Dear Editor,
Once again, these pollsters, analysts and chatterboxes got it wrong: Donald Trump did what many of them considered to be the unthinkable when he won the American presidential elections.
Now, in recent times, we have been bombarded with the supposedly expert views from these pollsters and analysts about what the future holds and what people will do, only to have a different result.
When Canada had its general election recently, these esteemed pollsters were telling us that the current prime minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, could not win. All sorts of explanations were given for their well-informed position. Well, the elections in Canada came and went, and so did their prediction.
When the former British prime minister, David Cameron, was campaigning for Britain to stay in the European Union, these charlatan pollsters and analysts were trying to convince the rest of the world that the British would not vote to leave the union. Indeed, some of them even went as far as to say that the British would be crazy to vote to leave. Well, the vote came and went and the British did vote to leave.
Here in Jamaica, the last general election was predicted to be a win for the then ruling People’s National Party (PNP). As usual, we had our many media houses flooding the airwaves with the views of so-called political experts with the sure prediction that the PNP would still hold on to power. The same was true of the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) internal elections. Of course, those elections came and went and these experts were proven wrong.
Even in a tiny country like St Lucia, where we had a leading pollster predicting that the then ruling party would hold on to power, the elections produced the opposite result. St Lucia is such a small country, it shouldn’t be too hard to poll the entire population – if not the better portion of it. But wrong the polls were!
You know, when these pollsters and analysts present their supposedly well-researched facts, with all types of graphs, charts and statistics, as to the outcome of any election, our media owners take their word for it. Why do these media owners continue to damage their reputation with their ‘expert’ expectations of the future after so many failed predictions is still a mystery to me.
Maybe the time has come to confine many of these pollsters to predicting long-term weather conditions. We know they are wrong most of the times, so their ‘well-informed’ expectations should suit that role very well.
Michael A Dingwall
michael_a_dingwall@hotmail.com
Once again, these pollsters, analysts and chatterboxes got it wrong: Donald Trump did what many of them considered to be the unthinkable when he won the American presidential elections.
Now, in recent times, we have been bombarded with the supposedly expert views from these pollsters and analysts about what the future holds and what people will do, only to have a different result.
When Canada had its general election recently, these esteemed pollsters were telling us that the current prime minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, could not win. All sorts of explanations were given for their well-informed position. Well, the elections in Canada came and went, and so did their prediction.
When the former British prime minister, David Cameron, was campaigning for Britain to stay in the European Union, these charlatan pollsters and analysts were trying to convince the rest of the world that the British would not vote to leave the union. Indeed, some of them even went as far as to say that the British would be crazy to vote to leave. Well, the vote came and went and the British did vote to leave.
Here in Jamaica, the last general election was predicted to be a win for the then ruling People’s National Party (PNP). As usual, we had our many media houses flooding the airwaves with the views of so-called political experts with the sure prediction that the PNP would still hold on to power. The same was true of the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) internal elections. Of course, those elections came and went and these experts were proven wrong.
Even in a tiny country like St Lucia, where we had a leading pollster predicting that the then ruling party would hold on to power, the elections produced the opposite result. St Lucia is such a small country, it shouldn’t be too hard to poll the entire population – if not the better portion of it. But wrong the polls were!
You know, when these pollsters and analysts present their supposedly well-researched facts, with all types of graphs, charts and statistics, as to the outcome of any election, our media owners take their word for it. Why do these media owners continue to damage their reputation with their ‘expert’ expectations of the future after so many failed predictions is still a mystery to me.
Maybe the time has come to confine many of these pollsters to predicting long-term weather conditions. We know they are wrong most of the times, so their ‘well-informed’ expectations should suit that role very well.
Michael A Dingwall
michael_a_dingwall@hotmail.com