Voting intention poll: blank votes and abstention left out

The election poll that forgot about abstention

A voting intention poll that offers no option to abstain or cast a blank vote starts with a methodological problem before a political one: the two behaviours that moved the most ballots in the last trips to the polls are left out of the form. The result is a survey that measures those who have already decided to vote for a party and renders invisible anyone who does not plan to visit the polling station. The paradox is no small one in a context where disaffection is measured at every election call.

The exercise, framed as a "serious" poll, also admits parties that are not even running in the elections it refers to, while leaving out others that are. With that starting point, any seat allocation coming out of it has the same statistical validity as a Christmas lottery draw: plenty of hope, no rigour.

What a poll without abstention or blank votes measures

The first objection is a textbook one: without abstention and blank vote options, the survey cannot estimate turnout, which is the variable that decides elections. A party can win with 30% of votes cast and lose the narrative if that 30% represents a minority of the electoral roll. As it is built, the poll does not distinguish between those who vote out of conviction and those who vote holding their noses.

The second problem is the party list. Parties that are not running in these elections are demanded, while others that do appear on the ballots are missing. The list of options thus becomes a wish list rather than a reflection of the electorate. Any comparison with polls from serious polling institutes — with weighted samples, margins of error and fieldwork — falls by the wayside.

Postal voting and distrust in the system

The thread soon drifts into a deeper discussion about the legitimacy of the system. Participants share the explanation of a postal worker with 25 years of experience on how postal voting works, its safeguards and its myths — a document that tries to dismantle the idea that the procedure is a leaky sieve. Against that account, another current holds that voting is dropping a ballot into a box that cannot be publicly inspected and whose contents are destroyed after 48 hours, and that taking part in that mechanism is part of the problem.

The discussion about abstention as a sarracena duty gains weight towards the end. Some argue that not voting is an ethical obligation to avoid legitimising a corrupt system, while the opposing side defends that the only way to change things is to participate. Turnout figures and polls reflect deep disenchantment, but there is no consensus on whether abstention is a solution or part of the problem.

Seat allocation and the 28N calendar

The opening post announces that with the 28N results, the Congress of Deputies and Senate of this government will be constituted — a parliamentary simulation game that will allocate seats according to votes cast. The date becomes the temporal anchor of the whole discussion: it is the day the numbers will be known and, with them, the distribution of power in the imaginary chamber.

The problem is that the measuring instrument is broken before it starts. Without abstention, without blank votes and with a party list that does not match the real offer, any seat allocation coming out of this would not withstand the slightest scrutiny from a sociologist. The poll serves to gauge the mood of a specific group, not to predict anything.

What about the parties that are not running

The confusion between parties that are running and parties that are not is another point that creeps into the conversation. Parties are mentioned that, it is claimed, are not standing in these elections but will in the future, and their inclusion in the poll is requested as if they were already in the race. The consequence is that the survey mixes different electoral scenarios and produces a result that matches no real election call.

For a reader arriving from Google looking for voting intention data, the warning is clear: a poll without abstention and blank vote options, and with a party list that does not match the electorate, is not a poll. It is an opinion thermometer of a specific group. Useful for knowing what that group thinks, useless for knowing what will happen at the ballot box.

The question left hanging is the usual one: how many of those answering this kind of survey would actually show up at the polling station on 28N?