ONE of the country's top polling firms has investigated how it (and so many others) got the B.C. election forecast so wrong and has concluded one factor looms larger than any other: the low turnout of young people casting ballots.
Angus Reid Public Opinion re-examined all its polling and its methodology and concluded that, more than anything else, the fact young people don't vote in nearly as large numbers as older people skewed a series of polls (by Reid and other polling firms) that gave the false impression of what expect on election day.
Forget theories about last minute vote-switching or general low turnout on voting day, pollster Angus Reid says in a five-page summary of his firm's internal investigation. Instead he found "that almost all of the discrepancy with our poll boiled down to one issue: low turnout among young voters."
Young voters are defined as being under the age of 35. They make up roughly 30 per cent of the population, but only about 15 per cent of those who actually come out and vote.
Reid's analysis concluded that, had he made an appropriate adjustment to better reflect the makeup of those who actually vote, his last poll would have showed a three per cent lead for the NDP (in other words, a statistical dead heat given the margin of error).
He rightly notes that publishing such a finding a week before voting day may well have changed the media reporting on the campaign narrative, and predictions of an NDP landslide would have been replaced with a too-close-to-call theme in news coverage.
Ironically, the series of polls by Reid and others (notably Ipsos-Reid) that misleadingly showed the B.C. Liberals far, far behind the NDP for the entire campaign may have helped Christy Clark's campaign "by energizing her base to get out and vote in order to beat back, as W.A.C. Bennett famously called them in 1972, the 'socialist hordes,'" Reid writes in his analysis.
I think there is considerable truth in that conclusion. Senior NDP officials and candidates have told me they ran into a significant "fear factor" on the doorstep among many voters as the campaign wound down.
"They weren't happy with the Liberals, but they were afraid of us," one top party official told me. "We remain vulnerable on that point and probably always will be vulnerable."
The so-called fear factor didn't seem to exist to the same degree among young people, who tend to support the NDP in greater numbers than older voters. But that fact became immaterial on Election Day, as those young voters simply stayed home rather than vote.
Reid, who has a long track record of accurate election polling, says he will change his firm's polling methodology in the wake of the problems exposed by the recent election. Young people will have to be "weighted" in the polling sample that is proportional to actual voters rather than the general population.
Apparently, this is a problem that is unique to B.C. Other jurisdictions don't seem to have the same level of disinterest in young people when it comes to voting.
As a political journalist, I've relied on Reid's polls since the mid-80s for providing both an accurate snapshot of public opinion and a context on which to base political analysis. With the notable exception of the May 14th election, he's always been right.
When he and others were proven to be so wrong on election night, the media also wore the fallout from the error. In his analysis, Reid says he considered pulling out of polling altogether, which would have significant implications for political journalism.
However, Reid has concluded that since corporations, special interest groups and political parties are still very much involved in polling (in the last U.S. election more than $100 million was spent on private polling by the various parties) it is important that non-partisan companies such as his continue their own polling.
"A strong democracy needs accurate and independent public opinion research to help balance the discipline of power and add context to public debates," Reid writes.
People may not like public opinion polling (particularly when their findings clash with their own views) but it is an important part of our democratic process. It's good to know that pollsters like Reid are going to make changes to ensure their findings are more accurate in the future.
Now, if we can just get those young people to actually get out and vote.
