The Center for Sociological Research (CIS) regrets that certain analysts repeatedly criticize alleged errors in its surveys, leading them to make highly critical value judgments about the methodologies used by the CIS. This is false because the CIS conducts measurements, not predictions. Predictions are evaluated based on election results, while measurements analyze what may lead to, or has led to, certain results. This is a crucial difference.
This approach leads to an error, which, when intentional, constitutes misinformation, on the part of those who claim that measurements are predictions. The distinction between these two concepts is included in all the technical data sheets of every study prepared and published by the CIS, as well as in various scientific publications.
Claiming that the CIS "doesn't get it right" in its election predictions is as true or as false as saying the exact opposite, because the CIS doesn't make predictions but rather measurements and estimates of trends with the corresponding theoretical margins of error; estimates, of course, that are only valid for the days on which the CIS surveys are conducted, dates that are always well before (generally ten days) the time of the vote.
Dealing with the CIS (Spanish Center for Sociological Research) in the face of systemic criticism, misinformation, and accusations of various kinds seems more like a way to avoid genuinely scientific and rigorous debates on these issues, while simultaneously trying to mask the fact that in certain electoral processes some parties have not achieved their pre-set objectives. This is a matter in which neither the CIS nor its surveys can or should intervene, as these are political issues that are not the CIS's concern.
Furthermore, in response to Ms. Gamarra's announcement to activate the Commission of Inquiry into the CIS, which was announced previously in the Senate, this autonomous body expresses its willingness to collaborate in this process, and thus take advantage of this circumstance to provide public and transparent information on the management of the CIS and the procedures followed in its investigative work and public administration, whose accounts are audited annually, being one of the bodies whose latest accounts have not been subject to any objection.
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- 23 JUL 2024