2023-07-24 01:45:52
Today I defend the usefulness of the polls beyond this volatile election night. In fact, I carried out the exercise of writing the essence of this text on Sunday afternoon, before the results were known. It is already a habit that helps me to reason without defeatism or demoscopic euphoria: I will vindicate the usefulness of the polls in any case.
How have they done it? Regular.
The average has guessed the order of the big parties and the distance between the two traditional parties and their pursuers. The average error was 1.2 points, which is much better than the historical average (1.9). But he has greatly overestimated the right (which wins by one point and not by six) and has fallen short with the PSOE. In favor of the polls, it must be said that —at least as a whole— they had left the result very open. My last prediction, based on an average of good polls and their historical accuracy, gave a 60% chance to the majority of the right; 16% to a success from the left that would allow him to govern with his support from 2019; and 23% that neither one thing nor the other happened, and that we fell into a situation that was almost blocked. Reality chose that intermediate place.
That was the most likely scenario according to the 40dB survey. published by this newspaper last Monday. His poll has been quite accurate: it gave 173 seats to the sum of PP and Vox, which have remained at about 169 seats. The biggest mistakes have been made by pollsters that had that sum above 180. The discrepancies between one and the other somehow made my job easier, because it is easier to explain uncertainty when there is disparity in criteria. Other times it was not so. In the most remembered ruling this decade, when in 2016 the defeat of Podemos to the PSOE did not take place, it was problematic that all the polls gave it as probable. It didn’t matter if it wasn’t due to much difference in votes; that consensus of polling companies conveyed a false sense of certainty.
The CIS deserves separate attention.
The left has done much better than expected by the rest of the polls, but even so the CIS remains biased. His estimation has been about as accurate as average — with an average error of 1.16 points per game, compared to 1.2. But his deviation goes in the foreseeable direction: he has once again exaggerated the strength of the sum of the left. Since the arrival of José Félix Tezanos to the leadership of the CIS, the center has overestimated the votes of the left in 36 of 37 elections. For your model to prove correct, it would have to hit half a dozen times in a row.
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The value of polls
Why do I claim the polls? First, because they offer information. The last week teaches us about what happens when the rigorous header polls are turned off: the alternative is not a reflective and peaceful silence, but noise, hoaxes and self-interested intoxication. Without polls, all the parties would say that they are winning; everyone would claim to have a seat at stake in your province; all would be useful vote.
The polls were popularized by the US media to offer data that was a counterpower to politicians. Transparent data —a commitment that we have redoubled in this newspaper in this cycle—, independent and rigorous. That mission remains ours.
Second, because the polls make the elections a little more predictable. Thanks to them we know what is possible, probable or very rare; and it is legitimate for some citizens to use that information to act. To cast a useful vote or to mobilize and stop a party that they do not want to see in the institutions. In the end, the entire democratic system can be seen as a funnel: millions of different people reconcile our differences until we agree on a government and certain laws. Good surveys have a role in that process.
A third reason? Readers want to have polls, we work for them and we owe it to them.
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