Opinion Poll Today, Some Questions

national | miscellaneous | news report Friday May 16, 2003 18:01 by Killian Forde

Some clarity is required on the benefit and accuracy of opinion poll

1. Why do the IT insist on using "(incl workers party)" in their "Others" section of opinion poll graphs, surely they could have a section for SP, WP, SWP when they are registering and not have the brackets business which will only reinforce attitudes of these parties 'being minnows'.

2. Does anyone understand the process of converting the core support into the adjusted support. For example Labours and FG core support is at 14% and SF at 7% but when it is transfered over to adjusted support we have figures of 22%(Lab) 20%(FG) and 9% (SF). The adjusted figure is the one used by the media to report the 'real' state of the parties. Anyone????

The reason I write this is that democracy by opinion poll destroyed any sort of debate taking place in the last election. They are taken as gospel by the media and influence voting patterns and transfer decisions. Therefore if we have them it is imperative that the methodologies are transparent.