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== History ==
The first known example of an opinion poll was a
In 1916, ''[[The Literary Digest]]'' embarked on a national survey (partly as a circulation-raising exercise) and correctly predicted [[Woodrow Wilson]]'s election as president. Mailing out millions of [[postcard]]s and simply counting the returns, ''The Literary Digest'' also correctly predicted the victories of [[Warren Harding]] in 1920, [[Calvin Coolidge]] in 1924, [[Herbert Hoover]] in 1928, and [[Franklin Roosevelt]] in 1932.
Then, in [[1936 United States presidential election|1936]], its survey of 2.3 million voters suggested that [[Alf Landon]] would win the presidential election, but Roosevelt was instead re-elected by a landslide. [[George Gallup]]'s research found that the error was mainly caused by [[participation bias]]; those who favored Landon were more enthusiastic about returning their postcards. Furthermore, the postcards were sent to a target audience who were more affluent than the American population as a whole, and therefore more likely to have [[United States Republican Party|Republican]] sympathies.<ref name="squire">{{Cite web|last=Squire|first=Peverill|date=1988|title=Why the 1936 Literary Digest Poll Failed|url=https://issuu.com/chilesoc/docs/why-the-1936-literary-digest-poll|access-date=2020-11-15|work=Public Opinion Quarterly|language=en|archive-date=2022-01-04|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220104053033/https://issuu.com/chilesoc/docs/why-the-1936-literary-digest-poll|url-status=live}}</ref> At the same time, Gallup, [[Archibald Crossley]] and [[Elmo Roper]] conducted surveys that were far smaller but more scientifically based, and all three managed to correctly predict the result.<ref name=":0">{{Citation|last=Dietrich|first=Bryce J.|title=Crossley, Archibald (1896–1985)|date=2008|url=http://sk.sagepub.com/reference/survey/n118.xml|encyclopedia=Encyclopedia of Survey Research Methods|pages=170–171|place=Thousand Oaks|publisher=SAGE Publications, Inc.|doi=10.4135/9781412963947|isbn=9781412918084|access-date=2021-05-22|archive-date=2021-05-23|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210523020215/http://sk.sagepub.com/reference/survey/n118.xml|url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="cantril">{{cite web |last1=Cantril |first1=Hadley |first2=Mildred |last2=Strunk |year=1951 |url=https://www.questia.com/read/98754561?title=Public%20Opinion%2c%201935-1946 |title=Public Opinion, 1935–1946 |publisher=Princeton University Press |page=vii |access-date=2017-09-07 |archive-date=2009-06-29 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090629104413/http://www.questia.com/read/98754561?title=Public%20Opinion%2C%201935-1946 |url-status=live }}</ref> ''The Literary Digest'' soon went out of business, while polling started to take off.<ref name=":0"/> Roper went on to correctly predict the two subsequent reelections of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. [[Louis Harris]] had been in the field of public opinion since 1947 when he joined the Elmo Roper firm, then later became partner.▼
▲Then, in [[1936 United States presidential election|1936]], its survey of 2.3 million voters suggested that [[Alf Landon]] would win the presidential election, but Roosevelt was instead re-elected by a landslide. [[George Gallup]]'s research found that the error was mainly caused by [[participation bias]]; those who favored Landon were more enthusiastic about returning their postcards. Furthermore, the postcards were sent to a target audience who were more affluent than the American population as a whole, and therefore more likely to have [[United States Republican Party|Republican]] sympathies.<ref name="squire">{{Cite web|last=Squire|first=Peverill|date=1988|title=Why the 1936 Literary Digest Poll Failed|url=https://issuu.com/chilesoc/docs/why-the-1936-literary-digest-poll |via=Issuu |access-date=2020-11-15|work=Public Opinion Quarterly|language=en|archive-date=2022-01-04|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220104053033/https://issuu.com/chilesoc/docs/why-the-1936-literary-digest-poll|url-status=live}}</ref> At the same time, Gallup, [[Archibald Crossley]] and [[Elmo Roper]] conducted surveys that were far smaller but more scientifically based, and all three managed to correctly predict the result.<ref name=":0">{{Citation|last=Dietrich|first=Bryce J.|title=Crossley, Archibald (1896–1985)|date=2008|url=
In September 1938, [[Jean Stoetzel]], after having met Gallup, created IFOP, the [[Institut français d'opinion publique|Institut Français d'Opinion Publique]], as the first European survey institute in Paris. Stoetzel started political polls in summer 1939 with the question "[[Why Die for Danzig?|Why die for Danzig?]]", looking for popular support or dissent with this question asked by appeasement politician and future collaborationist [[Marcel Déat]].
[[The Gallup Organization|Gallup]] launched a subsidiary in the [[United Kingdom]] that
Viewed from a long-term perspective, advertising had come under heavy pressure in the early 1930s. The Great Depression forced businesses to drastically cut back on their advertising spending. Layoffs and reductions were common at all agencies. The [[New Deal]] furthermore aggressively promoted consumerism, and minimized the value of (or need for) advertising. Historian Jackson Lears argues that "By the late 1930s, though, corporate advertisers had begun a successful counterattack against their critics." They rehabilitated the concept of consumer sovereignty by inventing scientific public opinion polls, and making it the centerpiece of their own market research, as well as the key to understanding politics. George Gallup, the vice president of Young and Rubicam, and numerous other advertising experts, led the way. Moving into the 1940s, the industry played a leading role in the ideological mobilization of the American people in fighting the Nazis and the Japanese in World War II. As part of that effort, they redefined the "American Way of Life" in terms of a commitment to free enterprise. "Advertisers", Lears concludes, "played a crucial hegemonic role in creating the consumer culture that dominated post-World War II American society."<ref>{{cite book|author=Jackson Lears|title=Fables Of Abundance: A Cultural History Of Advertising In America|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RgoXBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA235|year=1995|publisher=Basic Books|page=235|isbn=9780465090754}}</ref><ref>Jean M. Converse," ''Survey Research in the United States: Roots and Emergence 1960'' (1987) pp: 114-24</ref>
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Opinion polls for many years were maintained through telecommunications or in person-to-person contact. Methods and techniques vary, though they are widely accepted in most areas. Over the years, technological innovations have also influenced survey methods such as the availability of [[Ferranti MRT|electronic clipboards]]<ref>G. Rowley, K. Barker, V. Callaghan (1986) “''The Market Research Terminal & Developments in Survey Research''”, European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 20 Issue: 2, pp.35 - 39.</ref> and Internet based polling. Verbal, ballot, and processed types can be conducted efficiently, contrasted with other types of surveys, systematics, and complicated matrices beyond previous orthodox procedures.{{citation needed|date=November 2012}}<!-- this is just a string of jargon imparting no useful information ... -->
Opinion polling developed into popular applications through popular thought, although response rates for some surveys declined. Also, the following has also led to differentiating results:<ref name="cantril"/> Some polling organizations, such as [[Angus Reid Public Opinion]], [[YouGov]], [https://findoutnow.co.uk Find Out Now] and [[Zogby International|Zogby]] use [[Internet]] surveys, where a sample is drawn from a large panel of volunteers, and the results are weighted to reflect the demographics of the population of interest. In contrast, popular web polls draw on whoever wishes to participate, rather than a scientific sample of the population, and are therefore not generally considered professional.
Recently, statistical learning methods have been proposed in order to exploit [[social media]] content (such as posts on the micro-blogging platform [[Twitter]]) for modelling and predicting voting intention polls.<ref name="lampos2013">{{Cite web |url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236142275 |title=Vasileios Lampos, Daniel Preotiuc-Pietro and Trevor Cohn. A user-centric model of voting intention from social media. Proceedings of the 51st Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics. ACL, pp. 993-1003, 2013 Retrieved 16-06-4 |access-date=2016-06-05 |archive-date=2015-11-11 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151111081513/http://www.researchgate.net/publication/236142275_A_user-centric_model_of_voting_intention_from_Social_Media |url-status=live }}</ref><ref name="oconnor2010">Brendan O'Connor, Ramnath Balasubramanyan, Bryan R Routledge, and Noah A Smith. From Tweets to Polls: Linking Text Sentiment to Public Opinion Time Series. In Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media. AAAI Press, pp. 122–129, 2010.</ref>
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Among the factors that impact the results of Opinion Polls, are the wording and order of the questions being posed by the surveyor. Questions that intentionally affect a respondents answer are referred to as [[leading question]]s. Individuals and/or groups use these types of questions in surveys to elicit responses favorable to their interests.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Asher |first1=Herbert B. |title=Polling and the public : what every citizen should know |date=16 August 2016 |location=Thousand Oaks, California |isbn=978-1-5063-5242-8 |pages=75 |edition=Ninth}}</ref>
For instance, the public is more likely to indicate support for a person who is described by the surveyor as one of the "leading candidates". This description is "leading" as it indicates a subtle bias for that candidate, since it implies that the others in the race are not serious contenders. Additionally, leading questions often contain, or lack, certain facts that can sway a respondent's answer. Argumentative Questions can also impact the outcome of a survey. These types of questions, depending on their nature, either positive or negative, influence
In opinion polling, there are also "[[loaded questions]]", otherwise known as "[[trick question]]s". This type of leading question may concern an uncomfortable or controversial issue, and/or automatically assume the subject of the question is related to the respondent(s) or that they are knowledgeable about it. Likewise, the questions are then worded in a way that limit the possible answers, typically to yes or no.<ref>{{cite web |title=Question Wording - AAPOR |url=https://www.aapor.org/Education-Resources/For-Researchers/Poll-Survey-FAQ/Question-Wording.aspx |website=www.aapor.org |access-date=27 September 2020 |archive-date=28 October 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201028191139/https://www.aapor.org/Education-Resources/For-Researchers/Poll-Survey-FAQ/Question-Wording.aspx |url-status=live }}</ref>
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== Failures ==
A widely publicized failure of opinion polling to date in the [[United States]] was the prediction that [[Thomas Dewey]] would defeat [[Harry S. Truman]] in the [[U.S. presidential election, 1948|1948 US presidential election]]. Major polling organizations, including Gallup and Roper, had indicated that Dewey would defeat Truman in a landslide;
There were also substantial polling errors in the presidential elections of 1952, 1980, 1996, 2000, and 2016: while the first three correctly predicted the winner (albeit not the extent of their winning margin), with the last two correctly predicting the winner of the popular vote (but not the Electoral College).<ref>{{Cite book|last=Campbell|first=W. Joseph|title=Lost in a Gallup: Polling Failure in U.S. Presidential Elections|publisher=University of California Press|year=2020}}</ref> In the United Kingdom, most polls failed to predict the Conservative election victories of [[1970 United Kingdom general election|1970]] and [[1992 United Kingdom general election|1992]], and Labour's victory in [[February 1974 United Kingdom general election|February 1974]]. In the [[2015 United Kingdom general election|2015 election]], virtually every poll predicted a hung parliament with Labour and the Conservatives neck and neck, when the actual result was a clear Conservative majority. On the other hand, in [[2017 United Kingdom general election|2017]], the opposite appears to have occurred. Most polls predicted an increased Conservative majority, even though in reality the election resulted in a hung parliament with a Conservative plurality
In New Zealand, the polls leading up to the [[1993 New Zealand general election|1993 general election]] predicted
== Social media as a source of opinion on candidates ==
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== Influence ==
=== Effect on voters ===
By providing information about voting intentions, opinion polls can sometimes influence the behavior of electors, and in his book ''[[
A [[bandwagon effect]] occurs when the poll prompts voters to back the candidate shown to be winning in the poll. The idea that voters are susceptible to such effects is old, stemming at least from 1884; [[William Safire]] reported that the term was first used in a political cartoon in the magazine ''[[Puck (magazine)|Puck]]'' in that year.<ref>Safire, William, ''Safire's Political Dictionary'', page 42. Random House, 1993.</ref> It has also remained persistent in spite of a lack of empirical corroboration until the late 20th century. [[George Gallup]] spent much effort in vain trying to discredit this theory in his time by presenting empirical research. A recent meta-study of scientific research on this topic indicates that from the 1980s onward the Bandwagon effect is found more often by researchers.<ref name="irwin">Irwin, Galen A. and Joop J. M. Van Holsteyn. ''Bandwagons, Underdogs, the Titanic and the Red Cross: The Influence of Public Opinion Polls on Voters'' (2000).</ref>
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The second, first described by Petty and Cacioppo (1996), is known as "cognitive response" theory. This theory asserts that a voter's response to a poll may not line with their initial conception of the electoral reality. In response, the voter is likely to generate a "mental list" in which they create reasons for a party's loss or gain in the polls. This can reinforce or change their opinion of the candidate and thus affect voting behaviour. Third, the final possibility is a "behavioural response" which is similar to a cognitive response. The only salient difference is that a voter will go and seek new information to form their "mental list", thus becoming more informed of the election. This may then affect voting behaviour.
These effects indicate how opinion polls can directly affect political choices of the electorate. But directly or indirectly, other effects can be surveyed and analyzed on all political parties. The form of [[Framing (social sciences)|media framing]] and party ideology shifts must also be taken under consideration. Opinion polling in some instances is a measure of cognitive bias, which is variably considered and handled appropriately in its various applications. In turn, non-nuanced reporting by the media about poll data and public opinions can thus even aggravate political polarization.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Willems |first1=Jurgen |last2=Meyfroodt |first2=Kenn |date=2024-01-30 |title=Debate: Reporting pre-election polls: it is less about average Jane and Joe, and more about polarized Karen and Kevin |url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09540962.2024.2306912 |journal=Public Money & Management |volume=44 |issue=3 |language=en |pages=185–186 |doi=10.1080/09540962.2024.2306912 |issn=0954-0962|hdl=1854/LU-01HNDE8TMQF8BFNFMTD2P3A21T |hdl-access=free }}</ref>
=== Effect on politicians ===
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* [[Referendum]]
* [[Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]]
* [[American Association for Public Opinion Research]]
* [[World Association for Public Opinion Research]]
* [[Sample size determination]]
* [[Straw poll]]
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