Surveys, margins of error and misplaced frustration: the thoughts of an armchair critic

Mary Anne Lauri got all flustered when briefly talking about surveys during the closing session of the Nationalist Party general council on Sunday.

Lauri, who has occupied the role of party president for political research since November, told her audience of councillors that she knew a thing or two about surveys. She was correct.

As a social scientist – Lauri is a psychologist – she regularly uses surveys in her research. She told councillors as much. But then she went off on a rant about how surveys should be interpreted in the right way. She even urged the people in front of her to use their heads when reading political surveys.

“A survey is not a snapshot,” she said. “A survey has a margin of error, so if the statistic is showing you 30%, this means that this could be anything between 27% and 33%.”

It was a correct, brief lesson in the mechanics of margin of error but one that was pointless to say the least. The chasm between the PN and the Labour Party is way beyond any margin of error a survey may have.

In the last MaltaToday survey, the PN registered 22.8% against the PL’s 38.7%. If we are to apply the margin of error (+/-4.2%) in the PN’s favour all the way (add the full margin to the PN and reduce the full margin from the PL), the PN would hit 27% and the PL would hit 34.5%.

The difference between the parties would still stand at almost eight points, or 27,000 votes.

Would this really make a difference to how PN councillors and supporters should interpret the results?

I don’t think so, which begs the question as to why Lauri felt the need to get all flustered about surveys and margins of error. Her frustration was misplaced because the problem the PN faces is not how it reads the surveys but what is causing the party to register such dismal results and what it can do to change things.

And maybe one issue Lauri should be focussing on in her role as a political researcher for the party is the PN’s reason for being. What does the PN stand for? What is its ideology?

During the very same conference, Lauri had a good snapshot of the PN’s problem in getting to grips with a changed society.

Mario de Marco made the following observation when addressing councillors: “People do not want a government interfering in their personal life… people have become more liberal than the PN and this was not always the case. We can be pro-life but we do not necessarily have to be conservative.”

De Marco did not use the word abortion but called for greater sensitivity when dealing with such an issue.

Whatever De Marco meant with his words could be debated. I doubt it was a call for making abortion legal but it could have been his way of saying that abortion is acceptable when a woman’s life or health is in danger.

In any case, his was a welcome departure from the chest-beating, God-fearing statements espoused by some in the pro-life camp that the PN has wholeheartedly embraced.

But De Marco had hardly sat back down in his seat when an upbeat Beppe Fenech Adami boldly proclaimed his hope that “the fight to save unborn children from death” will eventually be won.

Fenech Adami’s stand was also replicated by PN secretary-general Michael Piccinino, who insisted the PN was the only pro-life party.

How can the PN synthesise these seemingly different views within it? How can it make policy for a changing society?

Abortion is just one issue, where the PN has been caught in a quandary even if the current debate is about government’s timid attempt to safeguard a woman’s life or health. The PN simply embraced lock, stock and barrel the position put forward by the pro-life groups without considering whether it had other options that embraced a more secular way of life.

It seems the PN has lost its ability to do policy making that is coherent.

There are many other issues where the PN has been unable to craft its own road. Does the party still stand for liberalisation? Does it still believe in the free market? Has privatisation of government assets become an ugly word in the PN’s vocabulary? Does it still believe in a low-tax environment? Does the PN believe in the freedom of people to make personal choices?

The problems within the PN go much deeper than a leader who lacks the charisma to inspire people. The party needs time to think, discuss and chart out its own future before it can aspire to chart out a future for the country.

There is a lot to be frustrated and flustered about with the PN and surveys with their margins of error are definitely not one of these issues.

But who am I to tell the PN what to do? I am, after all, just an armchair critic whose thoughts can be dismissed and binned.