Most pre-election polls from profit oriented firms – Report

Few days to the 2023 general elections, an independent analysis of major election opinion polls in Nigeria has shown that the firms behind the polls are profit oriented.

The report, which was tagged “Economic Confidential Independent Analysis of 2023 Pre- Election Polls,” was released to the public in Abuja.

At the event, the publisher of Economic Confidential and PR Nigeria, Yushua Shuaib, said over five election polls have so far been conducted, with majority projecting the candidate of the Labour Party, Mr. Peter Obi to win the elections.

He said that “After Economic Confidential and its Fact-Check Team analysed the polls by Nextier, ANAP Foundation, Premise Data (For Bloomberg), Stears Business, Nigerian Human Rights Community (NHRC), June Group Research and CASA, the research analysis reveals that some of them are partisan and does not reflect the true situation,”

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He noted that Nextier Polls which was released recently and projected Mr. Peter Obi as winner of the presidential election has clearly stated in its website that is a profit oriented agency.

Also, in his presentation, Managing Editor of Economic Confidential , Abdulrahman Abdulraheem, said the Analysis has shown that there is the fear that some gullible people may see the polls as the ultimate result even before the first ballots are cast.

He added that, “While some of the polls are defective in methodology, their promoters are obviously partisan which further create doubts on objectivity, fairness and credibility of the polls. Similarly, some of the pollsters strangely share the same identity from their digital footprints

Some of the pollsters had never conducted a poll before and lack the tested predictive validity from any previous experience. Also, the rash of unscientific opinion polls and partisan projections have heightened public anxiety and influence extreme optimism among candidates and their supporters, which could undermine national security,” Abdulraheem noted.

Furthermore, the Analysis recommended that “Pollsters should deploy scientific tools and not partisan instruments for political campaigns in promoting preferred candidates and contain standard verifiable indices and parameters including the sample size, the representativeness, geographical spread, age distribution, occupations of respondents, types of the questionnaire, the questions and the margin of error allowed in the final computations,”

It further said as a matter of national importance, Nigerians should lower their expectations from the result of opinion polls, while urging citizens to cast their votes and wait patiently for the results to emerge from appropriate authorities.