Pollsters failed to predict May 14 election results
ANKARA
Turkish pollsters largely failed to accurately reflect the electorate’s preferences and predict the outcome of the May 14 elections.
After the presidential election results, which are considered the “most difficult election to predict,” were officially announced, eyes were turned to pollsters.
The Supreme Election Board (YSK) declared that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan gained 49.51 percent of the votes, while opposition Nations Alliance’s candidate Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu secured 44.85 percent of the votes.
Both contenders remained under the required 50 percent plus one vote threshold to be elected. The third candidate, Sinan Oğan from the Ata Alliance, secured 5.17 percent of the votes. Muharrem İnce, the chairman of the Homeland Party, had received 0.44 percent of the votes, although he had announced his withdrawal from the race only days before the elections.
Mostly, the surveys that predicted one of the candidates would reach enough votes to be elected president in the first round did not coincide with the polling results.
In recent weeks, the polls mainly showed that Kılıçdaroğlu was ahead in the first round of the election.
As in line with this picture, Erdoğan and Kılıçdaroğlu will compete in the elections on May 28, and the one who secures the most votes will be the next Turkish president.
Only two pollsters were able to make the closest guess. Betimar, one of the companies making the most accurate predictions, drew a picture of Erdoğan’s 49.1 percent and 45 percent for Kılıçdaroğlu.
“We have continued the success we achieved in the 2018 election in this poll as well. We carried out our studies by taking samples from Türkiye’s all 81 provinces. The voter did not mislead us. Our margin of error in our study was only 0.3 percent,” stated Gürkan Duman, the chairman of the Betimar research company.
“Last week, we quickly launched the second investigation after İnce’s withdrawal.”
Duman also stated that they had started working on the runoff, noting that Erdoğan was more advantageous according to the initial predictions.
“The voter turnout in the runoff may not be at 90 percent as in the first round. Public perception has accepted that Erdoğan will win. Erdoğan has a great advantage in the second round.”
Optimar, an experienced research company founded 30 years ago, is one of the winning pollsters of this election.
The company estimated 50.4 percent of the votes for Erdoğan and 44.7 percent for Kılıçdaroğlu, which is one of the closest ratios to the election result.