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BREXIT and the US election are only two examples of many where election polls published earlier seem to have gotten it wrong. Some even argue that election polls may even distort elections at large and deflect from real issues. Today Sebastian and Dirk debate whether we should therefore go ahead and ban election polls all together.

Image Source: CC0, Pixabay, https://pixabay.com/en/arrows-centering-direction-central-1738060/
Audio jingles voice over by @berlinabby

Episode Transcript

Sebastian – Hello everyone! Welcome to the latest edition of 2debate.net, our podcast of debates. I’m Sebastian and my co-host is Dirk. How are you today, Dirk?

Dirk – As usual, I’m ready, I’m prepared, I’m out of words, I’m in a good mood and I can’t wait. Are you more prepared than usual? So I hope you learned your numbers.

Sebastian – Well, we’ll see, we’ll see! We’ll debate today on the following question, on the motion which is: “elections... election polls should be banned”. Maybe not elections themselves! Although that’s another topic, considering the results of some elections but ok, Dirk, you have the pleasure of starting this debate today as we have flipped the coin towards that, defending the case against the motion, which is again election polls should be banned.

Voice – OK let’s do this. Dirk goes first and argues against the motion.

Dirk – And there we are. Another election, weeks and weeks of reporting on numbers, and we all love that, right? And then bam! A result that we all believe has been predicted wrongly and this wasn’t the first time. Actually there were plenty. It looks like if you research it, it’s as if almost every single election is a surprise to the pollsters. So let’s ban polls, right? They are altogether totally useless and, well, they screw the process and they lead away from actual topics. Wrong! I would start start by killing a myth. Actually, the polls haven’t been wrong, not even in the US election. Actually, the polls predicted a very short race. And polls are statistics, so there’s a margin of error. The margin of error can go either side and if you have multi millions of people, yes then the potential margin of error are a couple of million votes in the end. So that’s not a surprise. On the other hand, having proper data is important for the electorate, so everyone should have every data point possible to know what is on the agenda, what is important right now, what are the issues being debated, which candidate is up front, so it allows you to actually make an informed and data-driven decision. Next thing, if there is data like polls, it’s the right of the voters to learn that. It’s a freedom of expression, freedom of speech, it’s close to actually closing down an open communication if you just ban polls and data around elections altogether, just because you don’t like the result of it.

Voice – And now on to Sebastian. let’s hear his argument for the motion.

Sebastian – The election polls, it turns out, they’re perceived by people and by the press as being wrong over the past year. There was the elections in the UK earlier in the year in 2016, there was the election of Trump, there was Brexit. In every single case, they were perceived as wrong, irrespective of margins of errors by the way. Additionally, there is bias. It is not only about being wrong or right, it actually introduces bias and if you read a book like “Thinking Fast and Slow”, you will see also a number of biases and among them, there is this mechanism of “anchoring”: so if you know that a candidate is at a specific level, you may actually think well, you might as well vote for him or not, or you might not even show up because anyway there will be people going out there to vote, and it will seem that it’s a foregone conclusion. So there’s a risk of influencing elections in a way that is detrimental to the democracy by just letting people in it not being biased by what may or may not happen. And finally, it’s already the case in many countries that these election polls are being banned, from a few hours to a few days, even a few weeks, before the elections over time. And we’re not talking about some random countries. It’s the case in France: it used to be two weeks before the elections, it is now two days. There was a recent survey and it looked at 78 countries and I believe about 39 of them, half of them, actually had polls being banned right before the elections, precisely to avoid this bias. So my case here is that they’re wrong, irrespective of margin of error, or at least they’re perceived wrong. There’s a strong bias which is detrimental to the elections and peopl...