Polls and the political process: the use of opinion polls by political parties and mass media organizations in European post‐communist societies (1990–95)

Opinion polling occupies a significant role within the political process of most liberal-capitalist societies, where it is used by governments, parties and the mass media alike. This paper examines the extent to which polls are used for the same purposes in the post-communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe, and in particular, for bringing political elites and citizens together. It argues that these political elites are more concerned with using opinion polls for gaining competitive advantage over their rivals and for reaffirming their political power, than for devolving political power to citizens and improving the general processes of democratization

Testing for voter rigging in small polling stations

Since the 1970s there has been a large number of countries that combine formal democratic institutions with authoritarian practices. Although in such countries the ruling elites may receive considerable voter support they often employ several manipulation tools to control election outcomes. A common practice of these regimes is the coercion and mobilization of a significant amount of voters to guarantee the electoral victory. This electoral irregularity is known as voter rigging, distinguishing it from vote rigging, which involves ballot stuffing or stealing. Here we develop a statistical test to quantify to which extent the results of a particular election display traces of voter rigging. Our key hypothesis is that small polling stations are more susceptible to voter rigging, because it is easier to identify opposing individuals, there are less eye witnesses, and supposedly less visits from election observers. We devise a general statistical method for testing whether voting behavior in small polling stations is significantly different from the behavior of their neighbor stations in a way that is consistent with the widespread occurrence of voter rigging. Based on a comparative analysis, the method enables to rule out whether observed differences in voting behavior might be explained by geographic heterogeneities in vote preferences. We analyze 21 elections in ten different countries and find significant anomalies compatible with voter rigging in Russia from 2007-2011, in Venezuela from 2006-2013, and in Uganda 2011. Particularly disturbing is the case of Venezuela where these distortions have been outcome-determinative in the 2013 presidential elections

The Case for Caution: This System is Dangerously Flawed

On any election day, interested citizens want to know one thing--who won. News organizations are in the business of getting accurate results to !heir audience as quickly as possible. but counting actual votes takes hours, and sometimes days. Beginning in the early 1960s, news organizations developed ways of projecting the outcome of races in order to speed the process of reporting before votes were actually counted. They began to develop methods and systems of modeling and polling that could indicate, statistically, the likely winner in any given race. The motive was to give the audience what it wanted--the faster, the better. Of course, the news media intended to make their projections as accurate as possible. In time, polling and analysis became increasingly sophisticated. Results from preelection samples, along with extrapolations from precinct models, exit polls. and partial election returns, were combined into what I will refer to as the networks' election-day polling and projection system. This system provided the basis for making election projections faster and better, meaning with fewer mistakes. Year after year, the systems were improved, spurred on by competition among the news organizations to be the first to report outcomes to their audiences. Not incidentally, the highly competitive polling and projection business grew increasingly costly. In 1990. the first network pool for exit polling and projections, Voter Research and Surveys (VRS), was formed with the intention to meet the increasing costs and share expenses. Cost sharing made it possible for the networks to provide the greatest sweep of polling. Without the pool, the networks would have had to restrict their reach and coverage because of budget limitations. Of course, in journalistic terms, pooling meant the information would be less re liable. While the networks could, by combining resources, undertake larger polling operations and more sophisticated modeling that could reduce the risk of certain types of error, the vulnerability of the networks to any errors that did result was increased. When data are wrong, with only one source of information, there is no opportunity for correction. Nevertheless, financial considerations trumped reliability--and the best practices of journalism. By election day 2000, after several permutations, a comprehensive polling and projection system was in place backed by a consortium of five television networks and the Associated Press. Its purpose was to collect and disseminate polling data and voting information by which news organizations could make their independent calls, maintaining an element of competition among them. In thinking about this system in its entirety, we must consider not only the Voter News Service (VNS), the reconstituted consortium operation, but also the analysis and reporting operations of the separate networks as well. The system was economical. and it was fast. But was it accurate? The answer: not as accurate or as reliable as it was intended, promised, or needed to be, especially when it came to calling a very close race. We learned that answer on election night 2000. At the core of the reporting problem were two mistaken projections in one state, Florida, which turned out to be key to the outcome of the national election. The television networks and other news outlets twice projected the winner and twice recalled those projections. News executives, particularly television news executives, as well as editors, correspondents, and producers themselves described election-night coverage as a "debacle," a "disaster," and a "fiasco." Something had gone wrong--terribly wrong--in the polling and projection system. It is not the purpose of this article to ferret out the exact sources of the errors on that night. The experiences of election night 2000 do, however, serve as a useful lens through which to examine the overall efficacy of the system that was in place. It is my contention that this system is too fraught with the potential for error for news organizations to rely on its projections in the way that they have in the recent past

DEMOCRACY’S SPREAD: Elections and Sovereign Debt in Developing Countries

We use partisan and opportunistic political business cycle (“PBC”) considerations to develop and test a framework for explaining election-period changes in credit spreads for developing country sovereign bonds. Pre-election bond spread trends are significantly linked both to the partisan orientation of incumbents facing election and to expectations of incumbent victory. Bond spreads for right-wing (leftwing) incumbents increase (decrease) as the likelihood of left-wing (right-wing) challenger victory increases. For right-wing incumbent partisan and opportunistic PBC effects bondholder risk perceptions are mutually reinforcing. For left-wing incumbents partisan PBC effects dominate bondholder risk perceptions compared to opportunistic PBC effects.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39961/3/wp575.pd

Landslide Denied: Exit Polls vs. Vote Count 2006

There was an unprecedented level of concern approaching the 2006 Election ("E2006") about the vulnerability of the vote counting process to manipulation. With questions about the integrity of the 2000, 2002 and 2004 elections remaining unresolved, with e-voting having proliferated nationwide, and with incidents occurring with regularity through 2005 and 2006, the alarm spread from computer experts to the media and the public at large. It would be fair to say that America approached E2006 with held breath.For many observers, the results on Election Day permitted a great sigh of relief -- not because control of Congress shifted from Republicans to Democrats, but because it appeared that the public will had been translated more or less accurately into electoral results, not thwarted as some had feared. There was a relieved rush to conclude that the vote counting process had been fair and the concerns of election integrity proponents overblown.Unfortunately the evidence forces us to a very different and disturbing conclusion: there was gross vote count manipulation and it had a great impact on the results of E2006, significantly decreasing the magnitude of what would have been, accurately tabulated, a landslide of epic proportions. Because much of this manipulation appears to have been computer-based, and therefore invisible to the legions of at-the-poll observers, the public was informed of the usual "isolated incidents and glitches" but remains unaware of the far greater story: The electoral machinery and vote counting systems of the United States did not honestly and accurately translate the public will and certainly can not be counted on to do so in the future

Opinion polling in Central and Eastern Europe under communism

Whilst political opinion polling occupies a well-entrenched position within contemporary capitalist political systems, the same cannot be said for the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. This article focuses primarily on the development of political opinion polling in these countries in the period prior to the collapse of communist regimes at the end of 1989. Polling was a feature of these communist-led societies, although it was limited in terms of its activities, the scope of issue coverage, and its ability to measure public opinion effectively. The major focus of the discussion concentrates on the methodological issues and problems confronting opinion pollsters in these societies during this time

The Evolution of American Microtargeting: An Examination of Trends in Political Messaging

The usage of targeted messaging by political campaigns has seen a drastic evolution over the past half-century. Through advancement in campaign technology, and an increasingly large amount of personal information up for sale, campaigns have continually narrowed their scope from targeting large demographic groups to targeting each voter individually through a process called microtargeting. This presentation examines both the history of microtargeting in American politics, and the potential effects of its utilization

Breaking the Constitutional Deadlock: Lessons from Deliberative Experiments in Constitutional Change

This work provides comparative insights into how deliberation on proposed constitutional amendments might be more effectively pursued. It reports on a new nationwide survey of public attitudes to constitutional reform, examining the potential in Australia of innovative Canadian models of reform led by Citizens' Assemblies. Assembly members are selected at random and are demographically representative of the wider public. They deliberate over reforms for several months while receiving instruction from experts in relevant fields. Members thus become 'public-experts': citizens who stand in for the wider public but are versed in constitutional fundamentals. The author finds striking empirical evidence that, if applied in the Australian context, public trust would be substantially greater for Citizens' Assemblies compared with traditional processes of change. The article sets these results in context, reading the Assemblies against theories of deliberative democracy and public trust. One reason for greater public trust in the Assemblies' may be an ability to accommodate key values that are otherwise in conflict: majoritarian democratic legitimacy, on the one hand, and fair and well-informed (or 'deliberatively rational') decision-making, on the other. Previously, almost no other poll had asked exactly how much Australians trust in constitutional change. However, by resolving trust into a set of discrete public values, the polling and analysis in this work provide evidence that constitutional reform might only succeed when it expresses, at once, the values of both majoritarian and deliberative democracy