How opinion polls affect your right to think and vote wisely

A graphic representation of the senatorial race in Meru County as released by Infotrack in July 2017 at their offices in Nairobi.[Elvis Ogina, Standard]

One of the most recent striking political developments in this country has been the rise of opinion surveys.

The opinion poll is information collected by means of interviewing and creating statistics showing different percentages of how many people think “this” and how many are for “that”.

And now the country is in electioneering mood, pollsters unremittingly announce results concerning relative strengths of political parties, popularity of their leaders. I believe this country must come up with way of regulating these surveys since they are merely for manipulation rather than devices for educating the public.

Indeed, surveys have dominated ordinary Kenyans' lives particularly during elections that they have replaced rationality and wisdom as the voters’ tools in choosing their respective representatives. By generating a “bandwagon” effect and encouraging trends, surveys are impairing our electoral system’s capacity to generate rational and wise voting.

Kenyan polls are often devoid of the necessary paraphernalia; for instance, how and when the interviews were conducted, the sample size, and the sponsor of the exercises, to permit a rational assessment of there validity. Our surveys are based on dubious assumptions and flawed methodology of political inquiry not explaining how interviewers were trained and supervised. In his book, The Broken Compass (2009), Peter Hitchens authoritatively asserts that opinion polls are actually a mere device for influencing public opinion. There are theories how this happens and can be categorised into bandwagon, underdog effects, and strategic ("tactical") voting.

Surveys undermine democracy by influencing the electorate’s choice in favour of the survey-picked “future winner” of an election. The media and public attention they receive detracts voters or the public in general from real politics of ideas and realistic issues affecting the populace. Hence, the role of free discussion and reflection is significantly reduced.

Polls equally affect other key actors in the electoral process, such as financial supporters, volunteers, local leaders, NGOs, celebrity endorsers and media practitioners. Their collective decisions produce significant changes in the campaign terrain that influence the voters and condition the public’s attitude toward the election outcome.

These surveys can “demotivate” the populace. Instances abound when Mr X abstains from voting out of wild presumption that their candidate Y will automatically win the election. The living example is June 18, 1970 unexpected triumph of Edward George Heath. Polls had predicted his defeat, thus, many of the Labour Party voters did not go to vote for their candidate Mr Harold Wilson.

Then there is the “bandwagon” effect that occurs when the poll prompts voters to back the candidate shown to be winning in the poll. The idea that voters are susceptible to such effects is old, stemming at least from 1884. Bandwagon effect “assumes” that the knowledge of the popular party or candidate will change the voting intentions in favour of the front-runner. Opinion-poll-inspired bandwagons and trending in an election can carry over to succeeding elections.

The opposite of the bandwagon effect is the “underdog” effect. It is often mentioned in the media. This occurs when people vote, out of sympathy, for the party perceived to be "losing" the election. However, there is less empirical evidence for the existence of this effect than there is for the existence of the bandwagon effect.

Another theory on how pollsters directly affect voting is called strategic or “tactical” voting. It is based on the idea that electorate view the act of voting as a means of selecting a government. Thus, they will sometimes not choose their preferred candidate on ground of ideology or sympathy, but another, less preferred, candidate from strategic
considerations.

This has permitted polls to decisively and insidiously influence elections in African countries like Kenya. However, the government must guard its people from the self-fulfilling prophesies that were responsible for the failures of social surveys to predict the victory of Harry Truman over Thomas E Dewey in the biggest political upset in the US history in 1948. Similarly, it was witnessed in the US elections when pollsters failed to predict Donald Trump’s win but placed Hillary Clinton to be winning.

That reflects our Kenyan situation in 2007/08 post-poll skirmishes that, pollsters fixed our mind that Mr X would be the president. Even if the candidate who surveys listed to be in third position had worn, Kenyans would still have fought because their minds had been influenced on who “must “carry victory. It's why some jurisdictions restrict the publication of the results of opinion polls in order to prevent the possibly erroneous results from affecting voters' decisions before and after the elections.

In Canada, it is prohibited to publish the results of opinion surveys that would identify specific political parties or candidates in the final three days before a poll closes.

Herein lies the validity of the observation that opinion poll regulation is sacrosanct this electioneering period. Election surveys may not be violating the Kenyan people’s right to vote, but they are violating another equally important right, the right to think and vote wisely.