The Swiss Broadcasting Corp. will lift a ban on publishing poll results from an institute that wildly miscalculated the vote to ban new minarets.
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SRG SSR idée suisse, swissinfo.ch’s parent company, and the polling institute gfs.bern said they would take special precautions to avoid the massive miscalculations that predicted a ban on the construction of new minarets would fail by 53 per cent.
Instead, the referendum passed in November 2009 with 57 per cent of the vote.
An external study at Zurich University took an in-depth, independent look into how the predictions could have been so wrong. It says respondents likely offered “socially desired” answers opposite of how they actually voted.
The study also said that media outlets did not make it sufficiently clear often enough that the results of the election were still uncertain.
The media group and gfs.bern said they would watch closely for such behaviour when studying public opinion on other prickly topics in the future. Pollsters would use scientific methods to account for the potential discrepancies.
The next federal vote is expected on September 26 and involves a review of unemployment insurance.
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Minaret ban approved by 57 per cent of voters
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A burka-clad woman, rocket-like minarets shooting from a Swiss flag: A poster by the rightwing Swiss People’s Party ahead of a nationwide vote on whether to ban the construction of new minarets in Switzerland has been banned as racist by the city of Basel. Swiss go to the polls on November 29 to decide on…
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here. Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.