Journalists love them, political scientists hate them, and die-hard partisans fear them. Yes, today we are talking about polls in the form of an election model. Their regular publication always upsets the stagnant waters of Czech politics, when supporters of growing entities share graphs like a race, and those who are declining in the current survey question their relevance. One way or another, in the pre-election year we will enjoy surveys of various types to our heart’s content, therefore in this text we will analyze the pluses and minuses in detail, we will point out the frequent mistakes that the public projects into the surveys, we will explain the fundamental difference between the electoral potential and the electoral model, and also why the potential is often abused by political marketing.

Key Takeaways:

• Public opinion polls are only an imperfect picture of society and have many hidden disadvantages. Journalists and the public attach more weight than is healthy to the output of agencies and research institutions.
• Surveys differ from each other in the methodology used, and this causes different results. Rather than looking at the averages of all surveys, it is necessary to look at trends for individual agencies separately.
• Sharing the level of electoral potential is a sign of desperation, and if your favourite party is doing this, then they are probably in very serious trouble and their PR team is grasping at every straw.

Commentary – Karel Sál

The analysis is in PDF under the link below.