Steven N.
Details have been published in Index about a mysterious internal public opinion poll showing a huge lead for the government parties that was leaked to 444. The data, it appears, was not in a finished form, and was not even intended to be used to accurately predict party preferences.
As 444 originally reported, the poll showed Fidesz-KDNP with 46% support compared to 32% for the united opposition list, giving the government coalition a whopping 14-point lead.
No details were given about the poll though, and several opposition politicians claimed that they had never seen the results. Moreover, many other polls taken in the past few months not only show the two camps neck-and-neck, but even give the opposition a slight edge.
Now Index claims that the poll was created personally for Péter Márki-Zay, the opposition’s candidate for prime minister, by the Iránytű Institute and 21 Research Center. However, these think tanks denied the news to Telex.
According to the Index article, the survey was conducted by Iránytű through interviews with 2,000 people between December 6-11, assisted by American consultants using U.S. methodology, which may have contributed to the somewhat abnormal results.
Following the appearance of the Index article, 21 Research Centers responded to the news on Facebook. The group claims that the presentation published by the news portal had the phrase “This data is not to be used for election forecasting purposes” written on it.
Researching party preference wasn’t the purpose of the survey, so that’s not what we did… The data arbitrarily extracted from the presentation do not count as a finished survey result, and we do not intend to comment on this any further.
-21 Research Center wrote in its post.
[Népszava][Photo: Iránytű Intézet / Facebook]
