A RECENT opinion poll capturing the views of young Bangladeshis aged 15-35 years has attracted attention both at home and abroad. One of the key findings of the survey, conducted by the South Asian Network on Economic Modeling (SANEM) and ActionAid Bangladesh, was that the youth have very little interest in political participation.

I mentioned this disinterest in my column last month and received some pushback from readers. One of them, a physician working in Bangladesh, wrote to me, “Can you please explain to me how you reconcile the disinclination of the youth population to participate in political activities with the fervour they showed during the Monsoon Revolution of 2024?”We are aware that the results of opinion polls need to be taken with a grain of salt. Most polls have some bias if you dig deeper into the sampling frame, sample size, and statistical tools of a survey. The SANEM survey was taken to task on the pages of this daily by Md Rubaiyath Sarwar, managing director of Innovision, a research and consulting organisation, on technical grounds. In his column, appropriately titled “What the SANEM poll reveals and what it does not,” Sarwar pointed out certain weak points of the survey, including a small sample size and the bias introduced by a large percentage of non-respondents.

Incidentally, Innovision is among the research organisations that are in the “opinion survey” market. Earlier in March, it released the results of a survey of citizens’ election-related perceptions using a larger sample size of 10,696 respondents across eight divisions and 64 districts.

Opinion polls are, in a sense, a necessary evil. They can often incur the wrath of those in power, or of individuals whose views are not corroborated by, or match, the information provided by a survey. Even in a country like the US, which prides itself on being the most open society in the world, polls are often dismissed as “fake.” Recently, US President Donald Trump fired his chief of the Bureau of Labour Statistics (BLS) after the BLS published a job report that did not show the current administration in a favourable light. Trump even accused the former BLS commissioner of manipulating the data. I recall when Matia Chowdhury, an Awami League minister in 2013, characterised an opinion survey on voter preference for political parties by The Daily Star as “a waste of time and money.”

As a social scientist, I usually find opinion polls useful. However, they are based on sample surveys and may not be suitable for everyone’s consumption. Public opinion and economic surveys, nonetheless, are a critical part of the economic, social and political landscape of a country. While some polls, such as the inflation survey, are vital for monetary policymaking, others, like the “confidence index” or “favourability rating,” receive mixed reactions from audiences. The reaction of politicians when polls do not favour their personal beliefs is well-known.

Sound economic and investment planning requires accurate data. Reliable data on the population’s mood and preferences are necessary for effective policy and decision-making. As we all know, timely data on unemployment, market conditions, and the incidence of poverty are hard to obtain in Bangladesh. At this critical time for our country, better statistics can help the government control inflation and enable the central bank to manage monetary policy more effectively.

On a scale of 0 to 10, opinion polls conducted by many of our pollsters would rate 3 or 4 at best, while those carried out by market research experts would score a 9. The Federal Reserve of the US, the country’s central bank, whose mission includes correctly measuring and forecasting inflation from different angles, relies on sample surveys to make many decisions on interest rates and monetary policy — decisions that affect the global economy.

Politicians generally dislike opinion polls. Some Bangladeshi leaders often say, “Do not spread rumours; they are a criminal offence.” After the recent opinion poll results by various institutions were published, some sceptics were heard saying, “Oh, forget about the opinion polls, how much do they reflect reality?” Others label poll results as conjecture, hypotheses, or even phoney. —The Daily Star (Bangladesh)/ANN

Published in Dawn, August 11th, 2025