Why the French media should exclude themselves from the surveys - politico

Jean Litchfield He was a former foreign editor of the Independent and a Parisian journalist for the newspaper for 20 years.

Calvados, France - During the first 11 days of this year, nine opinion polls were published on the French presidential election.Last month 17, was more than one for two days.

In 2002, there were 193 polls during the whole French presidential campaign.560 in 2017.This record should be broken this year.

The Blizzard of the French elections can be explained in several ways.Exploring ideas is easy and inexpensive, thanks to the Internet.Thanks to the multiplication of 24 -hour television information channels, the demand for opinion surveys is strong.

The problem, as I have already argued, this more powerful studies (referendum) than everywhere else in France.They have become part of the political machinery, not just comments.

The combined effect of a dominant presidency, a weak parliament, a two-round referendum, the collapse of the double left-right regime and the collapse of powerful and stable political parties, shapes them without anticipatingEvents in France.

The events of this campaign have strengthened my opinion.

They looked at the climb of the Eric Zemor politics manic television in an incredible way.At the end of August and September, he was zoomed at 19% support in the first round of anywhere and fell to 13% since his official entry into the race on November 30.Politico survey.

Referendum on the French presidential election

See more survey data from all Europe Politics Survey.

Did the referendum cause the formation of the Zemmour bubble? Or have they enumerated with precision its ascent and its fall?

Meanwhile, the president of the northern region of France, Xavier Bertrand, sought to give priority to one person rather than another in the appointment of center-right for the presidential election of.By announcing in advance, he hoped to create a big score on the ballots and become the essential candidate of the center-right.

His surveys were good but not really.He was forced to enter the official multi-candidate primary in December and lost.

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In other words, the whole Bertrand campaign failed in the polls.

Vote is addictive

Nothing proves that French polls are worse than those of other countries.On the contrary, in the national elections, their assessment is very good (despite the big mistakes of 1995 and 2002).The problem in France is the relentless intensity of the referendum of 14 different organizations.Discoveries, however, are often presented as "exclusive" or "shocking" by their media partners.

A prosperous and respected French press agency - like Asterix - has decided to resist this frantic research of ideas.Ouest-France, the largest French-speaking newspaper in the world, announced in October during the 2022 campaign, he will not organize surveys on "horse races" and refrain from reporting or commenting on these polls published by D'others.

François-Xavier Lefranc, editor-in-chief of Ouest-France, described the rise of the French election.Large handle ”- Excellent handling.In his first -page editorial of October 23, he declares: "Hysteria around the referendum prevents everyone from seeing the diversity of this country and listening to its people and its regional differences.Vote pushes us to illusion.It blinds us.He pulls the wool on our eyes.

Three months later, how is the cold turkey's turkey test? Are 600,000 readers of Ouest-France as pathetic as unanswered junkies?

According to Lefrang, there was not the slightest clue.

He told Politico: "Most readers replied positively - very positively.New arrivals come to Ouest-France because, they say, they need a newspaper that explores fundamental questions, not the surface or the show.

"I am convinced that the referendum will intensify the contempt of the media.They guide us by not doing our job properly.

It is not the only one to say that political opinion polls fuel the anger of the public against the consumer media.Patrick Murray, director of the renowned polling station at Mannmouth University in New Jersey, said in November that he would like to abandon any campaign vote and focus on the survey.

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He declared that the results of the survey were no more precise than in the past, but that even minor errors now feed the anti -democratic agenda.

"Honest errors are linked to" false news "," said Murray wrote.

New approach

Jean-Yves Dormagen, professor of political science at the University of Montpellier, supports French opinion polls but criticizes the applications they use.

"Surveys are essential for political and social research," he told Politico."The problem in France is that the link between voting and analysis is broken or weakened.

Dormagen's response to the proliferation of French opinion polls is to launch his own survey company - Cluster17, which follows slightly different methods.

Group 17 gives too much weight to those who do not know if they will vote.The main result was to find more support for the far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon-about 13 % instead of around 10 %.

The electoral system also aims to destroy the left-right policy and to approach complex political anthropology from the beginning of the 21st.^st.Century.

Dormagen and his group divided France into 16 groups or political tribes.Clusters are not used to weigh or shape the population of the models used in the Cluster17 survey.They are then used to analyze the results: why, for example, some voters are more likely to go from the right to the far right than from the right to moderate.

16 "Clusters" bring together numerous culturalists, social democrats, progressives, actors (unit), centrists, insurgents, apolitical, social-republicans, elected officials, conservatives, liberals, dissidents (useless), euroseptics, socio-patriots, anti-manuals(Anti aid) and identifiers.

Those who answered the survey answered 30 questions, such as "sorting" the students of Harry Potter novels in different Hogwarts schools.

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"If you tell me what you think of the death penalty, the redistribution of wealth, political establishment, rich and nuclear, I will tell you for whom you are most likely to vote and for whom you do notwill not vote, "said Dorman.mentioned..

Except: there are 30 questions here.In my case, the result was (not disclosed) perfect.

Another frequent criticism of the referendum is that it drops precisely because more and more people refuse to participate, not only in France.In other words, the anger aroused by the polls makes the polls more inaccurate.

Research suggests that this is not true.The polls are not more wrong than ever.If the pollsters do their job properly and collect precise samples based on the population, this does not matter (in theory) if more people refuse to participate.

Cornelius Hirsch, who directs the politico survey, is hopeless."I think the growing reluctance of some to respond to the referendum is a serious problem.It affects certain strata of the population more than others.It is a sign of mistrust with regard to surveys and cannot be corrected by sampling and weighing.

There is a basic puzzle.

As Lefranc de Ouest-France points out, a political press without the right to vote can be very creative or difficult.It can be blinding and very vulnerable to discriminatory prejudices.In the absence of independent surveys, there will be parties, personal surveys and dishonest polls.

Critics of Ouest-France and the University of Monmouth are all the same-especially in a country like France where the elections can be shaped by referendum.Because the polls are so intermittent, it seems to tell voters what they think, not what they think.

Surveys are a fair democratic tool.They also threaten to endanger democracy.

I would like to know the answer to this riddle.Not me.