I agree with Stefan here, as someone who has worked on political campaigns and marketing.
I find it very difficult to have much information without polling.
Most popular initiatives seem to be launched without such polling (but there will be exceptions on the national level).
Why should this matter? That ballots succeed without measuring their potential and optimizing against it doesn’t mean anything.
The vote outcome will not only depend on individual opinion, but also a lot on the official recommendations by parliament and government (and the media).
Of course. Having polls can allow you to:
Help influence parliament and the government by polling (and releasing the polls if favorable)
Prepare for the change in public opinion / likelihood of success based on the recommendations that come out
Direct conversations with politicians and charities seem similarly helpful for informing framings/communications at much lower cost.
How so? As a charity worker and former political staffer I think I’d have minimal information on a ballot initiative for something like this that I hadn’t done polling on. Why would their expertise be helpful? What information do they have that you don’t? Campaigners would only know about issues on which they’ve researched voting behavior.
at much lower cost.
This seems unlikely. Door-to-door polling could be done by one person with a car/public transit in one day. Calling could make this even easier/quicker. Contact randomly selected, dispersed households, give them the same info they’ll see on the ballot, and ask how they’d vote. Your sample size can be quite small and still be informative.
This is very valuable input, thanks! In particular, I might have overestimated the cost of such polls. We’ll definitely look into this further and will strongly consider doing such polls.
As a result of this thread, we’re also in the process of obtaining data from a votematch tool. It’s not representative but contains demographic data, so we will be able to extrapolate.
Why should this matter? That ballots succeed without measuring their potential and optimizing against it doesn’t mean anything.
It does mean something, but I’m now 1) less confident in the belief that people don’t do such polling, and 2) think that we have more reason to update away from that prior (how well-informed is it, really?).
Direct conversations with politicians and charities seem similarly helpful for informing framings/communications at much lower cost.
How so? As a charity worker and former political staffer I think I’d have minimal information on a ballot initiative for something like this that I hadn’t done polling on. Why would their expertise be helpful? What information do they have that you don’t? Campaigners would only know about issues on which they’ve researched voting behavior.
I think polls are mostly helpful for strategic decisions such as how many resources to invest into the vote campaign. For refining our communication strategy, observing the media coverage and updating our strategy based on that will be more useful. Politicians also have intuitions for how people will react to various points, e.g. for the kinds of arguments opponents will bring up, or whether a particular party will support the initiative. They might be able to give us recommendations for how to make sure the parliament recommends accepting the initiative. This is especially true in the frequently-debated question of foreign aid. It’s not clear what a poll result like “45% plan to vote YES” means for the communication strategy.
I don’t think the last point is decisive though, we should simply do both.
I agree with Stefan here, as someone who has worked on political campaigns and marketing.
I find it very difficult to have much information without polling.
Why should this matter? That ballots succeed without measuring their potential and optimizing against it doesn’t mean anything.
Of course. Having polls can allow you to:
Help influence parliament and the government by polling (and releasing the polls if favorable)
Prepare for the change in public opinion / likelihood of success based on the recommendations that come out
How so? As a charity worker and former political staffer I think I’d have minimal information on a ballot initiative for something like this that I hadn’t done polling on. Why would their expertise be helpful? What information do they have that you don’t? Campaigners would only know about issues on which they’ve researched voting behavior.
This seems unlikely. Door-to-door polling could be done by one person with a car/public transit in one day. Calling could make this even easier/quicker. Contact randomly selected, dispersed households, give them the same info they’ll see on the ballot, and ask how they’d vote. Your sample size can be quite small and still be informative.
This is very valuable input, thanks! In particular, I might have overestimated the cost of such polls. We’ll definitely look into this further and will strongly consider doing such polls.
As a result of this thread, we’re also in the process of obtaining data from a votematch tool. It’s not representative but contains demographic data, so we will be able to extrapolate.
It does mean something, but I’m now 1) less confident in the belief that people don’t do such polling, and 2) think that we have more reason to update away from that prior (how well-informed is it, really?).
I think polls are mostly helpful for strategic decisions such as how many resources to invest into the vote campaign. For refining our communication strategy, observing the media coverage and updating our strategy based on that will be more useful. Politicians also have intuitions for how people will react to various points, e.g. for the kinds of arguments opponents will bring up, or whether a particular party will support the initiative. They might be able to give us recommendations for how to make sure the parliament recommends accepting the initiative. This is especially true in the frequently-debated question of foreign aid. It’s not clear what a poll result like “45% plan to vote YES” means for the communication strategy.
I don’t think the last point is decisive though, we should simply do both.