Preelection Polls in Israel: Structural Constraints on Accuracy

This article examines the last two Israeli election campaigns of 1981 and 1984, and suggests that structural variables greatly affect the accuracy of reported preelection polls. Pollsters' quest for more detail and refinement driven by competition and mass media pressures for highly processed predictions is liable to result in less accurate reports. The kind of errors in polls' projections are situation-bound and greatly depend on the nature of the floating vote in the system. Interpollster accuracy, however, is mainly determined by pollster–sponsor dependencies. Pollsters working for political parties projected results more favorable to their sponsors or less favorable to their sponsors' opponents. Moreover, the stronger the pollster–sponsor structural dependencies, the greater the inaccuracy.