Elections and Polls

How does an election poll work as a business, for example, in the US?

"For pollsters, there's no money in asking questions about elections and releasing the numbers to the media. They do it as a marketing tool to attract clients who want to know what people think about, say, shampoo."

The fact is that commercial polls are where money is and election polls, if paid for by news sources like newspapers, radio and TV, are not profitable, and are often operated at a loss.

Opinion polls and market research has been done for a long time. But there is no real way to verify even some simple information like what percentage of the people are using this brand of shampoo or that brand of toothpaste. Forget about asking the opinions of the people if they prefer this policy or that policy or if they like this or that political party, or the government, especially if you are at a place where people still needs to get used to speaking out.

Predicting elections results correctly is about the only way for pollsters to show they know their stuff. But it is not always easy to get the predictions right. A classic example is the 1936 Roosevelt-Landon presidential election in the US. The Literary Digest conducted a postal opinion poll aiming to reach 10 million people, a quarter of the electorate. After tabulating 2.4 million returns they predicted that Landon would win by a convincing 55 per cent to 41 per cent. But the actual result was that Roosevelt crushed Landon by 61 per cent to 37 per cent. In contrast, a small survey of 3000 interviews conducted by the opinion poll pioneer George Gallup came much closer to the final vote, forecasting a comfortable victory for Roosevelt.

With this success Gallup went on to establish the “American Institute of Public Opinion (AIPO)” with the goal “impartially to measure and report public opinion on political and social issues of the day without regard to the rightness and wisdom of the views expressed.” It was the real beginning of the claim by pollsters, past and present, that polls "can measure the true will of the people and that, through the polls, the people get a real voice in between elections and on all kinds of issues." Now there are reasons to suspect if that is not too much of a publicized or idealized view.

                                                                                                                          

For the history and development of opinion polls we will have to look at the history of this industry in the US. It has its beginnings there and it still has its biggest presence there. Forties in the last century was the time institutionalization and professionalization of public opinion research made headway. In 1941 the first university institute National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago was founded followed by American Association for Public Opinion Research, the first professional/academic association in 1946. The World Association for Public Opinion Research followed one year later. In 1948 the Public Opinion Quarterly the first academic journal was published. Development of opinion polls in Europe was somewhat delayed because of the effects of the World War.

Yet 12 years after Gallup's acclaim, the most famous failure was the polls predicting that Republican Thomas Dewey would beat incumbent Democratic president Harry Truman in the 1948 election. Not only Gallup, but two other major pollsters Crossley and Roper were wrong too.

Candidate	Party	Electoral Votes	Percent Popular Votes	Final Gallup Estimate	Final Roper Estimate	Final Crossley Estimate
Harry Truman	Democrat	303	49.6%	44.5%	38%	45%
Thomas Dewey	Republican	189	45.1%	49.5%	53%	50%

"Between 1956 and 2004 the US presidential elections showed an average deviance of only 1.9 percent (based on Mosteller method 3, one of several statistical ways how to calculate the margin of error ... But there have been major disasters for the pollsters in many countries, e.g. the US presidential elections of 1980, the British parliamentary election of 1992, or the German parliamentary election of 2005", and US presidential elections again in 2012. Even with these exceptions the polls were correct in predicting election outcomes most of the time. This is really not surprising, if we note that in mature democracies people have little reasons to lie as to whom they'll vote for and given that the sample of eligible voters is truly representative, and if the voter turnout is big enough, the numbers will always prove to be correct. So, the explanations for prediction failures must find fault with things other than the problem of the deceiving citizenry in those countries.

When an incumbent and an inspiring candidate meet in the presidential elections the Americans have a simple explanation for the results: the people let the good one stay and kick out the bum. Maybe some pollsters don't believe in such simple formulas or else they find it much harder to distinguish a good one and a bum than people do.

The International New York Times (Why Polls Can Sometimes Get Things So Wrong,

July 3, 2014) explained:

The science of polling is sound, but if you ask the wrong group of people your poll questions, you can get the wrong answers. Think of it this way: An arrow shot by an expert marksman has some chance of hitting the target depending on the wind, the distance and any number of other things, but if the marksman aims at the wrong target, those other things have nothing to do with why the arrow misses.

In 2012 Obama-Romney presidential elections, Gallup was wrong again and gave four factors that reduced the accuracy of its polling in a 17-page report. According to Huffington Post, June 5, 2013 they were:

Misidentification of Likely Voters. ... using a procedure developed in the 1950s ... Last year, this likely voter model moved Gallup's estimate of the margin separating Obama and Romney 4 points in Romney's direction.

Under-Representation of Regions. Gallup also weights its data by a variety of factors ... effectively undersampling states that vote more Democratic.

Faulty Representation of Race and Ethnicity. ...Gallup in recent years has used an unusual method to ask about race that distorted the racial composition of its samples when the data were eighted. ...This led to a disproportionate number of people who said they were multiracial, and that in turn distorted the weighting procedure, effectively giving too much weight to some white voters.

Nonstandard Sampling Method. Before 2011, Gallup had selected phone numbers using random digit dialing, or RDD, which calls randomly generated numbers. This is the procedure that most national media polls have used for decades. ... Gallup made a significant change in 2011, when it dropped the RDD methodology for its landline sample, using instead numbers randomly selected from those listed in residential telephone directories. ... But the change came with a downside: Not everyone who has a landline has a listed number. Although Gallup's initial research indicated that cell phone calls would cover the difference, they didn't: The listed sample turned out to be older and more heavily Republican than the RDD sample.

It is evident that all things being equal, exit-poll, that is, polls taken at a sample of the voting stations of a sample of voters after they have voted, would be much more accurate. But exit polling is not allowed everywhere and for example Singapore and New Zealand have a complete ban. Less accuracy aside, even when exit polls are allowed, pre-election polls are also in much demand. Because "they are the basis for campaign strategy by candidates, parties, and interest groups. They are the primary tool that academics and journalists use to understand voting behavior."

It is correct to say that in US, the first day after elections is the beginning of the season for next rounds of election polling. The only alertness, tenacity, and single mindedness comparable with that in the case of our citizens seems to be their search for cramming masters for their children as soon as a high-school completion exam (which also doubles as the university entrance exam) is over. Maybe we could expect a different kind of polling and marketing industry based on this to develop as we now see a flurry of activities by polling pundits trying to make inroads into Myanmar.

                                                                  

Bhagavad Gita and Paradigms

What do they have in common? Bhagavad Gita and Paradigms?

Gita was thought to be written by Sage Ved Vyasa some time in the fifth to second century BCE according to Wikipedia, while Thomas Kuhn published his "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" in 1962. I used to have both of them in my small collection. But no more.

Kuhn's book I had was the first edition, a paper back which I remember as having its cover mostly yellow. Now thanks to Wikipedia I could show what it looked like and I am proud to be one of the owners of first edition of this highly acclaimed work. Can't remember from which bookshop I picked it up. It was in Yangon.

It was in the mid sixties, I think. When I first saw its title I thought it must be about how to launch successful revolutions and at that time, I must note, that a lot of people were interested in revolutions. At that time also, I remember being quite skeptical about revolutions that are scientific because I'd read about scientific method by one Mr. Singer. Singer said when you say "a scientific boxer" you are misusing what is meant by the true scientific method. Those were the thoughts occurring before I picked up the book and read the description about the content on the book cover. Then I saw that it was on revolutions in science.

Bhagavad Gita when I discovered it, was a small, thin, slim book in the Bogyoke Aung San Museum in Yangon. It was in a small bookcase with glass doors and I could clearly read the title on the jacket. I am not sure, if the bookcase was in the bedroom beside a simple bed or in some other place. One of these days I would visit the museum to see if the book is still there.

When was this visit? I have forgotten completely. But if I were able to find my own book which was exactly like Bogyoke's I would have known when it was because I would sign all my books on their title pages with dates. The fact was that not too long after my visit to the museum I was lucky to find Bhagavad Gita, the same one as translated by Sir Edwin Arnold with a yellowish jacket and a red hardcover. I think, I picked up this book from the City Book Club and if I remember it right it was in the Pansodan Street, Yangon.

This book must have been misplaced. I've been looking for it for the last two days and still looking. Of the Kuhn's book, I had given it to my cousin years ago. Now that he had passed away and his family had moved to US and UK I would never have the chance to find out when I bought it. What I can say now is that from it I was able to get some bits of understanding on paradigm shifts in the sciences. Before I discovered Kuhn's book, I'd been reading quite a bit on history and philosophy of science. It was in the early sixties and during that time I found myself a year or so away from my studies at Rangoon University for some reasons of my own. In my recollection as of now of Kuhn's central idea, before re-reading him, is that while the scientists worked within an accepted idea (paradigm) of their times, some would find results that are at odds with the current paradigms. First, these will be recorded as footnotes in their papers. Later the inconsistencies grew too large to be accommodated within the current paradigms and new paradigms (revolutions) arise because of necessity.

As for Bhagavad Gita, I know it was a 700 verses long part of the great Indian epic, Mahabharata. I tried reading it, but never got past the first few verses! Nevertheless it was a great joy that I owned an exact copy of what Bogyoke had owned. What were his thoughts reading Bhagavad Gita? Where or from whom he'd heard about it? What was this thirtyish young Statesman contemplating in relation to the new nation he had been working on? We may never know.

Anyway, this internet age has provided me with the option of retrieving the texts of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions and Bhagavad Gita for free. It has compensated me for the texts I'd lost, but would never replace the physical objects that held them and the memories and the pride that goes with them.

The preface by Edwin Arnold in his translation of Bhagavad Gita is mostly excluded in many of the download sources on the Web, but included in the version produced as Project Gutenberg etext at http://livros.universia.com.br/?dl_name=The-Song-celestial-or-Bhagabad-gita-from-the-Mahaharata-being-a-discourse-de-Autor-Desconhecido.pdf.

This famous and marvellous Sanskrit poem occurs as an episode of the Mahabharata, in the sixth—or "Bhishma"—Parva of the great Hindoo epic. It enjoys immense popularity and authority in India, where it is reckoned as one of the ``Five Jewels,"—pancharatnani—of Devanagiri literature.  ... the question of its date, which cannot be positively settled. It must have been inlaid into the ancient epic at a period later than that of the original Mahabharata, ... The weight of evidence, however, tends to place its composition at about the third century after Christ;

Encyclopedia Britannica online gives a concise description of Bhagavad Gita:

Bhagavadgita, ( Sanskrit: “Song of God”) an episode recorded in the great Sanskrit poem of the Hindus, the Mahabharata. It occupies chapters 23 to 40 of Book VI of the Mahabharata and is composed in the form of a dialogue between Prince Arjuna and Krishna, an avatar (incarnation) of the god Vishnu. Composed perhaps in the 1st or 2nd century CE, it is commonly known as the Gita.

On the brink of a great battle between warring branches of the same family, Arjuna is suddenly overwhelmed with misgivings about the justice of killing so many people, some of whom are his friends and relatives, and expresses his qualms to Krishna, his charioteer—a combination bodyguard and court historian. Krishna’s reply expresses the central themes of the Gita. He persuades Arjuna to do his duty as a man born into the class of warriors, which is to fight, and the battle takes place. ...

Now, after reading the Bhagavad Gita page of Wikipedia I wonder if Bogyoke had not been reading Bhagavad Gita and thinking about independence movement the way Indian nationalists had been inspired by Gita.

At a time when Indian nationalists were seeking an indigenous basis for social and political action, Bhagavad Gita provided them with a rationale for their activism and fight against injustice. Among nationalists, notable commentaries were written by Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Mahatma Gandhi, who used the text to help inspire the Indian independence movement. ... No book was more central to Gandhi's life and thought than the Bhagavad Gita, which he referred to as his "spiritual dictionary". ... Mahatma Gandhi expressed his love for the Gita in these words:

I find a solace in the Bhagavadgītā that I miss even in the Sermon on the Mount. When disappointment stares me in the face and all alone I see not one ray of light, I go back to the Bhagavadgītā. I find a verse here and a verse there and I immediately begin to smile in the midst of overwhelming tragedies – and my life has been full of external tragedies – and if they have left no visible, no indelible scar on me, I owe it all to the teaching of Bhagavadgītā.

Back to Kuhn, February 2012 marked the 50th anniversary of the publication of "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" and John Naughton wrote in The Guardian (Thomas Kuhn: the man who changed the way the world looked at science, 19 August 2012, http://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/aug/19/thomas-kuhn-structure-scientific-revolutions):

Fifty years ago this month, one of the most influential books of the 20th century was published by the University of Chicago Press. Many if not most lay people have probably never heard of its author, Thomas Kuhn, or of his book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, but their thinking has almost certainly been influenced by his ideas. The litmus test is whether you've ever heard or used the term "paradigm shift", which is probably the most used – and abused – term in contemporary discussions of organisational change and intellectual progress. A Google search for it returns more than 10 million hits, for example. And it currently turns up inside no fewer than 18,300 of the books marketed by Amazon. It is also one of the most cited academic books of all time. So if ever a big idea went viral, this is it.

... Before Kuhn, in other words, we had what amounted to the interpretation of scientific history, in which past researchers, theorists and experimenters had engaged in a long march, if not towards "truth", then at least towards greater and greater understanding of the natural world.

"Whig history is the approach which presents the past as an inevitable progression towards ever greater liberty and enlightenment, culminating in modern forms of liberal democracy and constitutional monarchy. ... The term is also used extensively in the history of science ... which focuses on the successful chain of theories and experiments that led to present-day science, while ignoring failed theories and dead ends" (Whig history, Wikipedia). In this context, Kuhn was able to accommodate the failed theories and dead ends as well as uncertainties and phenomenal successes of science in a coherent way in his more realistic version of the history of science.

Kuhn's version of how science develops differed dramatically from the Whig version. Where the standard account saw steady, cumulative "progress", he saw discontinuities – a set of alternating "normal" and "revolutionary" phases in which communities of specialists in particular fields are plunged into periods of turmoil, uncertainty and angst. These revolutionary phases – for example the transition from Newtonian mechanics to quantum physics – correspond to great conceptual breakthroughs and lay the basis for a succeeding phase of business as usual. The fact that his version seems unremarkable now is, in a way, the greatest measure of his success. But in 1962 almost everything about it was controversial because of the challenge it posed to powerful, entrenched philosophical assumptions about how science did – and should – work.

... What Kuhn had run up against was the central weakness of the Whig interpretation of history. By the standards of present-day physics, Aristotle looks like an idiot. And yet we know he wasn't. Kuhn's blinding insight came from the sudden realisation that if one is to understand Aristotelian science, one must know about the intellectual tradition within which Aristotle worked. One must understand, for example, that for him the term "motion" meant change in general – not just the change in position of a physical body, which is how we think of it. Or, to put it in more general terms, to understand scientific development one must understand the intellectual frameworks within which scientists work. That insight is the engine that drives Kuhn's great book.

Nevertheless, it is nothing strange that Kuhn's great book has its share of serious criticisms. Some would be strong, some quite mild. Of the first variety, I felt, what were mentioned under the section "Criticisms" in the Wikipedia page "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" would qualify. I would say Greg Radick's criticisms recounted in "The Guardian" (Beyond our Kuhnian inheritance, Rebekah Higgit, 28 August 2012) at http://www.theguardian.com/science/the-h-word/2012/aug/28/thomas-kuhn were a milder example. I'm sure there is much more than what is touched here by me, second hand and a bit outdated.

Now, what do they have in common? Bhagavad Gita and Paradigms?

Personally, I could just say I used to have a book of Sir Edwin Arnold's translation of Gita and the first edition of Thomas Kuhn's book on scientific revolutions or the progress of the paradigms. What they have in common was a common owner, me; nothing simpler than that.

Nostalgically I've downloaded additional five versions in English of the Gita, and Kuhn's book.

If you are interested, for Gita try:

http://www.jcmotivations.com/tiki-index.php?page=Free+Ebooks+-+Bhagavad+Gita

Get Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" at:

http://projektintegracija.pravo.hr/_download/repository/Kuhn_Structure_of_Scientific_Revolutions.pdf