Pick up any newspaper today or read news articles online, and you can’t avoid seeing the most recent polls concerning the U.S. presidential primaries or the standings of federal political parties and their leaders in Canada. The most interesting polls of course have to do with the potential impact of the recent indictments against former President Donald Trump.
However, support for Trump, may obscure a still varied Republican electorate. To better understand the party today, one pollster split Republican and Republican-leaning voters into groups, based on the results of its Times/Siena poll. The groups were defined by how Republican-leaning voters felt on the issues — not how they felt about Mr. Trump. The results depict a Republican coalition that consists of different six groups. Their support for Trump varies accordingly.
According to a poll commissioned by POLITICO Magazine and conducted by Ipsos in June, roughly half of the country believes that Trump committed the crimes alleged against him. What should happen to Trump if he gets convicted? The poll’s results show that forty-three percent said he should go to prison, but most were willing to spare him jail time. Nearly a quarter of respondents said that Trump should incur no punishment at all (22 percent), while 18 percent said he should receive probation and another 17 percent said he should face only a financial penalty. Interestingly, roughly one-third of respondents said that they are not particularly familiar with the allegations in the indictment cases.
Nationally, recent polls indicate that support for President Biden and Trump is about evenly split. However, analysts note that should Trump win the Republican primaries, he would most likely loose to Biden. This despite voter concerns over Biden’s age and his low approval ratings.
In Canada, the political drama is far less evident than in the U.S. Recent polls show that the current leader of the federal Conservative Party, Pierre Poilievre, has pulled ahead of Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau. Moreover, an Ipsos poll in December 2022 indicated that nearly half of Canadians want there to be a federal election in 2023, although the official deadline for the next federal election is 2025. In addition, the poll indicated that, after over eight years in office, a slim majority of those polled are hoping one politician won’t be running in the next election: Prime Minister Trudeau. Fifty-four percent of those polled said Trudeau should step down as the leader of the Liberal Party in 2023, although just 27 percent said they actually believe he’ll do so. The Prime Minister’s approval rating has been coming down when compared to Poilievre’s. However, with an election still potentially two years away, anything can happen as indicated by recent polls, and much will depend on the regional distribution of votes.
Polls are powerful – they can influence emotions and shape political fortunes. They can be used to drum up support for campaigns and reveal how closely aligned (or far apart) the general public is on consequential presidential or prime ministerial policies. Recent national elections have reminded us how problematic it is when we think of polls as forecasts of the future rather than a glimpse at where people stand at a given moment in time. Also, not all polls include a margin of error, including non-probability polls such as those you can opt into online. According to Pew Research Center, participants for these polls self-select, or opt in, and there is a risk that “these samples will not resemble the larger population”.
Polling is a huge industry. All political parties and many third-parties, including media sources, use polls to get an idea where the voters stand on certain issues and how much support is out there for parties’ platforms. Past history has shown that the closer one gets to an election date, the more accurate certain polling can begun. Unfortunately, polls released just prior to that date can potentially influence the way in which certain voters, especially the undecideds, may consider voting. After all, everyone prefers to support a potential winner, notably if they are voting as independents. Prior to the next American and Canadian elections, I’d be closely watching the potential impact of polling and whether the results reflect the final outcome of the election.
FROLITICKS 
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