Co-owner of the Parsifal agency and sociologist Dr Borut Rončević noted that there are big differences in the measurements of support for different parties between different agencies, but only for the two leading parties – the Slovenian Democratic Party and the Freedom Movement. Rončević does not know why such differences have been appearing. With this, he also explained that the pre-election polls are not about predicting the election results but about measuring the results of a representative sample. It is also interesting that the Freedom Movement party is among the most popular parties, even though its President, Robert Golob, has not appeared in public for quite some time now. “Robert Golob is not really an autonomous politician. He is being guided by others, others who tell him what is good for him, and they actually forbade him from participating in any of the pre-election debates because that would reveal the difference between what his constituents want and what he really brings,” Rončević explained.
The differences in results between individual surveys, prepared by different agencies, are really big and unusual. And what is even more unusual are the fluctuations in support that some agencies have measured for individual political parties. As a rule, this does not happen with the Parsifal agency. Namely, their measurements have consistently shown two important things for two months now: the first is that the Slovenian Democratic Party (Slovenska demokratska stranka – SDS) is firmly ahead of the Freedom Movement (Gibanje Svoboda). And the second is that the results of small parties will decide who will form the next Slovenian government.
The public opinion poll prepared by the Parsifal agency, which we published on our television on Saturday, shows different results among the leaders in the poll than those of the Ninamedia and Mediana agencies. The first question in the Parsifal public opinion poll, which refers to the support of political parties, reads: “Which party would you vote for if the elections to the National Assembly were held this Saturday?” And the responses show that the majority of voters would support the SDS party (22. 9 percent), which is followed by the Freedom Movement (13.2 percent), the Social Democrats – SD (7.6 percent), the Left party – Levica (6.3 percent), the List of Marjan Šarec – LMŠ (4.5 percent) and the Let’s Connect Slovenia alliance – Povežimo Slovenijo (3.3 percent).
And if we only take those who already know who they would vote for (n = 523) and look at their responses to the same question, the results are as follows: the SDS party got 31.2 percent, the Freedom Movement 17.9 percent, the SD party 10.3 percent, the Left party 8.6 percent, the LMŠ party 6.1 percent, the Let’s Connect Slovenia alliance 4.6 percent, the NSi party 4 percent, and Our Country 3.8 percent of all the responses. The convincing leadership of the SDS party caused lots of left-wing Twitter users to believe that the results of Parsifal agency’s public opinion poll were manipulated in favour of Janez Janša.
Differences among the results of public opinion polls are not actually that big
Co-owner of the Parsifal agency, professor Dr Borut Rončević, saw in the media that the results of the Parsifal agency’s poll are being compared to the results of the two other large agencies. “I found this very interesting, and after I took a closer look at it, I could actually see that with the vast majority of these parties, which have a real chance of breaking into the National Assembly with a good campaign, these differences are not very big. If we drew a confidence interval, we would find that the vast majority of the results for individual parties overlap,” he explained.
He noted that the differences only appeared in the support for the SDS party and the Freedom Movement. But Rončević does not know why these differences occurred and explained that this is a question for the other agencies that measure public opinion. “We have been conducting these polls since mid-December, and our results are consistent,” he said, explaining that there were no inconsistencies in their measurements, such as the forecast of an 85-percent turnout. “So we are quite confident when it comes to the accuracy of these measures, but I would like to emphasise – and I keep emphasising this over and over again – that the pre-election polls are not about the announcing of the election result,” he said, adding that the true forecasts for the election results can only be announced on election day, and only after the polls close.
It is also interesting that the Freedom Movement party is among the most popular parties, even though its President, Robert Golob, has not appeared in public for quite some time. After the Parsifal agency conducted some analyses, which it did not publish, the agency found that these results are also being achieved by those who manage Golob. “Our results have shown in great detail how the supporters of different political groups imagine the politicians who should lead the party,” he explained.
Golob’s result is also a reflection of those who manage him
They noticed a strange paradox in these analyses. Namely, Golob has certain groups of voters, but on the other hand, the perception of his supporters or his potential voters of him is completely different from the reality. His constituents want a politician that does not exclude and is willing to talk to all parties. And the people who are behind his election campaign surely also know about this. “That is why I like to say that Robert Golob is not really an autonomous politician. He is directed by other people, others tell him what is good for him, and they actually forbade him from participating in the election debates because it would reveal the discrepancy between what his constituents want and what he really brings to the table,” Rončević said.
The agency’s “opponents” shared an excerpt from the Parsifal website online, which reads: “Call us; we will adapt our research to your needs.” According to Rončević, this means that the agency will determine what the company that orders their service needs, in what way they should analyse their market potential, and that they will also listen to the client’s wishes and adjust the questions accordingly. “That is, you can buy an expert, but you cannot buy the content of the expertise,” he said, adding that they also prepare specific questions for the public opinion polls they conduct for our media outlet so that they are related to the current topics.
Too much support for a party in public opinion polls can be a weakness
Responding to allegations of manipulating the results of the polls, Rončević also added that the SDS party is not even particularly thrilled about the fact that the polls show so much support for it because when this happens, many voters believe that they do not need to go vote, as the party already has enough support without them and thus, they do not really need to attend the election. “Surveys measure the mood of the voters on a representative sample of the general adult public. Of course, polls cannot measure what is actually happening in the field,” he responded to the question of why the polls often do not correctly predict the results of the elections.
Sara Rančigaj
