Abac Polls embarrassed by Bangkok election | Bangkok Post: breakingnews

Red-faced Abac to keep polls secret

Director admits to flaws after backing wrong man

Published: 4 Mar 2013 at 00.00
Newspaper section: News

Abac Poll has vowed not to disclose the results of its surveys about elections in future after its predictions for the Bangkok poll picked the wrong winner.

Abac's pre-election poll, conducted between Thursday and Saturday, had Pheu Thai Party candidate Pongsapat Pongcharoen leading the race with support of 45.9%, an 11% lead over Sukhumbhand Paribatra of the Democrats.

But in the actual election Sunday, MR Sukhumbhand emerged victorious, bagging more than 1.2 million votes.

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ATNN
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Discussion 17 : 04 Mar 2013 at 12.4617
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Polls are notoriously inaccurate, not least because pollsters are easily bought off in order to manufacture consent and create pretexts for calling elections "stolen," a favorite trick of the West's faux international "democracy promotion" racket. Careful observers would have noticed Western rags testing the waters with stories predicting PTP's victory in Bangkok, weeks before the election.
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facts_only
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Discussion 16 : 04 Mar 2013 at 11.5516
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"If a general election was held on September 27, slightly more than half of respondents surveyed by Abac Poll said they would vote for the Democrat Party to form the next government, according to survey results released on September 26, The Nation reports...Of 4,312 respondents, 50.7 said they had decided to support the Democrats, 33 per cent said they would opt for Pheu Thai and 16 per cent preferred other parties." - September 28, 2010
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paullane
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Discussion 15 : 04 Mar 2013 at 11.3715
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Have i missed something here? If results of polls are not disclosed, what is the point in doing them? Both ABAC and Suan Dusit are a total joke. I well recall the Suan Dusit poll claiming that 55% of people supported the reintroduction of corporal punishment in schools. It then went on to say that 50% of those interviewed were teachers and SD students; and SD is a teacher training college.
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thaimyth
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Discussion 14 : 04 Mar 2013 at 11.2314
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Polls can be wrong now and than, keeping them secret will not help much when it comes to restoring confidence. The problem with Thai polling agencies is that they have a wrong starting point. The people they poll do not represent the demographics of Thailand or Bangkok. On top of that polling agencies are plain lazy. Not seldom they extrapolate the outcome of a poll conducted in a handful of provinces to all of Thailand. I suppose the same happened in BKK. A few districts were polled and a conclusion was drawn for all of BKK. One should not trust polls or statistics in Thailand. They are on Par withe Greece or even more unreliable.
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soltair
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Discussion 13 : 04 Mar 2013 at 10.5513
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Is Abac Poll trying to gain credibility by using the name from ABAC University? Well, you are exposed now. Who is paying for this "polling" exercise?
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SteveCM
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Discussion 12 : 04 Mar 2013 at 10.3912
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"ABAC will attempt to eliminate biased respondents"

Excuse me..... what's a "bias" if not an opinion? Will ABAC simply look for "don't knows" in future?
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sirron

Discussion 11 : 04 Mar 2013 at 10.1211
Reminds me of the old cliche, "figures don't lie, but liars can figure".
from iPhone application.
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facts_only
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Discussion 10 : 04 Mar 2013 at 10.0710
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"Bansomdejchaopraya Poll and Bangkok Poll also placed Pol Gen Pongsapat ahead of MR Sukhumbhand; by about two percentage points, and three percentage points respectively." - above

"The typical sample size for a Gallup poll, either a traditional stand-alone poll or one night's interviewing from Gallup's Daily tracking, is 1,000 national adults with a margin of error of ±4 percentage points." - Gallup
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bluebkk
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Discussion 9 : 04 Mar 2013 at 10.019
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I want to personally thank the polling companies for helping Sukhumbhand win.......They were giving false , Dubai steered or sponsored predictions and this made some 100000 extra votes for the dems by people opposing the dictatorship of the North and the thuggish tactics of the reds....
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jimbly
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Discussion 8 : 04 Mar 2013 at 09.408
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Even in the west polls are only educated guesses and should not be taken as absolutely accurate. BUT how can polls work in Thailand, where votes are bought and sold and people are told how to vote by their godfathers?
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