Suppose a candidate, party, or government wanted to take the temperature of their constituents with a national, non-binding “referendum” on the issues. They don’t want to use traditional polling for a variety of reasons, particularly because they want to increase voter engagement. The survey results would not compel any action, but they would be made public.
The goals, in no order:
- Minimize Friction: Maximize the number of responses by minimizing the effort needed to participate. However, it is expected that some people will be unreachable or choose not to participate.
- Constrain Responses: One response per person from the set of constituents.
- Minimize Abuse: Eliminate widespread fraud and abuse such that the published results are meaningful. They are non-binding and do not have to be perfect, but need to be good enough to be useful.
- Minimize Cost: This task is akin to the US Census, but it’s not practical to spend $10B or more on this survey.
I’ve defined the goals subjectively since it is premature to define objective metrics. For example, I don’t want to define an acceptable cost. Instead it is enough that Solution X might cost $Y and that may or may not be too much.
One obvious solution is a simple internet poll. It is cheap and easy, but completely unreliable; there are too many ways to “game” the results.
Using an internet poll as the baseline, what are some potential better solutions?
Consider your answers from your locale; for example: some countries might have infrastructure to support this already.
Are you sure that non-binding referenda are a good idea in the first place? My expectation would be that if the sane side wins the poll, it’ll be ignored, but if the stupid side wins, it’d be treated as though it were binding. That’s what happened with Brexit.
The obvious solution would be to have the questions placed on the ballot for the actual election, with the statements that these are explicitly there to determine what the people want rather than to be enacted as law.
Good point. I wasn’t clear exactly what I was asking. I am curious about a non-state sanctioned survey.
Adding questions to a ballot, both binding and non-binding, increases the authenticity of the results, but also increases voter friction. It also comes with a lot of approval baggage.
There could be value in a candidate or party holding a survey, publishing the results, and stating “this is what the people actually want and I will use this to guide my platform”.
There’s also an advantage that the question text doesn’t need to be negotiated into legalese that sounds the opposite of what it means.
It could be used to defuse wedge issues and engage with younger voters and generate excitement.
The fact that it’s non-binding would probably deter the majority of centrist or lukewarm folks from bothering to go out to vote (“why bother?..it’s just symbolic…”), and only the fanatic zealots would go to cast a ballot, thus making the outcome look much more far-right or far-left than public mainstream opinion actually is.
That’s why minimize friction is a goal – to maximum participation.
If a candidate for governor could survey people from the state (voters and non-voters, Dems and Pubs) such that people felt “listened to”, then that would be a powerful tool.
I can’t think of a national options that would beat an internet poll considering cost-effective options, even if prone to abuse.
The scale means that nearly anything is going to be pricey.
Speaking for myself, I’ve responded to things like Neilson requests because they offered $1-2 cash up front, and managed to generate enough interest and implied responsibility that I took the time and got another $5 cash after finishing.
That sort of thing might be effective (though how many just take the cash and don’t bother is a metric I don’t have access to!), but would probably be far too expensive compared to the baseline internet option.
The other common option I see these days, that is probably cost effective is setting up a mass-text message poll. For me though, 99% of the time I just click “message is spam” and move on. But the costs are probably low, and since our society is increasingly smart-device dependent, would get your information out to a very wide range of people without as much website based self-segregation.
Good point. I wasn’t really considering how to get out word about the poll and how to keep it from getting lumped in with all of the noise.
I was thinking if a presidential candidate did this, it would be enough to give it wings. Maybe the first time, but the once the novelty wore off…
For accuracy sake, would it be sufficient to simply collect name and address (like a petiton does)? Is it possible and cost-effective for a private organization to verify those?
I personally have no idea, and the more private identifying information you have to give increases the chance someone nopes out.
I think the text message polls are reasonably fair in that relatively few people have multiple active lines of service given the monthly fees. Sure there are a number who have both work AND personal phones, but I’d guess it’s a pretty small percentage.
You could do a simple whitepages lookup in moments (I just did on my number) and get information, but it could very well be out of date (mine was). I bet with the various paid reverse-look up options, you might get more accurate information, and it seems it would still be pretty inexpensive, though the sheer number means it wouldn’t be negligible of course.
Crazy idea:
I wonder if you could use a system where your survey is worth a fraction based on the information you choose to share?