[Editorial] No more poll reports

The presidential candidates’ approval ratings in surveys conducted Thursday or thereafter will not be allowed to be made public. As such, the electorate will be kept in the dark until after the findings of exit polls are reported on Dec. 19.

The ban has a dubious rationale: An opinion poll may affect the decision to be made by voters at the polls when its outcome is made public near the election day. But this assertion is not proven by any research. Moreover, what is wrong with voters using polls as a reference when deciding whom to vote for?

A political commentator recently said that voters would have no idea where the election was headed when reports on polls were banned at a time when the gap in approval ratings between the top rival candidates was being reduced back to the margin of error. That was what was happening this time.

A series of polls conducted by Realmeter showed the gap in approval ratings between the frontrunner Park Geun-hye of the ruling Saenuri Party and her rival, Moon Jae-in of the main opposition Democratic United Party, was reduced from 7.9 percentage points last Saturday to 1.2 percentage points on Tuesday. The margin of error was plus or minus 1.2 percent.

The final surveys whose findings can be made public were conducted Wednesday. The findings, which are set to be reported Thursday, may or may not provide an indication of what the election outcome will be like, though they may help the undecided determine whom to vote for.

There should be many factors that would affect the electorate’s voting behavior during a weeklong period until the election day. Some commentators say Moon may attempt to enhance his chances of being elected by staking his political career on the election and declaring he will resign as a lawmaker.

Another possibility is that the candidate of the embattled leftist United Progressive Party, the distant third in opinion polls, may decide to withdraw from the race. Moon would have more to gain than Park should the leftist party’s candidate make such a decision.

Still, the electorate would be denied the right to information on the impact of such factors on the election. That would be wrong. Pollsters must be allowed to conduct surveys and make public their findings until the election day.