The Head-Counting Game

At 9:00 p.m. precisely on election night in Ontario last October, Global News declared Dalton McGuinty’s Liberal Party elected with a majority government. The people had spoken. However, the odd thing about this was that the people in question were not the electorate; indeed, not even one vote had been counted across the province when Global made its declaration. Rather, the people in question were about 7,000 members of an Ipsos Reid panel who had been invited to complete an election-day online survey for the company after they had cast their ballots. It was a new "first" for the polling industry in Canada, but really only another small step in the relentless insinuation of polls into the culture and politics of this country.

At one time, polling public opinion was just one of a number of ways to tap community sentiment. Letters to the editor, callers to phone-in shows, a columnist’s ear to the ground, informal contacts with constituents and interest group...