As of today it is illegal to publish the results of opinion polls related to the election: according to Central Election Commission (CEC) regulations, polling is banned for the last 10 days before any election. Thank goodness.
Unsurprisingly, the last day of the polling season saw a tumult of polls -- more than 40 in all -- released. This year there has been a particular urgency about the polling. Since the race is so tight, and since, no matter which poll you read, there is such a large number of undecided voters, all three camps are biting their nails at the prospect of sudden swings caused by "strategic voting." This practice, commonly known in most countries only to political scientists, has become a staple of Taiwanese electoral behavior, so much so that a special term has been crafted to describe it: the "dump-save effect"
Although strategic voting occurred in many previous elections, this year's contest stands out for the multiplicity of its possible permutations among the three main candidates, Lien Chan
Opinion polls are the crux of most of these tactics, which explains the frenzy of new issues yesterday. As the logic goes, the victim of "dump-save" should be the weaker of each pair of candidates, and thus all three campaigns released polls showing that their candidate is on top.
Obviously, even in this tight a race, it isn't possible that all three are in first position. The common-sense conclusion, therefore, is that some of the polls have been deliberately crafted to generate certain results, and that is certainly -- unfortunately -- the case for some of the polls that were released yesterday.
This cynical manipulation of what should be relatively objective data is dispiriting, because it entails a dishonest motivation on the part of the candidates and parties to mislead the voters.
Politicians are not alone in their complicity, however, as members of the media have also been grossly irresponsible in publishing less-than-professionally conducted polls. In fact, were it not for the media's unswerving commitment to flooding the market with anything and everything that claims to indicate something, parties would have little motive to commission the polls in the first place.
Indeed, until there are signs of maturity in the way the media and the public view polls, the CEC is right to restrict their publication. Some consideration should also be given to the suggestion that a special commission be established, made up of leading experts in polling, who could rate the technical quality of polls.
In the meantime, CEC officials must maintain maximum vigilance in weeding out violators of all the election regulations: vote buying, bookmaking and illegal advertisements are just a few that should be at the top of a long list. Hopefully, they are ready to put in the kind of hours that it will take.
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