The elections for Bucharest: The average of the polls favors Băluță, but Ciucu and Drula say that they are oriented
Both Ciprian Ciucu and Cătălin Drula, rivals of each other, meet when they state that the “survey game” is designed so that the “useful vote” goes to someone other than them. What the “median” and “mean” of the 11 polls so far look like and what they say.
- median shows the most representative score
- mediate provides a general view, but sensitive to extremes.
What would the ranking be if we looked at the median?
In the median of the 11 polls, Daniel Băluță leads with 25%, followed by Ciprian Ciucu with 22% and Cătălin Drula with 18.7% and Anca Alexandrescu, with 17%.
The median confirms the hypothesis of a race “in two”, which Ciucu, for example, affirms. Instead, Drula claims that the polls are altered by an older habit of the PNL, to “minimize” the party's counter-candidates in polls ordered by liberals.
This was, USR says, “the case of Nicușor Dan”, who won a clear second mandate, although the polls ordered by the PNL gave him much lower than the score he received in the vote. Drula directly reproached Ciucu for the fact that the PNL is now using the same tactics. In response, Ciucu did not deny that the party would have used this polling policy, but the liberal candidate said that “since Bolojan came, this is no longer done”.
The distribution of the results obtained in the 11 opinion polls
Bigger differences in Ciceala and Drula
In the graph below, Ana Ciceala has the largest difference between mean and median (1.3%), which shows a large variation between surveys and a wide range between minimum and maximum.
Cătălin Drula has the smallest difference, a sign that the polls are much more consistent with each other and public perception is more stable.
In the case of Drula, however, it must be stated that the two extreme values from the polls so far came at opposite times. The highest value, 25.5%, came in a survey just from August, the first taken into account. The second extreme value, the lowest is also the most recent – 11.6% in the latest INSCOP survey.
Without the two extreme values, the indicators for Cătălin Drula would be much more grouped, with most polls rating him with an average score of 19.7%. For comparison, in the AtlasIntel survey for HotNews, Drula is rated with 18.1%.
Why does the difference between mean and median matter and which one is closer to reality?
When the mean and median are close, it means that the polls are relatively homogeneous and there are no extreme results to distort the big picture. In such cases, both values provide an accurate and stable representation of the actual level of support a candidate has, according to all sociological research analyzed.
When the two indicators, however, begin to diverge from each other, an important signal emerges: the data is skewed, and extreme scores in some surveys “pull” the average up or down.
Thus:
- If mediate is greater than median: there is one or a few polls with unusually high values. These upbeat results push the average higher, although most polls point to a lower level.
- If median is higher than average: surveys appear with unusually low scores that “pull” the average down, although most values are higher. In such situations, the median is usually the indicator closer to realitybecause it is less sensitive to extremes and better reflects the “middle area” of public opinion represented by polls.
HotNews.ro centralizes here the big polls for the Capital City Hall and presents them in several interactive formats on the special section Alegeri.HotNews.ro
On Alegeri.HotNews.ro you will be able to watch LIVE, on the day of the vote, information about attendance and comparisons with the previous elections for each section and neighborhood in Bucharest, as well as the results in real time, after the polls close.
