In a democracy, the people's will is conveyed through representative government. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe wants to rewrite the Constitution, but Article 96 requires the approval of at least two-thirds of the national assembly to do that, so in order to hasten the process he first wants to change Article 96 so that a "simple majority" of one-half the Diet is enough to pass amendments. It is assumed that after this summer's Upper House election his Liberal Democratic Party will control both chambers of the Diet, but votes for individual candidates don't necessarily reflect voters' views on the Constitution, and so the media has been conducting public surveys in an attempt to understand the national mood with regard to the issue.
Last week Tokyo Shimbun published a letter from a 64-year-old lawyer who questioned the efficacy of such surveys. She cited a hypothetical poll in which a media outlet calls households based on a computer-generated selection of telephone numbers. Only 60 percent of these households "respond," meaning the people at the other end answer the phone and then the questions. The survey team finds that 80 percent of the respondents reply "yes" to their question, and so imply that 80 percent of the population would say "yes" as well. But since only 60 percent of the households contacted even respond to the survey, the lawyer figures the most you could claim was that 48 percent of the population would say "yes." Polling professionals will argue that a perfectly random sampling in this case can be extrapolated to mean 60 percent of the population at large. But the lawyer counters that the survey is conducted only over the telephone, specifically land lines, thus ignoring demographics such as young people or low income singles who tend to only use cellphones, if they own any phones at all. The limitations of the survey automatically calls into question its validity.
Moreover, when people read about these surveys or see them reproduced on TV news shows, if the results don't jibe with their own opinions they feel marginalized and may be disinclined to participate in elections, since they think their vote will just be wasted. "What I want to ask the media," the lawyer wrote, "is what exactly are the purposes of these surveys?"