André Kosters / Lusa
No poll predicted such a low result to the PS and the possibility of coming to become the second political force. Will it be time to rethink these inquiries?
More legislative elections, One more shot next to the polls. This time, the big surprise was not in the winning party – as was the case in 2022, with the absolute majority of the PS or 2024, with the result of AD to fall short of expected – but with the other two parties that make up the podium.
After several weeks when many polls pointed to a technical draw between PS and AD, the real Draw was between the PS and the arrivalwho conquered both 58 deputies, and there is also the real possibility of André Ventura’s party to assert himself as is in isolation as a second political force after the counting of the vows of emigration.
According to DA, which makes an average of the results of various inquiries, “not only no polls in 2025 put the PS at 23.4%”, but also None predicted the 22.6% obtained by the arrivalsince the “highest value it obtained with the distribution of indecisive was 20%”. “The key, as always, may be in the decision that undecided voters made this Sunday,” says the radio.
This underestimation of the arrival result did not go unnoticed by André Ventura, who began his speech with criticism of the polls. “From today no one else will believe in any polls. I warned in time about an injustice that was being committed with more than one million voters. demand for these companies responsibility In Portugal ”, he argues.
How are polls made?
According to Radio Renaissance, these measurements of voting intention move annually Hundreds of thousands of euros.
The internal polls, commissioned by the parties, are rarely publicized, but have marked the political discourse and themselves were a campaign instrument. Montenegro said recently dispose of “better numbers” that would support AD’s growth, while Pedro Nuno Santos suggested that the socialists were being “underestimated” in the polls. Both PS and AD refused to publicize how many internal polls they did.
In addition to the internal polls of the parties, six companies conducted surveys for different media, using varied methodologies in terms of participating selection, interview format and treatment of undecided.
Portuguese law, in force since 2000, does not require parties to disclose their internal polls, except when they are published by a media. In this case, the prior deposit of the survey at the regulatory entity for the media (ERC) is mandatory. Non -observance of this rule can lead to Fines of up to 250 thousand euros to the responsible companies.
In the budgets delivered to the Entity of Political Accounts and Financing (ECFP), AD declared spending on one million euros in market studies and the PS of 600 thousand euros. Among the remaining parties, only the liberal initiative revealed that it had a poll to define its strategy. Free, left block and CDU guaranteed that they did not have any internal poll.
Survey costs vary according to type and dimension: a telephone survey with 600 respondents round the 4000 euros, while a 1200 phone survey reaches 15,000 euros. Already an inquiry with 1200 people in urn simulation costs about 20 thousand euros. Finally, the polls in the mouth of the polls with more than 10,000 respondents cost between 50 thousand and 60 thousand euros, points to.
Are polls reliable?
Failures in predictions in recent years have led many to question the usefulness of polls and even if their disclosure should be prohibited, as there are those who consider that they are more A means of influencing the vote than merely a mirror of him.
Although there are post-election studies that point out that two thirds of Portuguese voters do not pay attention to polls, there are results that seem to contradict this. In 2022, PS and PSD appeared Taco in the inquiries and the PSD to CHegou arise ahead In the final stretch of the elections – just to, after all, the PS win with an absolute majority.
It was speculated that the proximity between PS and PSD in the polls may have been an influencer factor in the final result, since, in the face of Rui Rio’s reluctance to categorically refuse an alliance with the arrival, voters who did not want the extreme government of the government may have been frightened by the polls and have Decided to vote mass in the PS to lock this scenario.
According to the economist and survey specialist Luís Aguiar-Conraria, the inquiries are reliable, but not as expected. “General rule, yes, in the sense of not purposely manipulated. Trusting that they are a prediction of the electoral result is much more difficult, ”he argues, heard by.
Experts point out that the devaluation of indecisive is the explanation for successive errors in poll forecasts in recent years. Although it is not known how they directly influence the electorate, polls can not have an impact on elections by shaping parties’ speech. “These indicators serve to change and tune strategies for political parties“, Says political science teacher José Filipe Pinto.
Luís Aguiar-Conraria also recalls that “there are more and more people do not respond to inquiries And there is no way to ensure that those who do not respond have an electoral behavior similar to that of the responding. And so the extrapolations are increasingly complicated. ”
