In this election there won’t be any % barrier in some countries, but I still haven’t seen any poll numbers for small parties here in Germany for example. Everything below 2-3% gets lumped in with “Others” as usual, even though about 0.5% would already get them a seat in parliament this time. This makes voting strategically very difficult, because we have no idea whether any small party could even get in.

I get that there are limits to what you can show in a graphic, but even the source links I checked didn’t provide more details. Why is that, and has anyone seen poll numbers for small parties, particularly for Germany?

  • Gieselbrecht@feddit.de
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    5 months ago

    The problem is that small vote shares in a survey are not reliably measured when you consider measurement uncertainty. It makes sense to not include very low shares to avoid an unwarranted impression of accuracy.

    • 5ymm3trY@discuss.tchncs.de
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      5 months ago

      That’s the right answer. I couldn’t find a poll that explicitly states it on my quick search, but if I am not mistaken I saw a poll in TV lately that showed an uncertainty of about 2-3%. It just makes no sense to list parties that are below that value.

  • adr1an@programming.dev
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    5 months ago

    Perhaps those small % are more ‘volatile’ and prone to change? That would motivate hiding or lumping everyone altogether under ‘Others’

  • Gobbel2000@programming.dev
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    5 months ago

    I would say for whether or not your vote really counts it doesn’t matter if the party has 20.5% or 0.5%. Each vote counts the same towards the next seat, which may be the first or the twentieth. So I would encourage everyone to vote small parties (except for the crazy ones).