As we explained before, the absence of credible polls in Albania makes it difficult to say anything reasonable about the progress of the electoral campaign and national and local voting trends.
There is, however, traditionally one polling company that has been active in Albania since the general elections of 2009, which is the Italian company IPR Marketing. Also this year IPR, in collaboration with TV channel Ora News, will produce a number of polls leading up to general elections of June 25. The first polls are expected tomorrow, on May 31.
According to the methodology published by IPR in 2015, the company interviewed 1,000 people in respectively Durrës, Tirana, and Shkodra about their voting behavior for both the election of the mayor and the municipal council. The latest poll before the municipal elections of June 21, 2015 was held between June 10–15, and IPR claimed an error margin of ±3.2%
Below we have placed the predictions of the latest of three IPR polls, from June 16, 2015, and the election results of June 21 side by side. Deviations of less than 3.2% are marked in green.
Unfortunately, nearly all predictions of IPR on that date, and the previous two polling dates, were squarely outside this margin of error. The only race IPR was able to predict relatively well was the mayoral race in Shkodra between Voltana Ademi and Keti Bazhdari. IPR predicted on June 16 57.0% for Ademi and 41.0% for Bazhdari. The final election results were 56.39% for Ademi and 41.06% for Bazhdari.
In Tirana, IPR’s prediction for Erion Veliaj’s victory was within the margin of error, but the results for Halim Kosova and Gjergj Bojaxhi were off with 5.5% and 5.6%, respectively. In Durrës, IPR’s prediction were even further off. Ora News constantly reported on a tight race with a difference of 1% between Grida Duma and Vangjush Dako, but in the end PS candidate Dako won from Duma with 14%.
IPR’s performance for municipal councils was even worse. Its polls consistently overestimated the strength of the PD and the PS in Tirana, Shkodra, and Durrës. Conversely, the company consistently underestimated the LSI, which performed much stronger than expected, most notably in Durrës. IPR had predicted 10.0% of the votes to go to the LSI, which reached a final result of 22.75% – more than double the prediction.
IPR Marketing didn’t perform much better during the parliamentary elections of 2013. In a poll published on June 18, 5 days before the elections of June 23, the Italian company predicted a win for the left-wing coalition of 51%, against 45% for the right-wing coalition. Again these numbers were based on 1,000 interviews throughout the country, and with a claimed error margin of ±2.5%. The election results, again, were beyond the predictions of IPR: The coalition of Edi Rama won 57.6%, while the coalition of Sali Berisha got stuck at 39.46%.
So when tomorrow the first poll of IPR Marketing will be published, keep in mind that the actual results could be with a difference of single, and even double digits.
