Beirut

US presidential candidate John McCain has just proved how it is possible to benefit from opinion polls. “He is playing with the fact that he is behind in the polls”, Professor Jawad Adra, director of the independent research group International Information, said during a discussion on the significance of opinion polls on Monday in the “Sociology Café” of AUB. As an experienced media professional, McCain knew that dealing competently with bad opinion polls can win votes.

Professor Adra used some examples to show clearly why opinion polls have great significance in the US, but virtually none in the Arab world. First he pointed out the long tradition of opinion research in the US. The first polls had been started there as early as 1824. In Lebanon, however, opinion polling only started in the 1970ies. “The people in this part of the world aren’t convinced of the sense of polls“, Professor Adra stressed. Instead, politicians sometimes operated with fictitious figures without a serious background. “If two politicians claim that they have 70 percent of all votes, that makes 140 percent.” He stated that the lacking interest of Lebanese politicians in opinion polls was due to the fact “that they do no want to hear any bad news”.

However, according to Professor Adra, not only politicians but also Lebanese business people do not place much value on opinion polls. He provided an example: the ABC Shopping Mall in Achrafiye. “It is located on a busy crossing. But the investors didn’t ask what the people thought about that. They didn’t want to know.”

Even the Lebanese citizens did not have a great deal of trust in opinion polls, Professor Adra continued. For instance, a study tried to find out in 2002 whether the people believed in opinion polls. Result: nearly 50 percent did not believe in polls or at least were sceptical about them. Only about 25 percent had a positive opinion.

Although social research does not have many supporters in Lebanon’s public life, there is a host of – mostly unknown – opinion polls in addition to the work of Information International. As Professor Adra showed, these are initiated by Western countries. “It is highly interesting for the West to know what the people in Arab countries think.”

With his research group, Professor Adra has already accomplished a lot of preparatory work. Information International issues the magazine “The Monthly”, which publishes statistics on the latest research work, for example, on increasing cases of suicide or divorce. Politicians usually lose out in these polls. Researchers found out that three quarters of the people in Lebanon do not trust their politicians. Therefore it is not surprising that the Lebanese media are not very interested in the statistically processed public opinion.

This is completely different in Germany. Polls are a popular ritual of supra-regional newspapers and magazines in Germany, for example, polls on the popularity of politicians. Public television but also magazines like “Der Spiegel” publish so-called Germany trends every month. Standard question: “Who would you vote for if elections took place on Sunday?” Prior to elections of the state parliament in the state of Hesse, “Frankfurter Rundschau” also takes part in polls. On the chart of the most popular politicians, the German Chancellor Angela Merkel clearly ranks number one at present; 60 percent of the Germans would vote for her in a direct election.

Of course, the trust of the citizens in opinion polls is also connected to the question which institute carried out the poll. For instance, some institutes such as “Allensbach” are regarded as quite conservative while others are considered to be more left-wing. However, experience has shown that this has virtually no effect on the validity of the results. The error rate for election forecasts is plus-minus three percent.

And politicians who are behind in the opinion polls like John McCain consider the results to be a chance. Because they hope that the voters of their opponent will not bother to go to the polls – because they expect their candidate to win anyway.