Registration of 30 poor-performing polling companies gets revoked

The National Election Commission decided to cancel the registration of 30 out of 88 election polling companies registered with the National Election Survey Deliberation Commission under the National Election Commission. These companies have only one or two expert analysts and less than five full-time employees, which means the credibility of their polls is doubtful. The 30 companies whose registration with the National Election Survey Deliberation Commission has been canceled cannot ask two questions of whether respondents support the president’s state affairs and which political party they support. They are also not allowed to publicly announce the poll results through the media. Aside from the National Election Commission’s decision, during a Monday meeting of the Legislation and Judiciary Committee, the ruling and opposition parties passed a revised bill of the Public Official Election Act, which requires the names of the polling companies that fail to comply with scientific methods to be revealed in order to prevent the companies without the basic requirements.

With the upcoming general elections in April, deregistering poor-performing polling companies is a decision to help voters. Some political polls with poor quality were likely to distort election public sentiment. Two companies were criminally charged last year, and three were ordered to pay over 10 million won in fines. Aside from such illegal activities, results varied by polling company, which may have been caused by differences in their expertise or the involvement of partisan figures with a background in certain political parties or the presidential office. It is a grave distortion of public opinions as general readers would find it difficult to distinguish whether the polls were conducted scientifically based on articles alone.

With the deregistration decision, the average number of analysts per registered polling company increased from 1.7 to 3.4, but this is not enough. There are still small companies among the remaining 58 polling organizations. Some companies also make automated calls instead of human operators calling potential respondents directly to save costs. Response rates are lower in the case of automated calls compared to human operators. Experts say that the opinions of those highly involved in political matters are overrepresented when response rates are low. Furthermore, some polls are conducted without purchasing secure phone numbers that reflect the phone number owners’ actual location of residence, gender, and age from three major telecommunication companies. The National Election Commission should continue monitoring polling companies to increase statistically meaningful polls by paying due costs.

With the upcoming general elections in April, the importance of high-quality polls should be emphasized. Public opinion polls affect the voter trends for the general elections and the district elections of the two major parties. Therefore, measures should prevent the involvement of short-lived polling companies set up in each district and disappear soon after district elections in the general elections. Given that the results of public opinion polls have a bigger impact on elections than actual public opinions, supervision of polling companies should be further strengthened.