By Banji Ojewale
As it is going to be with the next set of
Senators of the United States of America, where new faces, the majority being
the Republicans, are coming up, Nigeria in 2015 may witness a similar
displacement of old hands in its Senate. I am not making any attempt to predict
bloc party victory or defeat.
Ben Murray Bruce
(pix: thenewsnigeria)
There is always some tricky of
impreciseness in it for analysts. In the case of the US, it was perhaps “easy” for the
Cable News Network (CNN) to arrive at
its 246-Senate seat forecast for the Republicans in the November 2014 ballot
because of the near-infallible opinion poll system in the country. CNN
journalists and experts relied on such advanced sampling techniques as computer
technology and sociological and psychological research.
But it was not always so. The pollsters
of the previous age plunged the US
into trouble when their statistics misled the nation’s media. In the 1948
Presidential election, the “soothsayers” predicted victory for the Republican candidate
Thomas Dewey. Now without waiting for the official count of the vote after the
ballot, US newspapers declared in screaming headlines: Dewey defeats Truman.
