opinion on opinions

Opinions on opinion polls

Inspite of all the brouhaha over the opinions that opinion polls have generated, I decided to go ahead and conduct a poll of my own. This one was on the validity of opinion polls.

The poll on polls generated some poles of opinions. Ok, enough with the wordplay. The result of my pop

 ( polls on polls) came out with a result. According to this result 99.95% people interviewed disliked opinion polls and considered it to be the biggest threat on democracy.

Obviously some errors had crept into the poll. For one, I had conducted this poll on a single person, my roommate and had cleverly worked up till the question. This is how I conducted my poll.

Interviewer: given the massive corruption in ad agencies in the past few years do you think that we should depend on the results of opinion polls

Respondent: ahmm..  I guess not.

Interviewer: With the ownership of majority of media houses in hands of a few business firms, do you think that the news channels are often biased

Respondent: I guess so…

Interviewer: The growing closeness between media houses and political bosses has fractured ethical journalism. What do you think?

Respondent: I guess you are right… gosh I never thought of it from this angle

Interviewer: do you think opinion polls are trustworthy and necessary in a democracy

Respondent: ofcourse not!!

So here, we see that there were some fundamental inaccuracies that I hadn’t disclosed earlier. First of all the sample size was limited to only one person. I had twisted my words and arranged the questions so as to suit my purpose, thus effectively eliminating any neutral opinions in the purpose. There was no check on how, where or in what situations I had conducted my grand poll.

Thus, all these inaccuracies were brushed aside when I merely published my result and made no effort to present the audience with the context. Perhaps if I had published this very poll in a reputed magazine with a nicely illustrated graphic showing the result, majority of people would have taken the results at their face value. Their own beliefs could further have been affected had I shown that even Sachin Tendulkar had taken part in the polls.

It’s a fundamental fact that most of the people don’t always have independent opinions on each and every topic and more often than not follow the bandwagon or the example of a person whom they consider to be respected. But that doesn’t mean that all the polls conducted are unfair. To ban them outright would be a refutation to the scientific methods established to accurately assess the public opinion.

Given the uneven distribution of wealth and power in our society, more often than not it’s the richest who are able to voice their opinions. The weaker sections are more concerned about their daily needs rather than being able to push across their views. Thus sometimes these polls are the only way in which the majority can put their opinions, concerns and problems in the larger public domain.

Thus, political parties would often be misled on the general mood of the country if they don’t have the facility of an accurate opinion poll. Truly there would be some deviations from the reality and there would also be some attempts of sabotaging these, but instead of giving in we might as well try to  monitor these or perhaps poll on the polls.

Whatever be the result of the latest controversy, the voice of democracy needs to come through the din of political squabbles. Perhaps if people poll on opinion polls, then the ministers would be forced to reconsider.