There are two aspects about electoral coverage in newspapers that I did not deal with, for lack of space, in the evaluation that I made in last Sunday’s column: the use of electoral polling and following the election of City Council members.
This election was marked by the proliferation of new research institutes and by the increase in the number of cities polled. It was a phenomenon understood by journalist Fernando Rodrigues in an article in Folha (“Polling” on Sept. 29) and by the weekly news magazine “Veja” (“Do you believe the polls?” Oct. 6).
According to a study by Rodrigues, during the 2000 elections polls were carried out in 120 cities; this year, in 147. He calculates that now they cover close to 450f the Brazilian electorate.
There must have been a lot of chiseling, but the rules of the electoral tribunal have been standardizing procedures that allow voters to evaluate the quality of the polls and the seriousness of the institutes and newspapers.
The obligation to publish data from the study, the number of voters interviewed, the margin of error and the record of the electoral court are respected today by serious newspapers. More surveys, more information, more transparency in elections.
Fewer polls
Folha, however, has not followed the expansion of electoral polling this year. Due to the expenditures involved, the newspaper, a pioneer in the intensive use of this tool of checking voter intentions since the creation of Datafolha in 1983, had to drastically reduce the number of cities polled.
According to information from Datafolha, in 2000 it covered municipal elections in 21 cities (10 state capitals, including So Paulo and 11 cities in So Paulo state); this year, in only two, So Paulo and Fortaleza.
During the first round of voting in 2000, Folha published 17 rounds of polls in So Paulo and nine in the other cities. It did exit polls in all of them. This year, there were nine rounds in So Paulo and five in Fortaleza.
It is evident that this evaporation impoverished the newspaper’s national coverage, which sought to compensate the sensible use of results from other suitable institutes. This way, the reader had access to a big study about polls which, in other times, the newspaper avoided publishing or published without highlighting the institute itself.
Exit polls
The big problem caused by the cuts in polling at Datafolha came at the end of the campaign in So Paulo. The institute took three polls at the end. On Sept. 24, So Paulo Mayor Marta Suplicy of the left-leaning Workers Party (PT) and former Cabinet minister Jos Serra of the centrist Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB) were tied at 350f voter intentions; on Sept. 29, they remained tied, with 34%; and in the last poll, done on Friday, Oct. 1 and Saturday, Oct. 2, they remained in a technical tie, but Serra had fluctuated to 37% and Marta continued to have 34%. Translated into valid votes, it equals 40 0.000000or Serra and 37 0.000000or Marta, with a margin of error at two percentage points.
Due to the expense, an exit poll was not taken. As is known, the official result was 43.53 0.000000or Serra and 35.85 0.000000or Marta. The difference of nearly eight percentage points was not recorded by any institute.
Exit polls do not have the same importance today that they had when the vote count was slow and finished one or two days after voting took place. The result of the survey was the main story in newspapers the next day after the election. But it remains important to complement the surveys of voter intentions and to feed the news on radio, TV and Internet sites before official results are released.
This year in So Paulo, only Ibope did exit polls, and they showed a tie at 40% (with a margin of error of 1.7 percentage points) that was not confirmed.
The second round
In the case of Datafolha, it is no use to say that it was wrong because its last poll was on Oct. 2. But I don’t know if it could be asserted, as a story in Folha said on Oct. 4 that “Datafolha detected a wave of growth for Serra.” The two had been tied, and Datafolha could have detected and told about this “wave of growth” if it had done an exit poll, as the director of the institute, Mauro Paulino admits: “It is not correct, and I consider it unjust to imply that the poll is mistaken when it was not. The mistake was in not doing an exit poll.”
As for the reductions in polling, I reproduce his comments made at my request: “Despite the limitations, I can say that Datafolha had scheduled the electoral process in So Paulo since December of last year, when it already showed Serra’s electoral viability. I believe that the decrease of polls enormously damaged Folha’s electoral coverage because the exclusive numbers in Datafolha were always a marked difference in relation to other news organizations and explicitly showed the national reach of coverage.”
We now head for the second round in the elections. By the importance of what is at risk and the dispute stirred up, the ideal would be for Datafolha to poll up to the confirmation of voting.
Local power
Municipal elections have always shown how we cover city halls and city council members poorly, without continuity and without an editorial project. If newspapers do not manage to cover the state legislative assemblies correctly, what can you say about city halls? Meanwhile, it is in our municipalities that people live and have direct interests.
Folha does not deviate from this standard of irregular coverage. The City Council and its members are remembered when scandals explode. Still, the coverage has a short life. There is no concern about following public policies or the behavior and performance of the council members. Even in the electoral period they are ignored because the attention of newspapers is centered on the race for mayor.
Is there a way to fix this? It is difficult because newspapers have little space and availability to a lot of topics to follow. Newspapers such as Folha have a commitment to give priority to national policy. Still, newspapers should think about space for information concerning the work of city council members. That way they allow readers to come to the elections with some knowledge that helps make decisions about voting.
So Paulo has two organizations that monitor the City Council: the gora Institute for the Defense of Voters and Democracy (www.eleitor.org.br), that publishes the “Municipal Legislature Evaluation” about the city, and the Movement of Conscientious Voting (www.votoconsciente.org.br). Gilberto de Palma is a political scientist and director of the gora Institute.
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Ombudsman – Did newspapers cover the municipal election well?
Gilberto de Palma – No. They concentrate too much on the elections for top offices. The legislature gets a lower priority during the whole electoral period. After the first round, there is a slightly bigger space in the days after the election. It is only to record the names of those elected and their pictures.
Ombudsman – Was coverage irregular through the whole legislature?
Gilberto de Palma – There is no specialized coverage, except in the case of non-government organizations. Despite the importance of the So Paulo City Council, which is second only to New York in size and budget, newspapers only cover it when there is a scandal or some very important topic.
Ombudsman – How can newspapers improve this coverage?
Gilberto de Palma – The press should work in a complementary way. There are new players, such as non-government organizations. If they were proved to be capable and explained their criteria of monitoring, the press could benefit from this work. The function of big news organizations will be to cover the national Congress. But local authority, which is concrete for the citizen, can’t be neglected. We know how much a professional soccer player or TV host earns, but we don’t know how much it costs to put a public health clinic on our streets.
Translatioon by John Wright
