A Case of Social Desirability Bias in Polling

So, like 1992, the opinion polls proved wide of the mark. But I wouldn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. It just goes to show that what really counts isn’t the survey result but actual behaviour, and that polls seem only to really hit the mark when there is a degree of electoral stability.

See: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/election_2010/8667801.stm

Perhaps what has been most confusing, though, is the degree to which Cleggmania (at least that’s the media headline) fell apart.  My own view is that there is a certain implicit social bias in response to researchers. 

When the whole media space builds these things up, people feel they have to express agreement with the social buzz and say what feels like the socially correct thing to say – to follow the ‘cultural leaders’ who try to define the moral high-ground. 

But this is a very fickle arrangement.  What happens ‘in the moment’, in that personal time when an individual decision is made, reflects true desires not those bound by artificial convention or the media definition of what you should do and say.   

The question is, how to take account of this type of error in the future.