As a professional researcher, I have a long-term and well-founded set of doubts about the capacity of quantitative polling to reflect or predict public opinions. The problem with this type of research is that people express views, tailored to the question, that may well be neither deeply held nor likely to affect their voting. Asking people, for instance what their views on Lilliputian refugees is likely to get a similar response to Afghanis.
There is a long history of anti-immigration responses to polls, even right through the postwar immigration boom. In fact, my arrival in 1948, as a refugee, was despite polls in 1947 that showed majority opposition to bringing in Jewish refugees. The Chifley government showed leadership, as did Malcolm Fraser with the Vietnamese decades later and the origin of some levels of bi-partisanship so governments could bring in the immigrants that have deeply benefited Australia.
Polls, particularly those done for media consumption, don’t really measure opinions, they ask certain questions at times of their choosing, which usually parallel media coverage of particular issues they deem as controversial. The coverage affects the polls, the polls become part of the coverage and the cycle continues. The simple responses cover a range of viewpoints from the deeply green who would prefer an unpopulated Australia to the rabid racist who wants white ones only. The bulk of respondents will be relatively disengaged but will answer what they are asked, including an unknown percentage of respondents who just made an instant decision on what they thought, and then maybe stuck to it.
How these responses affect voting behaviour is even more obscure. Even asking people what issues are likely to affects their voting is no guarantee of accuracy in predicting actual behaviour at the ballot box. My suspicions, as a long-time researcher-observer, is that those likely to change votes will do so on a mix of feelings, including attitudes to party connections, the personality and character, what others might do, and maybe a preference for the devil you know or a desire for something new.
The importance of individual policies is overrated. Because the policy names and positions mostly fit easily into usable questions, they can be used in polls, rather than the more complex questions of viewpoints. The questions are usually precoded to make them easily countable, and become published percentages. These become news, and are read by politicians, strategists and minders who often translate the figures into potential votes, and may be used as triggers for policy changes.
Therefore the influence of polling on an election is much more complex than just recording the public’s views. The pushing by media of particular populist moral panic questions and responses presumably gains audiences and advertising. Stories about public views, particularly negative ones, on topics such as “boat people”, indigenous crises, dole bludgers, population growth and immigration are guaranteed wide coverage and interest. They can be used to put the conservative views of threats of human iniquity and sins higher on the political agenda, by encouraging the fears and anxieties in the population that make humane civil and ethical policies less likely.
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