LIPI Warns Public of Shoddy Pollsters during Election Year
12 March 2018 16:36 WIB
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) senior researcher Siti Zuhro has warned the public to beware of non-independent pollsters that release misleading information ahead of the 2019 Presidential Election.
“See where the pollster’s funding stems from, it’s a political attraction,” said Siti told Tempo in an interview on Monday, March 12.
According to Siti, one way to differentiate neutral pollsters from deceitful ones was by looking at the funds behind the pollsters. She added it would be easy to find out the sources of funds of credible pollsters as they would deliberately disclose them to the public.
Read also: LIPI Researcher: Alternative Presidential Candidate Needed
Siti explained political interests could make pollsters, which were supposed to uphold academic values, to become corrupt and present false information to the public.
She also warned certain groups that often use pollsters for their personal gain to stop doing it in the 2019 Presidential Election.
However, Siti said she did not blame political parties for funding pollsters to make surveys so long as the results were only for internal use and not made public.
“Not many people are well-informed and many will take the information as it is,” said the LIPI researcher.
M JULNIS FIRMANSYAH
