When analysts and think-tanks claim to offer objective analysis without partisan interest, and presumably similar populations and data are available to everyone, the question must be asked how some get it wrong, and others get it right when predicting election outcomes.
It is a problem best observed when conclusions and predictions are reported with conviction rather than restraint – the statement, “this is what will be”, rather than the statement, “these results may indicate”. The question holds also for citizens in everyday life.
The confidence with which analysts and lobby groups predict the outcomes of political events in the main are based on two concerns, namely scientific method and the quality of data.
‘Scientific method’ refers to the research approach and theoretical framework with which the study is set up and data analysed. ‘Quality data’ refers to the historical data, current responses of participants and the formats in which data are collected and available for analysis.
The more scientifically valid and recognised the method and framework of analysis, the higher the level of confidence in the findings and subsequent predictions. The broader and more diverse the groups of participants, and the more specific the questions to which people respond, the higher the level of confidence.
Sound scientific method and quality data combine and make it possible for analysts to describe trends, which form the basis of predictions. Predictions of where large-scale societal processes are heading therefore attempt to describe what will be by combining readings of what was and what is.
Apart from more formal analyses, in everyday conversations citizens use similar ways to argue their views. When among their neighbours and friends, people make predictions with some attempt at validity in their argument and their sense of a trend – a sense of what was and what is and how to two connect.
In the back of our minds a sense is at play of what a valid method and sound way of thinking would be, as well as what makes quality data. It is this sense of validity in our attempts to argue sensibly that makes us confident of our predictions. It is a confidence that leads us as citizens to consider our predictions as objective statements without partisan interest.
Everyday analyses among family, friends and neighbours are however met with suspicion, because they are associated much more with individual preference than scientific method.
Not because everyday predictions may not be trustworthy accounts of what is coming, but because in every conversation lies the possibility that the prediction may change. Every conversation may present new data to upend views and conclusions.
It seems inevitable that citizens analyses have neverending data collection, a fluid definition of participants and loosely defined questions that drive it. And yet in daily life it is the citizen analyses that hold sway in how people respond to large-scale social and political happenings.
This is so because of an additional question citizens add to the questions of what was and what is as they develop their predictions. Citizens also ask, “what ought to be”. It is the concern for what is good and right; for what they wish. It is the lived reality of hope and aspiration, the space of prophecy – a way to know the future that the think-tank will not view as a version of scientific method.
And yet, it is in cultural and faith communities – collectives of prophecy, that citizens root their daily method to make sense. Here, at the scientific margin, predictions make way for prophecies, citizens become prophets, and their prophecies are allowed to change.
* Rudi Buys, NetEd Group Chief Academic Officer and Executive Dean, DaVinci Business Institute.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
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