Voting stations for the first round of the presidential election, Sunday, November 24, 2024, Timisoara. PHOTO INQUAM/Virgil Simonescu
To find out what were the reasons why the exit polls from the first round of the presidential election gave different results from those that came later from the official account, HotNews.ro spoke with the sociologist and coordinator of the exit poll d’Avangarde, Marius. They peel He says that “technology has defeated sociology, unfortunately.”
Avangarde exit poll from Sunday to 21:00, with data collected until 19:00, showed Marcel Ciolacu in first place (25%), Elena Lasconi in second place (18%) and Călin Georgescu in third place (16% ). The coordinator of the exit poll, Marius Pieleanu, explains how these results were reached.
“There was a higher rate of refusal to answer the question ‘Who did you vote for?’ in front of the hall. That is to say, there are somewhere more than 35% of non-answers and our suspicion is that, rather, they went to the Georgescu candidate. This is a category of explanation. The second category of explanations is that some respondents told us that they voted for Marcel Ciolacu and, in fact, they also voted for the Georgescu candidate. So the cause is multiple, it is not linked only to the so-called phrase of the spiral of silence. There are also responsible, many, who said to vote for Marcel Ciolacu and voted for Călin Georgescu”, said Marius Pieleanu for HotNews.ro.
“By the way, that’s why we happened to have an estimate of the vote for Marcel Ciolacu higher than the actual count. That’s where it comes from, from the fact that they said to vote for Marcel Ciolacu, especially the voters of the PSD. Some voters of the PSD, who will probably be found tomorrow at the PSD, said that they had voted for Marcel Ciolacu, but that they had voted for Călin Georgescu”, explained the coordinator of the exit poll Avangarde.
He says that for this reason there was a wrong hierarchy of candidates.
“Technology has defeated sociology, unfortunately. We, in our profession, have to make a complete reassessment of the tools, of technology in general, which obviously also includes a rather psychological approach, of social psychology, because the “with today’s simple tools of sociology I can no longer accurately photograph, as an estimate, an intention to vote”, said Marius Pieleanu.
Regarding the exit polls from female parliamentarians: There is the risk of the same thing
Marius Pieleanu says that there is a risk that the same thing will be repeated in the case of exit polls for Sunday’s parliamentary elections.
“There is a risk (ed.: that the same thing happens). I hope I am not right, there is also a risk of this type, of a high rejection rate and of an answer that is not right, which does not indicate well which political party they voted for. I think that to a lesser extent than there was a week ago, “said the sociologist for HotNews.ro.
“There is the same risk for the second round of the presidential elections. Attention, if we stay in this paradigm, that is to say that the CCR does not cancel the first round and Mrs. Lasconi and Mr. Georgescu will go to the second time, for the candidate Georgescu there is the possibility that we still don’t have answers or not. This is the reality, there are no previous scenarios, conspiracies… No, it is one reality, a current photo, an obvious reality that we have no way of not recognizing”, said the coordinator of the exit poll of Avangarde.
Who does the exit polls in the parliamentary elections
For the presidential and parliamentary elections, four polling institutions have been accredited: the Center for Urban and Regional Sociology – CURS, the Center for International Research and Analysis, the Socio-Behavioral Study Group AVANGARDE and ARA Public Opinion SRL.
Among them, Avangarde and CIRA have taken the decision not to conduct exit polls in Sunday’s parliamentary elections, according to Marius Pieleanu. Therefore, we will have the first results of Sunday’s vote from the exit polls CURS and ARA.
