IDIS Viitorul suggests polls should be checked before release

Polls conducted by specialized institutions should be checked by the community of sociologists before being presented to the public, suggested Leonit Litra, vice director for international cooperation at IDIS Viitorul, in a study presented on Wednesday, August 17, Info-Prim Neo reports. Leonit Litra thinks that in order to rebuild the trust in sociological tools like opinion polls, exit polls or quality researches, the entire community of sociologists should check the work of their colleagues before it is brought to the public. “Sociologists should go public and interpret the results of polls because political analysts could intentionally or not manipulate raw data and reach fantastic conclusions, which are then spread by the media”, said Litra. According to the expert, the launch of polls during election campaigns have become media shows and the credibility of these studies has been lost. The differences between reality and the poll results can be explained on technical errors, different methodologies and the commercial interests of those who commissioned the polls. “Only 3-4 important politicians, only one of them being a party leader, take these figures seriously. The party structures lack the culture of polls and leaders think they know the situation better”, stressed Leonid Litra. The expert is puzzled how each time the party of Communists is underestimated in polls. “Some sociologists and analysts think that PCRM convinces its voters to lie to poll operators and to falsify elections. Unfortunately, this theory isn’t supported by any evidence and is said halfheartedly”, he said. “A big difference between the results of an exit-poll and the elections results is a sufficient reason to consider the hypothesis of electoral fraud”, he added. The study “Survey and exit-polls in Moldova: how to raise the credibility of sociological tools?” is included in the Crisis Prevention Report, funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).