{"id":1572,"date":"2011-04-18T07:44:11","date_gmt":"2011-04-18T12:44:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/?p=1572"},"modified":"2011-04-18T08:34:54","modified_gmt":"2011-04-18T13:34:54","slug":"the-ndp-and-online-polls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/?p=1572","title":{"rendered":"The NDP and online polls – some cautions"},"content":{"rendered":"

Christopher Waddell<\/strong><\/p>\n

So the week begins with a \u201csurge\u201d in NDP support in two online public opinion polls. That certainly fits the media\u2019s need to find a narrative for the campaign\u2019s final two weeks. If there isn\u2019t going to be a race for first place, a race for second is more entertaining than no race at all.<\/p>\n

However precedent suggests it is worth being cautious and asking some questions about NDP performance in online polls.<\/p>\n

In the 2006 election, Decima Research conducted a series of experiments comparing polling results from an online panel it had assembled with those obtained from traditional telephone polling. The goal was to see how accurately online polls could match telephone results and to try to figure out how online polls should be weighted compared to the traditional demographic weighting done for phone polls to ensure the pool of respondents matched the demographics of the country.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

On election day, Decima asked the members of its online panel to report how they voted in an attempt to create a national exit poll. About 10,000 people responded and by 6:30 pm in Ottawa – three hours before the polls had closed everywhere west of New Brunswick – it was obvious Stephen Harper and the Conservatives were going to beat Paul Martin and the Liberals. There there was a clear gap in the share of the vote each attracted and while Liberal vote share was below 2004 results, the Conservatives were significantly higher.<\/p>\n

By the end of the night the Liberal and Conservative vote shares in the online poll were pretty close to their actual results. The one discrepancy was the NDP which did several percentage points better in the online results than it did in actual voting results across the country. This difference was most pronounced in Atlantic Canada where the NDP was 7-8 percentage points online better than it was in the ballot box.<\/p>\n

A conversation three or four weeks later with another polling company that had done a similar test on election night revealed the same thing. The NDP scored better online on election day than than it did in ballot boxes.<\/p>\n

There was no simple answer but the most likely seemed to be that online panels overrepresented urban voters at the expense of non-urban voters. Urban Canadians were more likely to be heavier Internet users (with better Internet connections) and therefore more likely and more enthusiastic about participating in Internet polling panels. The possibility that online panels oversampled young voters compared to older ones could be a further explanation. The assumptions that the NDP do better with younger voters and with urban voters seemed to be possible explanations for the difference.<\/p>\n

It is five years later and polling methodology as it relates to online samples should be much better but it is interesting that much of the NDP growth is in Quebec where there is a clear delineation between urban and cosmopolitan Montreal and the rural nature of almost all the rest of the province.<\/p>\n

It would be worth the media\u2019s time to ask pollsters a few questions.<\/p>\n

How do they draw their online sample – where does it come from and how does someone get into an online panel?<\/p>\n

How do they weight the online panel results for demographics – age, gender, income – all the usual weighting factors?<\/p>\n

How does the weighting they do for online survey results compare with the weighting they do for telephone-based surveys?<\/p>\n

What demographic indicators have to be weighted more online than for phone polls? Here age may be important as younger people are more likely to be Internet users so may respond to polls done during the campaign but are equally less likely to show up and vote on May 2. How does the online poll factor that behavior into its results?<\/p>\n

Finally how do online polls weight results for rural and urban respondents as some evidence suggests that could be a more significant distinction online than it is on the phone.<\/p>\n

Christopher Waddell is director of the School of Journalism and Communication at Carleton University. He is a former reporter, Ottawa bureau chief for the Globe and Mail and a former CBC-TV parliamentary bureau chief and executive producer-news specials for CBC TV News.\u00a0You can follow him on Twitter @cwaddell27<\/em><\/em><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Christopher Waddell So the week begins with a \u201csurge\u201d in NDP support in two online public opinion polls. That certainly fits the media\u2019s need to find a narrative for the campaign\u2019s final two weeks. If there isn\u2019t going to be a race for first place, a race for second is more entertaining than no race […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,17,18,19,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all","category-election-2011","category-election-2011-campaign-strategy","category-election-2011-faculty-links","category-election-2011-media-commentary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1572"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1572\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1579,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1572\/revisions\/1579"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}