‘Black eye to the industry:’ Report delves into polls gone awry in Calgary vote
CALGARY — A report into wildly inaccurate polls ahead of last year’s Calgary civic election recommends stronger standards and best practices for the polling industry.
The report commissioned by Market Research and Intelligence Association, which has announced it’s shuttering its operations, was released Wednesday by the academics who were tapped to independently examine the fallout after the election.
“It was a black eye to the industry,” said the University of Manitoba’s Christopher Adams, one of the academics.
In the three weeks leading up to the October vote, Mainstreet Research conducted three polls that put incumbent Mayor Naheed Nenshi substantially behind relatively unknown challenger Bill Smith — one by as many as 17 percentage points. The polls were published in the city’s two Postmedia papers, the Calgary Herald and Calgary Sun. The organization no longer has a relationship with Mainstreet.