Electoral Commission finds that the Fiji Sun breached the Opinion Poll Guidelines

The Electoral Commission has today stated that the Fiji Sun breached the stated Public Opinion Poll Guidelines.

The Commission adopted the opinion poll guidelines for the 2022 General Elections on 5th July 2022 and this was published on the Commission’s website for all interested agencies to refer to and comply with when pertaining to the opinion poll for the 2022 General Election.

However, the Commission says it noted that Fiji Sun published a public opinion poll on 6th August 2022 which did not follow the approved ESOMAR & WAPOR guidelines.

The Commission found that Fiji Sun is the parent company which directs Western Force Research to carry out general research survey works, opinion polls for the newspaper and therefore it is bound by the adopted guideline.

It found that Western Force research is a home based small business that does not have a business website nor any social media page. The guideline provides that the researchers are required to promptly identify themselves and unambiguously state the purpose of the research and enable respondents to check their identity and bona fides without difficulty.

The Electoral Commission also says the guideline also provides that the basic principle of fair and informative reporting requires that it be made clear on how and where the enquirer can obtain additional details.

The survey company and the media should publish all required full details of public opinion polls on their website within hours of publication.

The Commission says as such the Fiji Sun-Western Force Research publication does not comply with this standard.

It stresses that researchers must ensure that adequate security measures are employed to prevent unauthorized access, manipulation and disclosure to the personal data.

The Commission says Western Force Research has failed to demonstrate that it has sufficient capacity to deliver this requirement.

The guideline provides that the name of the organization which conducted the poll and its sponsor, the organization or person who paid for the poll must be disclosed.

The Commission says the Western Force Research company does not exist according to the company search conducted and the company is purportedly owned by the name of Mere Serukalou rather as claimed in the response.

The Electoral Commission says in its response, Western Force Research claimed that they take a sample size of 1,000 respondents based on the demographics of Fiji.

The guideline requires that researchers observe the need for samples of appropriate size and quality and technical consideration particularly affecting pre-election polls.

It says such polls must have a sample large enough to draw conclusions about voters.

The Commission says Western Force also stated that all research survey data is handed to Fiji Sun but also noted that this is currently not published by Fiji Sun. The guideline commensurate that researchers and those publishing survey data must make available sufficient information to enable the public and other stakeholders to evaluate the results.

The Commission found that the interviews were conducted by teams targeting bus stands, markets, housing settlements, neighbourhoods, taxi stands etc.

The required standard requires that exit poll interviews conducted in a public place must take special care about respondents' confidentiality. However, there is lack of information on how this confidentiality was maintained by the interviews while being out on field.

It says the interviews were mostly done face to face in markets, towns, and neighbourhoods ensuring that respondents are not politically biased, politically active or affiliated with a certain political party.

The Commission says the standard required outlines that the actual question wording is critical to interpreting the findings, and to eliminate ambiguity and misunderstanding.

It says there is lack of information on what questions were asked to the respondent and how it was ascertained that these respondents were impartial.

The guideline also highlights that for interviews conducted face to face, the researchers must ensure that the interviewers must be professionally trained on how to conduct such polls, that interviewers act properly and are adequately supervised.

It says Fiji Sun-Western Force Research being a home-based business must be sponsored for carrying out such training. However, there is no mention of sponsor details and how they train their team for conducting such a poll.

The Electoral Commission says the June poll and the recent poll on 6th August published by Western Force Research failed to state how many interviews were done face to face, how many were done by telephone calls and interviews through social media by divisions, age, gender and locations.

It says Fiji has four divisions Central, North, Eastern and West yet the research company has left out our maritime zones formally known as the Eastern Division and within those divisions there are zones or areas such as the Lami area, Nasinu/Nakasi area, Nausori area and the Navua area but none of this were mentioned in any of the polls published as per the ESOMAR/WAPOR guideline, sampling method is vital in publishing any public opinion poll.

Fiji Sun’s Acting Publisher and CEO, Rosi Doviverata is yet to comment on the findings.