Prof. Sam Lehman-Wilzig: When the Situation Changes so Quickly, are Public Opinion Polls Really Useful?
If you think public opinion polls are only for election campaign periods, you haven’t been following Israel’s media recently. Of course, if you’re consuming the news in the U.S. these days, you can’t ignore them at all. So the question arises: are such polls useful, and if so – for whom? Such a question takes on added relevance when the situation on the ground – militarily and politically – can change so quickly and radically from one day to the next. To take the most recent example: will Israeli respondents answer a question on the Gaza War the same way post-Sinwar as they did before he was killed? Many of them, probably not.
The overall answer to the value of polling isn’t a clear yes or no. Here’s a walk through this thicket. I will assume that we are talking about professionally done surveys by reputable polling institutions that understand the need for representativeness in the population polled, well versed in statistical analysis, and are willing to explain who was surveyed, how, and what it means (e.g., significance error, etc.). I will also refer mostly to polling in Israel, with its own peculiar elements.
Let’s start with a useless, yet popular poll question: “Who do you prefer for prime minister?” There are two problems with such a query. First, the question is almost always formed in dyadic form: X or Y? That might be relevant in the U.S. where basically there are only two realistic candidates running in the general election, but during primary season with several party candidates the problem in America is similar to Israel: asking X vs. Y, then X vs. Z, then Y vs. Z etc., does not reflect what happens when the voter enters the booth to cast a ballot – faced with a list of candidates. Second, and in Israel much more to the point: the country does not have direct elections to the PM office! Thus, I might prefer leader X (from party A) to leader Y (from party B) – but my loyalty is to party B and that’s where my vote will be cast. Metaphorically, Israeli elections might well be a “horserace”; however, they aren’t between horses but rather between multi-horse chariots.
A different problem arises when the poll is taken in regular times and not during the election campaign. Here the question refers to the chariots: “Which party would you vote for if the elections were held today?” Sounds reasonable, no? Actually, not so much. There has not been a single election in Israel’s history in which a new party (usually a lot more than one) emerged to run in the ensuing election. Thus, the poll question is like asking a week before the horserace which steed you’d bet on, when additional horses could still register for the race (and others drop out). Presently, it’s quite clear (I’m going out on a short limb here) that when new Israeli elections are called, there will either be a realignment of the “moderate Right” (a union of Gantz, Liberman, Yossi Cohen, and perhaps several Likud defectors etc.) or a new “traditional Right” party will be established – similar to Kadima twenty years ago that split from the Likud.
Somewhat more useful – at least for the parties running – are polls during the election campaign proper. These can be divided into two types: public polls and internal party polls. The latter enable the parties to see what is working in their campaign and what not. The questions aren’t only about “who’s leading?” but also (perhaps primarily) what does the public (dis)like about the campaign i.e., which topics are more salient; what are the candidates doing right or wrong; and so on. On the other hand, the public type of poll has limited usefulness: maybe pushing the undecided into a clear choice or persuading the potential non-voter that not casting a ballot is a “vote” for the party/parties they least like. Moreover, given that around 30% of Israeli citizens do not bother to vote, election polls could theoretically pique their interest and possibly push them out of their apathetic stance, but that doesn’t seem to be a frequent occurrence.
Finally, and perhaps most controversially – but also most potentially significant – public opinion surveys during the middle of a government’s tenure can indicate a high degree of public dissatisfaction with the current coalition. Indeed, this has become a hot potato in Israel today. Over the past year, the polls have consistently shown Israelis to be deeply and widely dissatisfied with the ruling coalition – and over two-thirds of the public want new elections posthaste. But after the IDF’s success in killing Sinwar and decimating almost the entire Hamas leadership, is that still true? We’ll have to wait for upcoming polls – especially if a hostage deal takes place.
Here we arrive at the crux of a central democratic question: does the public automatically and completely transfer “sovereignty” to the representatives they elected for the mandated term of office (in Israel, four years), or do they retain some semblance of power to peacefully terminate the arrangement if and when a large majority feels the immediate need for new elections? To be sure, there is no hard and fast answer to this question: legally/”Constitutionally”, no; democratically, yes. (After America’s general elections on Nov. 5, I’ll expand on one practical possibility regarding this.) Certainly, in a multi-party system like Israel’s, coalition parties could vote “positive no confidence” in the prime minister (choosing a different PM from the same party or some other non-coalition party), thereby shuffling the deck more in liking to present public opinion.
Unfortunately, at present these polls have worked as a boomerang to the public’s democratic sentiment. With clear electoral catastrophe in the works for Israel’s present ruling parties should new elections be called, the coalition parties have circled the wagons and are holding on for dear (political) life – none willing to jump ship, given that all of them would drown together, having little chance of being part of any new government.
In sum, polls can be useful or useless, depending on what they ask and when. They can even be a double-edged sword, preventing the very thing that they are supposed to serve.
