Pollster Blames Press For U.K. Mistake

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32351, 17 July 1970, Page 16

Pollster Blames Press For U.K. Mistake

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) SAN FRANCISO, July 15. The debacle of the opinion polls daring Britain’s Genera] Election last month was the fault of sycophants in politics and the press, according to an American pollster. Dr Mervin Field, who runs California’s Mervin Field Poll, accused British political leaders and journalists of viewing the polls as black magic and of neither examining nor interpreting them properly. “To make flat predictions that an election result is going to come out the way a survey or poll indicates is simply a form of statistical Russian roulette,” Dr Field wrote in a recent assessment of the election. “Better Headlines” “A prediction makes better headlines, may sell more newspapers and gather a large television audience, but it is also a very dangerous way to live and it is not really the best use of polls.” Dr Field declared polls by themselves could not predict, they merely measured public opinion of voter conviction at one point in time and much could happen in the closing days of a campaign. Nor, he said, could polls precisely predict voter turnout—an all-important electionday factor—because they were designed to reflect the preference of all potential voters.

What polls could do, he added, was to help the democratic process by showing the'

dynamics of an election, how the public divided on issues, how solid was voter commitment, what issues pulled voters toward a candidate 01 party and what issues pushed them away. Dr Field criticised the press, politicians, and bookmakers for having a fixed idea of a Labour Party victory early in the campaign. “Having taken a position, they viewed the campaign as though with blinkers on. They highlighted angles and events which reinforced their earlier positions. In effect, they do

sed their own information loops. “In their proper place reliable polls can be very good servants of the political process.

“But when they are viewed as black magic, improperly examined or interpreted and when intelligent political leaders and the press abdicate their responsibilities to be critics and allow the unrefined and un-analysed pollsters’ numbers to dazzle them into being mere sycophants, then we have the kind of shock which occurred after the recent British elections.”