Tsai Ing-wen (File Picture Visual China)
"Hello! This is the TVBS Public Opinion Interview Center. We are conducting a public opinion survey. For the purpose of access, is this a company address or residence? Are you over 20 years old? Are you ready?" For Taiwanese people, this kind of phone call opening is not unfamiliar. This is an organization that conducts public opinion surveys.
Nowadays, the 2020 elections for leaders and "legislators" in Taiwan are approaching, and various primary elections and bottom-line polls are emerging one after another. Which polling company is more professional, whether the data is "watered", whether the poll only targets phone users or whether it should include mobile phone users... These issues have become the focus of public opinion on the island.
So, how did Taiwan’s polls come about? Is it trustworthy? Reporters recently visited the island's polling center to find out.
Polling is a business
The earliest polling in Taiwan appeared around the end of the 1980s. At that time, some "legislators" asked professional organizations to conduct public opinion surveys to understand the administrative agencies' satisfaction with their governance, so that they could be used in questioning. By the 1990s, polls began to be introduced into elections.
A senior poll practitioner on the island said that although the poll has sampling limitations, it relatively objectively reflects the candidate's support among the overall electorate compared to direct designation within the party and voting by party members. In particular, although some candidates can gain high intra-party support by mobilizing grassroots organizations and factions of their political parties, they may not be popular with ordinary people. Such candidates often have difficulty winning elections and cause losses to their political parties.
With the frequent use of polls in elections, various polling agencies have begun to spring up on the island. The reason is that "there is money to be made." For example, it costs a candidate 150,000 to 180,000 yuan (NT$, the same below) to conduct a poll. If he can successfully qualify, he will conduct multiple polls before the election is over. In Taiwan, there are more than 20 local county and city heads, more than 900 county and city councilors, and more than 100 "legislators." The corresponding candidates have to be multiplied by 3 to 5 times. All told, these candidates will need to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on polling. The cake is so big, why don’t you take a piece of it?
High efficiency of the assembly line
So, how are polls generated? To this end, the reporter went to the polling agency for on-site visits.
The layout of the polling center is very simple. It is a large office divided into dozens of cubicles . There is a computer in each cubicle, and each staff member is equipped with a pair of headphones with a microphone. Industry insiders told reporters that in order to collect effective data as quickly as possible, the working hours of the polling center are from 6:30 to 10 pm to facilitate contact with office workers. Normally, there are about 30 employees working at the polling center every day, and sometimes there are 50 employees. The location was chosen near the city center to make it easier for employees to go home. How does the
polling company sample and select respondents? First, the computer system fixes the first few digits of the phone or mobile number. After that, the system will randomly draw the following numbers. Since the system runs very fast, when the computer dials an empty number, it will automatically skip and dial the next number until the call is answered. After
makes the call, the operator of the polling company will explain the reason, then ask the respondents about their household registration, and then ask for their answers to specific questions. For example, if the subject of the survey is the 2020 Taiwan leader election, the operator will ask, if so-and-so, so-and-so and so-and-so are running for election, assuming tomorrow is the voting day, which one are you more likely to vote for? Bit? Alternative answers include the name of the specific candidate, do not support it, have not decided yet, have no opinion, etc. After asking a few questions, the operator will ask the respondent about his age, education, ethnicity, gender and other personal information.
According to statistical research, when the sample size of the survey is 1068, the result error can be maintained within 3%. For example, if a candidate's poll result is 35%, the actual result is likely to be between 32% and 38%. This conclusion has nothing to do with population size. The person in charge of the TVBS Polling Center said that if more than 1,000 polls are conducted, it usually takes three days.
Whether it can be trusted or not
Although opinion polls are very important for elections, they have been controversial since the first day they were introduced to Taiwan. Many people even asserted that polls are not trustworthy. Why is this happening?
Speaking of controversy, the most important issue is sample selection: how to balance phone users and mobile phone users? This is an issue that has been hotly contested among politicians on the island recently. Since many young people on the island only use mobile phones and do not have fixed phones installed in their residences, if polling agencies only conduct telephone interviews, the probability of finding young people is relatively low. For example, when the operator made calls to 1,000 landlines, he found only about 70 young people. Therefore, if only landline telephones are used for polling, it will be difficult to understand the opinions of young people, and ultimately biased results may be obtained.
However, why do some polls still not include mobile phone users? It turns out that the phone can determine the user's registered place through the area code and the first few numbers, but the mobile phone number cannot identify the user's registered place. If you want to collect samples from a specific county, city or constituency, or evenly collect samples from various places, you can quickly do it by phone sampling, but it is impossible to judge by using a mobile phone. This is where cell phone sampling falls short.
In fact, polling agencies have many ways to influence poll results. For example, the way and order in which survey questions are asked, and the answers set may have a inducing effect on the audience. Some polls do not reach the required amount of collection, and a "weighted calculation" will be performed at this time, causing deviations in the results. Sometimes, some polling organizations that hold specific positions will also conduct "fake polls" to deliberately increase the support rate of themselves or their opponents in order to influence voters' willingness to vote.
In response to the above issues, the person in charge of the TVBS Polling Center believes that if polls are used to determine the results of the party's primary election, regardless of whether mobile phone users are included or what the proportion is, each political party can participate as long as they reach consensus within the party or pass corresponding measures by voting. Chosen people generally comply. At the same time, in order to make the results as fair as possible, relevant political parties often choose 3 to 5 polling companies for evaluation, and finally use the average to measure the results to reduce errors.
In order to avoid polling from interfering with voters' voting intentions, according to the current regulations in Taiwan, political parties and anyone are not allowed to publish polling information about candidates or elections in any way from 10 days before the voting day to the closing time of the voting time. , and may not be reported, disseminated, commented on or quoted. (Reporter Chai Yifei)
(This newspaper, Taipei, June 6)
"People's Daily Overseas Edition" (June 07, 2019, Page 04)
