At the beginning of August, the campaign headquarters of one of the country’s center-left parties got the results of an especially comprehensive study. The long list of questions examined how committed voters were to the ruling right-wing Likud. The center-left party that commissioned the poll was hoping to use this information in order to put together a campaign that would convince supporters of the soft right to transfer their support from the ruling party to them.
Experts in political campaigns know that in-depth questionnaires like this provide pollsters with a more accurate view of the situation than questions asking whether respondents plan to vote for one party or the other. Indeed, polled voters who claim they intend to support ultra-Orthodox parties are usually considered particularly reliable, give or take a small percentage of people not responding honestly. No in-depth questions are needed to determine their exact state of mind. But this is not the case when it comes to parties with a vaster and more heterogenic constituency. Here, in-depth questionnaires are critical to any real understanding of how things are unfolding on the ground.