Gallup in the US
“George Gallup always knew, who the next US President is going to be,” this is how the US media writes about the Gallup Institute. The Institute has started its activity since 1936 and was mistaken only once in 1948. George Gallup and his apprentices have made 15 correct forecasts. Only in 1948 they completed their research early and forecast the victory of Republican Thomas Davis, however with 4.5% privilege of votes Harry Truman was elected. 50 years after that the experts were joking by saying that the elections were wrong not the Gallup forecast. The inaccuracies of the American elections in 1956-1988 amounted to 3.85%. And during the elections conducted in 1956-1988 the number of inaccuracies amounted to 1.6%. On this background the inaccuracy of 5.8% of 1992 Bill Clinton victory seems unbelievable to us. In total the inaccuracies of the forecast of the Gallup institute compared to the official results, amounted to 2.7%. How are those prognoses made? What is the secret? George Gallup and his successors have never hidden the methods of their forecasts. They have even published a book about it in 1972. The only methods are the traditional and the contemporary methods. It seems that for the forecast it is necessary to find out the opinion of thousands and even hundreds of thousand people. However, during their surveys the Gallup Institute as well as other western polling institutes pick 1000 respondents. Gallup is one of the first sociologists, who have started to apply mathematical rules when surveying the electorate. No one understood why Gallup was picking a similar number of respondents in New York and in a tiny provincial town. Gallup responds this way, “Imagine the cook preparing two types of soup, one in a big bowl, the other one in a small one. When checking the taste of the soup from the big bowl the cook picks a big spoon and when tasting from the small one he gets the small spoon. During the polls two things are important – the number of respondents and the quality not who was interviewed. Moreover, the second one is more important.” Even at the beginning of his activity Gallup came to the conclusion that the people must be polled in accordance with their residence area via telephones. The pollster of Gallup were constantly using the refreshed telephone archives of the US and they would pick 1000 numbers at random. The questions are formulated in a way to be maximally neutral and not to affect the answers of the respondents. The last stage of the surveys is the wrap-up and analysis of the results. Correct forecast cannot be made on the results of the polls and the sociologists start to survey the opinion of people from the beginning of elections. They analyze the alternation of the voters’ opinion; they find the factors, which affect their opinions and compare with the results of previous elections and sometimes with other country elections. They draw their conclusions only after that. It is extremely difficult to make at least one correct presidential candidate forecast. However Gallup and his successors have correctly forecast 15 out of 16 US Presidential elections. The list includes F. Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Carter, Reagan, G. Bush, and Clinton. One more fact – during those years has forecast 14 times, which party is going to overwhelm in the US Congress. And they all came true.
Gallup in Armenia
During the past years the number of polling organizations in Armenia has increased. In parallel with that the doubt about the results of the polls has increased. People are skeptical not only to local but also international pollsters. The polls conducting the Sociometer Center headed by Aharon Adibekyan are not accepted seriously not only the society but also political parties because according to certain opinions only governmental parties get high ratings from Adibekyan’s polling results. When speaking of social polls we remember the famous Russian saying, “the music is ordered by the one who pays.” In Armenia social polls were conducted by the Gallup, Populus and other famous organizations. By the way, when their polls related to social issues, public moods, corruption in the country both the society and politicians agreed with those. But when the polls were conducted on concrete ratings of politicians, political parties they mainly caused dissatisfaction and complaints. Everyone (besides the government) agree with the results of the Gallup and another social poll organization, by which 70% of the population is intimidated. Some of the opposition leaders immediately rebelled against the results of the Gallup when 67-70% of the population responded that they are against the change through revolutions in 2006. Once upon a time PPA chairman, NA Justice Alliance head, Stepan Demirchyan expressed his opinion about the Gallup polls, according to which those are ordered by the government and have got nothing to do with reality. At that time the focus group of Gallup drew the conclusion that if the PPA comes to power the system of inheritance will start to work in industry. “I haven’t inherited any factory,” said Demirchyan. In 2006 when NDU chairman Vazgen Manukyan was speaking about the corruption in the country, criminality and illegality he emphasized the point that the society doesn’t have confidence to future and elections. And the survey conducted by Gallup, by which 70% of the population doesn’t believe in elections, Manukyan thinks is true regardless of how skeptical we are to social polls. Gallup is conducting surveys on Presidential elections 2008 of RA. They conduct their surveys in closed and secret conditions in all of the countries. Gallup has surveyd the rating of 13 potential presidential candidates of Armenia. They have completed one of their researches, which in fact was conducted prior to the registration of the candidates. By the way, after they conduct the polls they present to the parties only the rating of the candidate nominated by the given party. This means that Gallup provides the parties with only their party candidate rating. We succeeded in only finding information about the rating of the RPA candidate. According to the Gallup Prime Minister Serzh Sargsyan’s rating occupies the first place in the list. As of other candidates 1% said to no one and 14 percent answered don’t know. Of course all the others political parties will put into doubt the results of those polls. Gallup has p[resented these surveys to all political parties. Therefore, we will try to apply to all the other parties to receive their rating results. And they have the right to publicize their results. In the result we will see who were the ones, who had appeared in the top 13 in the period of October 26-November 3 according to the reputed organization Gallup, which knows everything.