Vernon Daley

The pollsters in the United States got it horribly wrong in the New Hampshire primary last week when they said presidential hopeful Barrack Obama would beat Hillary Clinton as he continues his 'fairytale' run for the White House. Now, they all have egg on their faces because she, instead, managed to secure a victory - no matter how narrow - contrary to their predictions.

Since then, there has been a fair amount of discussion in the United States about political polling and how imprecise a science it is.

We, in Jamaica, can appreciate the argument. In recent elections here, our pollsters have not distinguished themselves by the accuracy with which they have called the numbers.

Take the last election. For most of the pollsters, the only accurate thing they said was that the race would be close. That it was. But, they missed the mark in terms of an accurate seat count. The Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) initially won 33 seats to the People's National Party's (PNP) 27. One of those seats subsequently went to the PNP following a magisterial recount. However, it is now the subject of an election petition and might very well shift back to the JLP. Only time will tell.

Predictions

Based on the findings of its pollster Bill Johnson, combined with its own analysis, this newspaper boasted that it had called the election correctly, giving the JLP 32 seats and the PNP 28. While the overall seat count was accurate, The Gleaner had its fair share of errors in predicting which candidates would make it to Gordon House. Has it oversold the accuracy of its predictions?

Today, Barbadians go to the polls and they are confronted with the same challenge of sifting through the predictions of pollsters. This is quite interesting, because the two major polls published there are directly opposed to each other.

A survey conducted by the Cave Hill Associates Polling Organisation (Chapo), in collaboration with Ian Boxhill of the University of the West Indies, Mona, said the Owen Arthur-led Barbados Labour Party (BLP) would secure its fourth straight hold on power. This is in contrast to a recent poll done by the Caribbean Development Research Services (CADRES) which predicted victory for the Opposition Democratic Labour Party.

According to the Chapo poll, published last weekend, "it would appear that the BLP is likely to have a marginal win on Tuesday, assuming, of course, that no major event occurs to remove the BLP's advantage between now and election day".

Lead pollster for CADRES Peter Wickham has, however, put his neck on the line saying that a 10 per cent swing away from the governing party tips the scales in favour of David Thompson and his team taking power.

Important media product

It's clear that one of these polling organisations is going to end up having to explain itself, because they both can't be right.

Political polling has become a very important media product here in the region, and elsewhere. It's part of the political hype and helps to boost media coverage and revenues. There is nothing wrong with that, but I wonder whether we do not treat it with more respect than it deserves, given the in-built potential to produce inaccurate results.