Election Reporting and Opinion Polls

Political Reporting (JN 513)

Lecture Outline• 1. Election Campaigns• 2. Media & Elections• 3. Public Opinion• 4. Public Opinion Polls• 5. Journalistic Reportage of Polls

Election Campaigns• Elections are

predictable and unpredictable affairs – characterized by risk-free, highly professionalized modes of communication but they also throw up random events, gaffes, etc.

Election Campaigns• Election campaigns now more important because

of increased volatility in the electorate with increasing party dealignment, less class identity, greater individualization, etc.

• Alternative argument that campaigns have minimal effects and that pre-existing political allegiances and levels of economic prosperity dictate electoral success.

Media & Elections• Election campaigns are

contests between forms of political control and the media scrutiny of political performance.

• Media logic argues that the coverage of political events and issues must be compatible with the media’s ‘scheduling and time considerations, entertainment values, and images of the audience’ (Rudd and Hayward 2009, p. 91).

Media & Elections• The media matter because:• (i) they provide information to allow voters to

match their preferences with particular candidates or parties

• (ii) they give long-term political information that helps to socialize voters into particular party preferences and

• (iii) in close elections or on critical issues when voters are confused or even angry, media coverage can sway an election. (Oates 2008, p. 92)

Public Opinion• A healthy democracy is informed by the

widespread, free and considered expressions of public opinion.

• “Citizens behave as a public body when they confer in an unrestricted fashion – that is, with the guarantee of freedom of assembly and association and the freedom to express and publish their opinions – about matters of general interest” (Habermas, 1989: p. 49).

Public Opinion• The history of public

opinion expression and measurement have moved from:o more unstructured to structured

forms of expressiono from more public to privatised forms

of expressiono from ‘bottom-up’ to ‘top-down’ forms

of expression (Herbst, 1991).

• Modern public opinion polls started in 1935 when George Gallup began conducting scientific and statistically valid opinion polls.

Public Opinion• Public opinion

continues to animate contemporary democracy – basis for political action and journalistic inquiry

• Public opinion also remains productive and unpredictable phenomenon.

Public Opinion• Public opinion is the ongoing conversation or

dialogue that a public has about the representations of it, the representations of public opinion.

• “The media proposes, publics form themselves by reading what is proposed, and images of what those readings decide are proposed back to the public via opinion polls and surveys” (Wark, qtd in Craig, 2004: pp. 160-1).

Public Opinion• Forms of public opinion:• Different types of

opinion polls• Voting• Letters to the Editor,

talkback radio• Emails/Letter writing• Petitions, lobbying• Media representations

of public opinion – vox pops, ‘the worm’ in political debates, etc.

Public Opinion• Graffiti, culture-

jamming• Demonstrations, Riots

• Social media – Twitter, Facebook, etc.

Public Opinion Polls• ‘Call-in’ polls• ‘Push-polling’• Reputable,

statistically-valid opinion polls - polls conducted by independent pollsters, media companies, political parties.

Public Opinion Polls• Major UK pollsters include:• YouGov - http://yougov.co.uk/publicopinion/ • Ipsos MORI - http://www.ipsos-mori.com

• British Polling Council - Association of market research companies:http://www.britishpollingcouncil.org/objects.html

Public Opinion Polls• Political parties, public groups and news

organisations can also conduct their own polls.• The rise of the ‘electoral-professional’ political

party has meant that the modern political party concentrates on short-term, shallow support of floating voters – hence their heavy reliance on public opinion polls.

• Opinion polls quantify public opinion, creating definite, impartial information, and rendering public opinion ‘knowable’

Public Opinion Polls• Probability theory dictates that a relatively small

sample can accurately record the opinion levels of very large populations, providing that the random sample has been correctly compiled.

• Sample size 200, 95% chance that result will fall within 6.9% of poll outcomeSample size 500, 95% chance that results will fall within 4.4% of poll outcomeSample size 1000, 95% chance that results will fall within 3.1% of poll outcomeSample size 2000, 95% chance that results will fall within 2.2% of poll outcome

Public Opinion Polls• Opinion polls can be criticised as a means

of social control:o Transformation from a voluntary to an

externally subsidized mannero Transformation from a behavioural to an

attitudinal phenomenono Transformation from the property of groups in

society to an attribute of individuals o Removes individuals’ control over their own

expressions of opinion by transforming them from spontaneous assertions to a constrained response. (Ginsberg).

Journalistic Reportage of Polls

• Democratic function of representing and reporting on public opinion.

• But opinion polls are also a valuable source of news – new, topical and exclusive information.

• Greater autonomy in the production of news – altered balance of power because politicians have to respond to public opinion

Journalistic Reportage of Polls

• As Stromback (2009) notes, the media rely too much on opinion polls (particularly during election campaigns) (p. 56)

• Stromback (2009) study also finds:• “The main result of this qualitative analysis is that

the people is strangely absent from almost all poll results in the investigated media.” (p. 66) and

• “The media use the polls as a tool for serving their own purposes, rather than to give voice to the people.” (p. 67)

Journalistic Reportage of Polls

• Journalists are criticised because they present the election as a ‘horse race’, as a campaign contest rather than debate about issues and policies

• Horse-race coverage - gives us clear cut winners and losers, it facilitates journalistic ‘objectivity’ because journalism is not dragged into the difficulty of ‘interpreting’ issues.

• Horse-race reportage is facilitated by the use of opinion polls.

• Underdog and bandwagon effects

Journalistic Reportage of Polls

• Stromback study, however, found an increase in poll focus on issues over three Swedish elections 1998-2006 (but from low base) and a fall (from high levels) of horse race focus in polls over those elections (p. 63)

Journalistic Reportage of Polls

• We need to be careful about imposing a simplistic binary between issue and game framing. Journalists often present issues through discussion of game strategy. As Graber (2006, p. 234) reminds us: o “there is more issue coverage, albeit unsystematic, than scholars have

acknowledged in the past. … Audiences often overlook commentary about issues because it is embedded in many horse race stories and discussions of candidates’ qualifications.”

Journalistic Reportage of Polls

• Good journalistic reportage of opinion polls should include the following:

• The questions asked;• The date of the poll;• The size of the sample & the sample error;• The method of polling (phone, etc);• How the random sample was compiled.

Seminar• 1. When the news media discuss public opinion

are they reporting on a product of their own creation or are they articulating the views of the society that exist independently of the news media?

• 2. The Times article analysis

References• Craig, G. (2004) The Media, Politics and Public Life. Crows Nest: Allen &

Unwin. • Ginsberg, B. (1986) The Captive Public: How mass opinion promotes state

power. New York: Basic Books.• Graber, D. (2006) Elections in the Internet Age, in: Mass Media & American

Politics, 7th ed., CQ Press, Washington D.C., pp. 218-247. • Habermas, J. (1989) The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An

inquiry into a category of bourgeois society. Trans. T. Burger with F. Lawrence. Cambridge: Polity.

• Herbst, S. (1991) Classical Democracy, Polls, and Public Opinion: Theoretical Frameworks for Studying the Development of Public Sentiment. Communication Theory, 1, 225-38.

• Oates, S. (2008) Introduction to Media and Politics. Los Angeles: Sage.• Rudd, C. and Hayward, J. (2009) Newspaper Coverage, in: Rudd, C. Hayward,

J. & Craig, G. (eds.) Informing Voters? Politics, Media and the New Zealand Election 2008, Pearson, Auckland, pp. 90-107.

• Stromback, J 2009 ‘Vox Populi or Vox Media? Opinion Polls and the Swedish Media’, Javnost: The Public, vol. 16, no. 3, pp. 55-70.