The Voter And The Vote

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32117, 13 October 1969, Page 12

The Voter And The Vote

Many electors will vote in the General Election next month for “ My party, right or wrong ”, according to the results of a public opinion survey carried out by the Political Science Department at the University of Canterbury. Ideally, it seems, most voters would prefer to have capable men in Parliament rather than particular policies. But seemingly they leave it to others to put those capable men into Parliament; in the polling booths they think of party rather than candidate. Many, indeed, do not even know who the candidates are. This inconsistency goes a step further; many vote for party even when they do not agree with the policies it espouses. Habit, rather than considered political thought about issues and candidates, determines many political preferences. Care has to be taken in generalising from such a small sample of opinion as in this survey. (The student pollsters took one name at random from each page of the St Albans electoral roll, which gave them 247 names in a roll of 16,000. Only 173 of these responded to tiie full interview.) Nevertheless, it is no cause for satisfaction that party labels still attract so many votes. A healthy democracy, even one in which few baric issues divide the major parties, requires more political sophistication than this if the system is to give the maximum benefit to those whom it is designed to serve. The organisers of this poll tried, quite properly, to avoid predicting the outcome of the election. Public opinion polls have their uses—and their dangers. A pre-election survey might discourage the lazy voter by making the result seem clear in advance; it might even prompt uncommitted voters to jump on to the predicted winner’s “ band-waggon ”. Opinion polls on political subjects, in short, are capable of influencing the opinions they aim to measure. Still, if surveys of this kind increase public interest in politicians, policies, and the political process then this is all to the good. Whether this has been achieved in St Albans may be determined when the Political Science Department makes two follow-up surveys of political opinions—one shortly before polling day, the other shortly afterwards.