Polls are the political equivalent of too much foreplay, and exhaust voters

I’ll tell you who I’d vote for. I’d vote for any candidate who promises to abolish political opinion polls.

Not just coming up to elections, but generally. It’s not going to happen, but can you imagine how wonderful it would be if someone removed them from our lives? The political monthlies start with a vague feeling of internal discomfort where those likely to be affected get that slightly feverish headachy sense that something unpleasant and inevitable is on its way. Something you can’t afford to make a public issue of, in case you look like a wimp.

Towards the end of the week, political nerds start talking to each other about the likelihood of a poll that weekend, and on the Saturday, politicians and their advisers suck up to journalists on the newspaper believed to be running the poll in the hope of getting even an indicative leak they can then splatter at all their friends, enemies, and clients like the fizzed-up bottle of Coke a constituent recently threw at the health minister. Being able to pass on key poll results even 10 minutes ahead of the official announcement is important. It gives you the look of ‘Someone In The Know’.

I have been that knowing soldier. I have projectile-leaked onwards what was leaked to me, as would be expected by the person who gave me the dribble for which I am prepared to grovel nearly as much as if Donald Trump had favoured me with a feel of his 24-carat gold taps. But, now and again, back comes the intelligent question from one of the recipients: “What do you think?”

That question tends to catch me on the hop, because polls, to me, are like frisbees. Someone throws one at you, you don’t sit down with it and make like Rodin’s Thinker. You feck it at someone else.

And if someone asks you what you think of the frisbee content, you make like a consultant. “Doesn’t matter what I think,” you say. “You’re on the frontline. What do you think?”

That’s the question that separates the men from the boys, the women from the girls, the reactors from the nerds.

The nerds always start with the relative value of the different polling approaches, and since I do not wish to be sued, let’s get pseudonymous, here.

“The only poll worth paying attention to is the Integrity Boredom Poll,” the nerds will tell you. “That’s the only one that’s statistically valid and proven so over time. The HeadlineGrab Poll is complete crap and the Third Runner Poll is suspect.”

Agreeing with that analysis is the way to go, and you should throw in a general condemnation of telephone and online polls just to show you have been paying attention. When talking to a nerd, the next safe comment to make is this one.

“I believe myself that it’s the trend, over time, that merits attention, rather than any individual poll.”

That works a treat. The only time it doesn’t work is right before a real election when you’re talking to a candidate who knows they need two more points to get on the right side of the transfer market and who is convinced that, no matter how statistically questionable is this particular poll, it is going to reach into every household in their constituency and persuade every voter to abandon them and vote for someone else because, they say with the certainty borne of desperation, voters like winners. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the process. In fact, voters like candidates who make the voter feel like a winner.

The majority of those voting for Joe Higgins down the years, for example, never fully understood or bought into the policies he advanced. Nor did they play the logical odds and work out that his chances of being in any government at any time were somewhere between slim and none. So his policies, while they matter hugely to him, didn’t motivate many of those who voted for him. What motivated them was the desire to be anti-establishment by promoting someone who was permanently against the ruling consensus, and witty with it. They felt better about themselves for making the statement implicit in their vote. Similarly, those voting for the Healy-Raes are not, as many Dubliners believe, motivated mainly by the desire to get stuff for their local area. They’re motivated by the desire to stick it to Dubliners who don’t understand that the Healy-Rae dynasty is an irony wrapped in sarcasm consciously focussed on confounding the sophisticated.

These subtleties are beautifully expressed in our proportional representation system. They would be ironed flat, with enormous damage to the cultural fabric of this complex nation, if we had a first-past-the-post system, and polls are first-past-the-post at its crudest. This is not to say that opinion polls are without effect. Tragically, they have huge effect.

They take up pages in newspapers which should be devoted to what real candidates stand for and what they won’t stand for and hand them over to commentators analysing what a statistically valid bunch of anonymous responders think about a narrow range of issues on the day they were asked. A bit like refusing to look at competing architects’ plans for a new cathedral or hospital and instead concentrating on the wall-scrawled drivel of nameless graffiti-writers. At least if you visit the trends identified by bookies, they exemplify opinions people hold passionately enough to put their money where their mouths are. Opinion polls are based on randomers asked questions they may never have considered until asked.

Politicians believe media polls can turn a mild tendency into a full-grown trend. Those who advance this theory suggest that one opinion poll after another indicating that Sinn Féin are on the grow makes them more interesting than they really are and gives them more airtime than the average political party. Of course, the counter-argument is that if Sinn Féin were not already coming through on the ground, no opinion poll would have any data to amplify.

Politicians who get into power get hammered for broken promises when things don’t work out the way they believed it would. Pollsters are always in power and they never get hammered when the results of an election match their predictions not at all, which frequently happens.

However, the worst aspect of opinion polls is how irrelevant they can make the actual election seem.

Commentators and political parties predict that this time around we may face the lowest turnout in history. If they prove to be right, opinion polls undoubtedly are part of the cause. Something like seven separate polls have come out in the last few days, are out today or will be out tomorrow, with all their accompanying repetitive and boring comment.

By the time we go to the polls, for many potential voters, the whole thing is done and severely dusted.

That’s not voter apathy. That’s voters who are foreplayed out.