Politics between polls and advertisements

Polls are among the most important test results for diagnosing changes, mobilities and discontents in society, for general sociological analyses. That is, provided they are conducted with a proper method, at the proper time and by asking the proper questions. Just as blood tests not taken in the morning and on an empty stomach give different results that are unreliable for medical evaluation, polls conducted in extraordinary times also give extraordinary results and reflect the effect of extraordinary conditions. But to understand how much they reflect it, one must take as reference other polls conducted before the extraordinary conditions.

Of course, the reference values of the body are generally regarded as fixed, as a norm. In society, however, especially on political matters, there are no constants that can be used as a reference. Society is in constant change. The reference is taken only according to findings made at a particular moment. People's attitudes now, according to the latest election results. A finding in a recent poll against findings made earlier on nationalist values. The differences in between of course allow us to speak of a change.

The primary condition for the answer you get from a question you put to people in polls to be sound is, in fact, that you not strive to get an answer you want, one you wish for. If you can say "whatever it is," if you can create the conditions under which you can say it, if you have this ease, and if, even if it disappoints you, you do not let the desire for truth be consumed by the desire for power, then you can obtain sound poll data.

In polls conducted by politicians themselves, maintaining this attitude is far harder than supposed. For politicians generally want poll results that show them what they want to see rather than what is in the field. The director wants a happy ending. So what is produced is not a poll but a script that will end happily. And they do not always do this knowingly, willingly and by distorting, as is supposed. When they see results that really come in as contrary to their own opinions, they do not want to accept them, and they push the poll results until they reinterpret them and put them into the form they want. Looking at the final form and saying "there, now it's right," they do not even think that they have distorted the facts; they have merely approved a picture more in keeping with what they themselves see. But the upshot is distortion.

The latest MetroPoll survey, showing that the gap between Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his rivals in the presidential election has closed, and even that Erdoğan has been outpaced, appears to have another aim beyond that as well. From the owner of the company's presenting the poll result as great good news, it is already very clear that what he is doing is not a poll aimed at reflecting what is in the field but a manipulation.

Discussing with the company's owner some polls he did before the 2014 local elections or on other occasions, I witnessed time and again that he always presented the AK Party with an exuberance, a joy, saying "it's over, it's ending." On a program, when it came to going beyond poll results and discussing the parties' politics, seeing with what antipathy (this term may fall short, of course) he approached Erdoğan and the AK Party, I asked: "Are you really sure you are conducting a poll that takes no side?" The election results are, of course, the soundest and truest poll. Not long after, just a few days later, when that true poll came out, it swept away MetroPoll's polls.

At one time, when asked "the AK Party constantly conducts polls, do you ever conduct any?", CHP Chair Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu answered, "We have no money to spend on polls; we allocate our budget more to advertising." In this way he in fact showed how far he was from political dialogue, that is, from taking the people's pulse and being in dialogue with the people. Political advertising is the business of steering the people without listening to them, unilaterally, by explaining yourself to them with an elitist arrogance and conducting perception operations. A poll, however, requires you to listen to the people whose politics you are conducting. It entails your ear being open to the people's voice, listening continually to the people's troubles, and taking care to have the people constantly endorse the politics you will pursue and the programs you will implement.

It can be said that the most important feature that carried the AK Party from success to success for years and kept it in power for a long time has been its ability to conduct its politics with the people on this dialogical basis. Before explaining itself to the people, it listened to the people. Then, knowing to whom it was explaining itself, it explained itself and secured the people's support for its political programs. It constantly held a mirror up to itself before the people. In this sense, public opinion research provided the scientific ground for not being arrogant toward the people and for behaving modestly toward the people. Of course, this is not the only condition and the only way of this modesty and of being intertwined with the people. There are also all the other ways of it, reflected in a style of behavior, even in a way of life.

In its early days the AK Party attached great importance to sociological knowledge and made very good use of it. It cared about having public opinion research done not in the way it wanted to hear but by really trying to capture whatever was in the field. It also cared about impact analyses of the policies it pursued and took institutional measures for these analyses. This feature always set it apart from all political parties or traditions that have come and gone.

Perhaps today it is possible, and very necessary, to make the following comparison. Compared with the past, how far has the AK Party come, institutionally, at this point, that is, in taking sociology seriously and relying on sociological knowledge?

Do its most important feature, the one that brought it into being and kept it strong, that is, its sociological sensors, continue to work as soundly and effectively as before? If they do, there is no problem at all. But what if they do not; does one not need to think about measures for this?