“Strangely enough, I put polls into perspective. Polls are not a prediction. We ask people, “If there were elections today, how would you vote?” Well, people say today that they will vote one way and tomorrow they say they will vote another way, and we assess the trends,” said António Gomes, stressing that “one should not try to extract predictive power from them”.
Exploitation of polls
In an interview with the Lusa news agency, the sociologist, university professor, and director-general of GfK Metris also warns against overexposure to polls and their exploitation, and considers that so-called “tracking polls” have the same methodological rigour as a poll.
“The purpose of a tracking poll is to assess trends and understand developments. There is no reason why a tracking poll should be less reliable than any other poll when it is conducted with the same methodological care as any other poll,” he said.
The difference lies mainly in the fact that the tracking poll works with “a moving average of a constant number of interviews, which corresponds to the most recent collection that was carried out,” he pointed out.
In the case of the TVI/CNN tracking poll, “on the first day, 200 interviews are conducted, on the second day 200, on the third day 200.”
and “the first 600 are used to extract the first results, and these are published”, whereas “on the fourth day, 200 interviews are conducted, and the first 200 interviews no longer count towards the calculation of voting intentions”.
Polls like snapshots
In the logic of a poll being a snapshot of a given moment, in a tracking poll, the purpose is to “have as many snapshots as possible”, which are “almost like frames from a short film”.
“If I have a lot of snapshots, I can see movements in what is happening, and these movements are nothing more than an appreciation of trends,” explained António Gomes.
The expert says it is “clear that they can change voters’ behaviour”, considering that in these presidential elections he predicted that they would assert themselves as “protagonists” because there was a scenario of a technical tie “for the most obvious” until Friday, which he admits could even persist.
“Our mental process tends to struggle with too many choices and, as a result, one of the ways people think, ‘after all, who should I vote for? ‘is precisely by looking at what the polls are saying. In this case, the polls served or may have served to make people rethink their choices and look at them and think “A or B will go through [to the second round], so I take that information into account, and that information may influence me,” he argued.
António Gomes thus sees polls as a tool for people to “gain some degree of clarity,” while also acknowledging the instrumentalisation of opinion polls, which must be explained to be understood.
“I suggest that great care and rigour be taken when exposing polls. When polls are exploited, that is, there is a tendency to say “I am ahead in the polls” or “I am behind, and they are worthless”, they talk more about the polls than they do about their political proposals, he pointed out.
Late voting decisions
António Gomes also referred to the phenomenon of late voting decisions, citing Marina Costa Lobo’s studies on the construction of this desire, which have shown this trend, including in 2022, when a tracking poll gave victory to Rui Rio’s PSD, even as the elections gave an absolute majority to António Costa’s PS.
“There is a portion of the electorate that makes their decision the day before, and some almost as they enter the polling station. If that happens, why can’t there be a difference between a poll on Friday and the election results on Sunday?” he asked.
“In these elections, I always thought that those who admit to changing their minds were just as important as those who are undecided,” he said, stressing that “they are a form of undecided voters” and that some change their vote because of the polls.
For António Gomes, “the dilemma is a complex one”: “What is the alternative? Not conducting polls or not publishing them? We already know that when this does not happen, politicians and candidates have them. It is the electorate that does not have them,” he said, rejecting the ban.