THE Government advertising campaign during the divorce referendum could have influenced the electorate in favour of a Yes vote by 3 to 5 per cent, perhaps even higher, a British expert on opinion polls told the High Court yesterday.
Mr Gordon Heald said he was managing director of Opinion Research Business in London the former MD of the Gallup organisation, and had worked for the Conservative Party policy unit at Number 10 Downing Street. He was giving evidence on the ninth day of the challenge by Mr Des Hanafin to the outcome of the divorce referendum. He is the last witness for the petitioner.
At the end of yesterday's hearing before the three judge Divisional Court of the High Court, the Attorney General, Mr Dermot Gleeson SC, indicated he would be making an application next Tuesday after Mr Heald had completed his evidence. It would depend on the outcome of the application if the State would call witnesses.
Earlier, Mr Anthony Coughlan, a lecturer in social policy at TCD, said he believed if the Government advertising campaign had not been made there would have been a significant win of tens of thousands of votes for the No side.
The court rejected as irrelevant an attempt to introduce a letter sent in 1994 by Mr John Bruton, then in opposition. It was in response to a letter by Mr Coughlan, founder of the Campaign for Fair Referenda.
Mr Coughlan said the volume of the Government campaign and the cumulative effect would have influenced voters. There were seven million ads advocating the Yes vote in 2 1/2 million newspapers during the campaign.
The Attorney General asked in cross examination how he made the jump from looking at the newspaper ads to estimating the figure for votes. Was there a shred of working paper, any record, any calculation, any document he had prepared that afforded any evidence, scientific or technical, about the questions addressed in the witness box?
Mr Coughlan conceded that the answer to the question was no.
Mr Hanafin is seeking to overturn the referendum result on the grounds that the Government wrongly spent public money promoting the Yes campaign. He wants the court to order a new referendum.
Mr Heald told the court that, based on his experience, he would give a conservative estimate of a 3 to 5 per cent effect in favour of the Yes vote. That figure could be even higher as the ads were later much more carefully devised.
The sheer weight of the Government advertising campaign was remarkable and professional. In his opinion it undoubtedly affected the outcome.
Another factor was that the Government endorsed every ad and that alone would shift opinion quite a bit. In his experience, political parties were not held in high esteem but a government was.
Mr Heald said he had studied the three MRBI polls. They were very professionally carried out and very accurate. The first report by Mr Jack Jones, chairman of MRBI, on the March, 1995, survey contained language that was clearly partisan. It was unusual for a pollster to start laying out campaign strategy. The whole tone was designed to influence the Government to devise a campaign.
The October poll was even more surprising as it carried open ended questions that were clearly trying to get at what messages should be carried.
Mr Heald said he saw all the ads had a direct co relation to the market research. When the Yes vote was shown to be sliding, a hotter campaign was devised and became, subsequently, much more effective. A total of Pounds 250,000 was spent on the press campaign and this, in anybody's terms, was a major campaign.
Mr Peter Shanley SC, for the State, asked how he could express an opinion if he saw only five ads provided by the petitioner. Mr Heald replied that he could do this based on the amount of money spent by the Government on the newspaper ads.
The hearing continues on Tuesday.