The power of polls

As you read this, chances are that you may have heard of the famous Gallup Polls. Gallup is an American-based research house which pioneered polling, a research-driven system aimed at assessing public opinions on issues spanning broad spheres of society, from politics to business. Gallup became famous for its Gallup political polls which have been used for decades across many countries where Gallup has offices to forecast election outcomes across all levels of government. Back in the ‘70’s and ‘80’s when Gallup had a monopoly on polls and polling in the USA, no self-respecting politician would have run an election campaign without studying the Gallup polls. The polls allowed the politicians the opportunity to understand the issues the electorate felt strongly about and the politicians would then use the information gleaned from the polls to shape their election strategies. More recently, almost every major media house in the world carries out public opinion polls on many issues affecting society. One needs to look at the 2008 US Presidential elections to see how extensively polls were used by major media houses such as CNN, Newsweek and Time Magazine to predict the outcome of those elections. Over time, the polls showed very clearly that Barack Obama would win the election over his rival John McCain, the only thing the polls differed was the margin by which Obama would trounce McCain. What is more interesting however, is that Obama’s success in the elections came as a direct result of his fanatical use of public opinion polls to assess the issues that the American electorate deemed important for their new President to address. The Obama campaign picked up much earlier than the McCain camp did that the polls were pointing towards the economy as the most pressing social issue and the Obama campaign strategy was then shaped largely around how he would address the economy if elected President. The rest, as we now know, is history.

SA should use polls more

In South Africa, polls are commonly used with respect to Brands and Branding such as the well-known annual Sunday Times Top Brands survey, indeed more recently there has been a move by the larger research houses such as Ipsos Markinor and TNS Research Surveys (TNS) to carryout polls with a political, social or economic interest. TNS regularly publishes results of polls that it carries out ranging from people’s opinion on the upcoming FIFA World Cup to people’s opinions on Government performance. It would be interesting to establish how many of our politicians pay attention to such polls in an effort to keep their fingers on the pulls of what the electorate is thinking. In South Africa, polls remain largely the domain of research houses with the media owners playing little to no role in leveraging their extensive reach to continuously test public opinion on social, political and economic issues. In a society like ours which is still in transition, I believe polls would play a big role in helping to keep politicians in check. My point of departure is that the more pervasive public opinion polls are the more politicians and social leaders would have to pay attention to addressing the issues that society deems pertinent.