With the April 10 general election just three months away, the National Election Commission (NEC) has decided to expel 30 polling firms this week, representing 34 percent of the 88 registered firms. The National Election Survey Deliberation Commission (NESDC) under the NEC took this action following criticisms that many of the firms lack professionalism, reducing the credibility of election polling. As the NESDC raised the registration requirements to “three or more analysis professionals, five or more full-time employees, and annual sales of 100 million won or more,” one-third of the registered companies failed to meet the requirements.
These findings, which come despite no significant tightening in registration requirements, suggest that a significant number of unprofessional and unreliable firms have been conducting election polls. Twenty of the firms being deregistered had no record of election polling since 2021. Many of the firms were fly-by-night firms that primarily targeted local polling requests during general elections, aiming to capitalize on the high demand for regional opinion surveys.
The absurd practices carried out by these unqualified companies are hard to account for individually. In 2022, a company headed by a pro-Democratic Party figure, who worked as an administrator at Cheong Wa Dae during former President Roh Moo-hyun administration, conducted a survey on the impeachment of President Yoon Suk-yeol, who had only been in office for half a year. A news article titled, “Majority in favor of impeachment of President Yoon, all regions and generations agree,” was widely circulated in the left-wing media.
YouTubers who act as speakers for a particular political faction openly operates election polls as well. Many issues have been raised, including the use of favorable questioning or sampling for a certain candidate to drive results. According to a survey last year, only 40 percent of respondents trusted the results of political and election-related polls, about 20 percent less than they trusted polls about other topics.
Without the objectivity and reliability of election polling, the general election can become a mere formality. Measures for permanent expulsion of polling companies should be considered if they are found to be biased in favor of or against a particular candidate, or to have drawn a biased sample to produce a result that is not in accordance with public opinion. We need to expand the authority and role of the NESDC to scrutinize the fairness of survey composition and sampling. In the long term, there is a need to significantly increase telephone interview surveys and expand respondent incentives.
