71% of French people believe polls do not influence their vote in a presidential election – EXCLUSIVE – The HuffPost

The HuffPost

POLICY – It’s a sort of mise en abyme that we wanted to test this month at HuffPost for our usual survey in partnership with YouGov: poll the French on the polls. An unusual exercise of which we are aware of the limits, but the results of which provide interesting avenues for reflection.

In this survey, carried out on 1000 people representative of the national population aged 18 and over, according to the quota method, between 2 and 3 November, the French surveyed tell us several things. First, that they believe for the majority of those questioned not to be influenced by the polls and studies of voting intentions published by the media and polling institutes to make their choice during a presidential election.

71% of them say so, against only 18% who believe that polls have an impact on their vote. What to put into perspective their importance, while these studies are scrutinized by the candidates or political parties, even if the criteria of the vote are difficult to make objective, by definition, especially vis-à-vis oneself.

Second teaching which describes the distrust habit of citizens towards all the country’s institutions observed for several years: a majority of those polled (64%) believe that polls on voting intentions are unreliable. Only 28% of respondents think the opposite and trust them.

The decision of “Ouest France” acclaimed

About the recent decision Daily West France not to order any poll on the voting intentions for the candidates during the presidential election campaign, the French polled by YouGov seem unanimous. 72% consider it “a good decision”, while 11% of respondents consider it “bad”.

Figures that will consolidate the regional newspaper in its daring and highly commented decision. A majority (56%) of respondents believe that there are “too many” opinion polls published on voting intentions. In fact, their number has increased during the last two presidential elections, with 409 studies carried out for the 2012 presidential election, compared to 560 in 2017, according to the polls commission. Only 7% of French people who speak on the subject believe that these polls would not be numerous enough.

And at HuffPost ? Our news site has never considered polls on voting intentions to be inappropriate or biased an election. In our opinion, they are useful for informing about an election and analyzing the political balance of power during a campaign, even if it is necessary to be aware of their own limits: they are only a snapshot of public opinion at a given moment, with a margin of error, and cannot predict with certainty the outcome of an election.

Fact, The HuffPost does not commission surveys on voting intentions, but makes available to its readers a poll aggregator which counts and compares the results of all approved and published surveys on each candidate, weighting them according to the timeline to give more weight to the most recent ones. This allows us to see the essential: the favorable or unfavorable dynamics, as a whole, to a candidate.

Constantly increasing polls deemed “too numerous”

Finally, the last lesson: the French seem open to a change in the law regarding the publication of this type of poll. 29% of French people would like polls on voting intentions to be banned a month before the first round of the presidential election. 23% of respondents plead for a publication ban one week before the vote, which was the case before 2002. They are only 11% to consider that the current law which prohibits them the day before and the day of the poll is a good idea.

13% would even prefer their ban six months before, which would mean starting today and which would be an interesting experiment to carry out in terms of strict political science.

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Survey carried out from 2 to 3 November 2021 among 1000 people representative of the national population aged 18 and over, according to the quota method. In partnership with YouGov:

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