Opinion Polls Should Be Banned Ahead of Elections: Ontario’s Elections Watchdog

A vote sign is displayed outside a polling station during advanced voting in the Ontario provincial election in Carleton Place, Ont., on May 24, 2022. The Canadian Press/Sean Kilpatrick

A new report by Ontario’s Chief Electoral Officer says opinion polls can influence election results and they should be banned two weeks in advance of election day.

The report looks at lessons learned from Ontario’s 2022 election, which had a record low turnout of 44 percent. “Many lost interest in the election due to early reports of one-sided results,” said the report, which was released March 31.

An average of 2.5 opinion polls per day were published in the two weeks leading up to the June 2 election, for a total of 36.

“Political polls have the potential to influence election results by either motivating or demotivating electors,” the report says, making a call for legislative change to prohibit their publication so close to election day.

A federal bill that proposed a two-day blackout on opinion polls ahead of elections met with much opposition more than 20 years ago. In the end, the blackout was reduced to only election day itself.

“We regard the proposed two-day ban on the publication of public opinion poll results as unconstitutional. Whether it’s for three days, two days, or some other period, a publication ban is still a publication ban,” Blair Mackenzie, then-vice president of the Canadian Newspaper Association, testified in the House of Commons in 1999.

Some other countries have opinion-poll bans, with Slovakia being one of the longest at 50 days before elections, according to Reuters.

The Chief Electoral Officer’s report said only 10 percent of people polled after the 2022 elections said they had a process-related barrier to voting. Many instead cited “political reasons.”

The whole world is seeing a downturn in voter engagement, the report said, citing “democratic erosion” as the reason.

Other Recommended Changes

The report made several other calls for legislative change.

It called for changes to allow poll workers as young as 16, as is the minimum age in some other provinces and in federal elections. This would further open the worker pool and help with shortages, the report said.

Voting should be done on holidays or weekends instead of school days to make it easier to use schools as voting stations and also engage young workers, the report said. It also recommends civics classes for grades 9 through 12 to enhance knowledge of the electoral process.

It called for polls to be set up ahead of time in long-term care and seniors’ facilities to better “reach this elector group.”

The report expressed concerns about voter data privacy as political parties “are building sophisticated databases of voter information.” Political parties should be subject to privacy laws to provide oversight of these practices, the report said.

Currently, candidates are required to report campaign contributions of more than $10,000. The report suggests lowering this threshold to $2,500.