ position as it amounts to political interference in other countries’ internal matters or indigenous politics.

Some people, however, argue that in the present-day world of inter-dependence, globalization and greater media intervention, it is difficult to stop any foreign institute like IRI or NDI (or even Gallup) to go for such opinion polls. There is nothing wrong in this argument if it is applied to countries other than Pakistan, where there is no foreign interference in the name of terrorism or on some other pretexts. Already, the people of Pakistan have developed a perception (most probably it is wrong) that only that political party comes into power in Pakistan that enjoys the blessing of Washington. Not even that, even people from intelligentsia express this opinion most often and they include some big official positions in this list (i.e in the list of Washington-blessed people).

It would not be out of place to give one example here about the unauthentic nature of these opinion polls. One of these surveys was conducted last year by IRI which got special attention because it declared PTI as the most popular party in Pakistan. That untested party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI), had not even contested recently held by-elections and there was no yardstick to gauge its popularity on the ground. These surveys conducted by the IRI never placed the ruling party, PPP, which has the most number of seats in the parliament as number one or number two despite the fact that the PPP won several by-elections held in the last five years or so.

In the most recently conducted survey by IRI, the PPP is placed third after the PML-N and the PTI. The elections are around the corner and conducting these surveys serves no purpose other than giving some boost to the parties which are placed at number one and then becoming the topic of TV shows. One wonders, if it is fair to other political parties to conduct these surveys so close to elections?