False Truths? Pollsters setting a "missing" trend

As the dust settles down, many are still shocked by the historic 2016 Presidential Elections in the USA. “Shocking” is the word since very few people had given the president- elect a chance. It surprisingly got to the point that Mr. Trump broke ranks with some of the senior members of the Republican Party. He moreover, got very little favor with the media, political analysts and most importantly the pollsters. They all falsely predicted a dead heat and victory for Mrs. Hillary Clinton and none saw a comfortable ride for the Republican Presidential Nominee.

Similarly, going back a few months to Brexit, political analysts and pollsters had a big miss. Predicting things to go one way and when it was all done things went the opposite way forcing Prime Minister David Cameron to call it quits. Back home, the story is even more interesting, the pollster keep “missing” to point that their credibility is now in question. I have gathered a few reasons why election results will keep “shocking” people and why this is a dangerous trend.

Promoting a populist idea. Is it possible that away from the statistics the pollsters are driving a populist ideology? Perhaps it may be true. The pollsters are driving a particular agenda hoping that they can pull as many people as possible towards a favored direction. They may be on a mission to tell people what is good for the ear, rather than what the voter is really thinking. Looking at the USA, the ideal of a woman president appeared popular as opposed to Donald Trump’s combative and divisive politics. The same may be said of the Brexit vote; it appeared good to release polls that supported a negative answer to the referendum. A few months ago, an opinion poll was released giving President Kenyatta a 60% approval rating. This caused uproar in political circles questioning the credibility of the polls of which they would not back up. This brings up more questions than answers.

One of the reasons given for the “miss” in the US has been shy voters. A population that did not give the true picture to the pollsters. Although they were uncomfortable with a woman president, they did not want to be seen as chauvinists, so they took cover in the secrecy of the ballot. The same situation may be true with Brexit; the voters may have given statistics contrary to their intentions. This however is highly unlikely in Kenya, tribalism and polarization is a reality and even the few who pretend that it is not a factor still find themselves in the fold for political survival.

That said there is also a possibility that pollsters are making too many assumptions. The US presidential elections 2016 surely presented a number of assumptions against Mr. Trump, which led to a false prediction. These include; voter turnouts, the presumption that women and minority constituency in America would vote blue. Similarly in Britain no one may have accounted for the dynamics and change in elections. In Kenya however, the pollsters never factor in the number of dead voters coming to life on election date, BVR machine malfunctions and over 100% in some of the known regions in Kenya hence false predictions.

There is also debate as to the kind of questions that pollsters ask their respondents. There are few people who contend that they are narrow and lead the respondent to a certain outcome. This is a scientific process however, given that they are getting things wrong, they may need to re- look at the questions. This ties in to argument that they are gunning for particular outcomes, knowing or unknowingly contrary to the voter’s intentions

Naturally opinion polls are meant to spark debate in the election process in addition to giving pointers to what the voters are looking for but when they are set on a false premise, or they are not credible, they tend to mislead people, play on emotions and could easily lead to violence.