He has been polling Spaniards for almost half a century since, in 1977, in the first general elections after the dictatorship, he put his sociology studies into practice at Yale University. He was 35 years old. Today, he continues to have fun like a child with a new toy on the eve of the elections, since he has delegated the day-to-day of the polls and acts as "queen mother" in his office as president of Metroscopia, the demoscopy company he founded in 2004. We speak at its new headquarters in Madrid, where a team of young people, twice or three times the age, work in front of their screens. He doesn't look 80 years old. I have fallen into the trap. Because there are as many ways to be 80 as there are octogenarians.
His brother Manuel, a legendary television meteorologist, predicted the weather; You, the votes. Do you bite each other a lot?
We joke around a lot about that. Our trades have parallels, but Manolo is more handsome and smarter. And, now, on top of that, he is much more successful over time than I am with the surveys, because his instruments have improved a lot. Before, it was balloons and things like that. Now, they have satellites almost on demand and they nail it to you. On top of that, your son is our chief computer scientist. He's an abuser.
Artificial intelligence is not helpful in your guild?
That will never make for a good survey. Help analyze the data a posteriori, can. But no machine can replace individual thought and will, which is what we investigate in the surveys. You can do simulations, but you can't anticipate what someone is going to do. We ask what they're going to do, and then they can do something else, or do nothing. Human contact is irreplaceable. The ideal would be to survey face to face, but that is very expensive. On the phone, it's easier to lie. And online, you miss an entire generation that isn't digital, as big as those under 35. The older ones all vote, the young people, from 18. The perfect survey does not and will not exist.
Do respondents lie a lot?
They don't lie so much, they can tell you the truth, their truth, at the time of the survey. And then you can have a fantastic day and go to the beach. This is like the notes: if they tell you that they are going to vote, sure, from 1 to 10, a 7, they can go or not. If he tells you, a 10, it's safe. Let's say that, reliable, reliable, it is only the outstanding.
Do you vote more with your head, your heart, or your guts?
Let's say people vote with reasonable emotion. We are becoming more and more practical. Voting is becoming less ideological and more tactical. Look at the case of Rivas, in Madrid. The census votes Podemos in the municipal, PP in the autonomic and PSOE in the general. And they are the same. Today's society, complex and plural, is a serene society, which has the bad luck that, for 15 years, it has been complaining that the political class has leveraged itself in anger and disqualification. But, crossing all the data, it is clear that people want pacts, understanding and dialogue.
And the anger and polarization?
There is a kind of mirror effect. Politicians look at themselves in the media and speak for them, and vice versa; They are like mirrors. And people do not see themselves reflected in one or the other. They peddle sensationalism and throwing punches at each other, but anyone who polls knows that, even among voters of the parties further to the left and further to the right, they believe that the two big parties, with which they have enormous differences, should talk and understand each other. The idea of acknowledging that no one is completely right all the time.
José Juan Toharia, at the headquarters of Metroscopia in Madrid, putting an end to the electoral ranges. Bernardo Perez
Is the question or answer more important in your business?
The question, absolutely.
And who formulates them?
Among the whole team, arguing a lot. All questions, all of them, are biased. That is why you do not have to do one, but many. Sometimes they are done wrong, of course. Sometimes it is done without bad intention, out of clumsiness, and sometimes with intention. You, as a journalist, know that the art of asking questions is very difficult. In addition, in a survey they have to be questions that everyone understands. Because we are all people. We are all the others. For example, no one will tell you in a poll that they are racist. You have to ask him if people are racist around, go around him. Pull what they call the "third person" effect. That's where smell, experience and...
... The kitchen
Yes, with all the data, your experience, your nose, and a little bet, you cook the data and give the final forks. In an election, it is difficult not to guess the winner if the sample is sufficient and well done. You have to ask even in hell. Now, what we measure are trends, and they're not going to change in 15 days.
So, all this spectacle of candidates for nothing?
Campaigns serve very little. Infinitely less than the money some earn with them. The politician plays everything in a few days, and throws the rest. But both polls and campaigns move very little vote. There is a small percentage that can point to the winning effect, or vice versa, save the loser, but where it goes is unpredictable. Therefore, not publishing polls after a certain date is ridiculous, apart from treating the voter as a minor. It is obsolete.
So you are charlatans. Do you remember your greatest success and your greatest mistake?
We try never to be. We never give a fact that we do not consider to reflect what people said they planned to do at the time of asking. Then he changes his mind and doesn't. Our greatest success, a bit of chiripa, was to nail the 3.7% that the PP took to the PSOE in the European elections of 2009. We got 3.5%, it seemed very round, we went up to 3.7, and bingo! Rubalcaba called us "the 3.7% guys." We even made T-shirts with that legend. The biggest mistake, without being so, were the general elections of 2004, in which we predicted the victory of the PP and the PSOE won after 11-M. I had to spend the drink on election night live on Telecinco. Profession Gajes.
His team is very young and hyper-digitized. Do you notice the famous gap with them?
Gap, as such, does not. The young people I have here do wonders, and I admire them. I can understand what they do and I take advantage of it, but it does not occur to me to start learning it because, for the time I have left to live, it is not worth it and I prefer to dedicate it to other things. What I don't do is the memez of saying that in my time it was done better. No, it is done much better now, and my times are also these.
What is it for you to do now, speaking like your employees?
The problem at a certain age, which in this case is a certain age: 80 years, is that it is very difficult for you to admit that you have no future, as Ramón y Cajal said, in a book that they gave me when I turned 80. So, you have to accept that you are living in a permanent present and cannot make plans. And that's fucked up, I say annoyed. It takes time to adapt, because all your life you have been planning for the future, and I still do, but knowing that your horizon is finite.
And how is that done? It's for getting the idea.
Cultivating good people in general. People who have a background of kindness and generosity. Listening to music, Brassens, the old Leonard Cohen, Aute. Even my brother Manolo, who, on top of that, plays the piano. I'm still alive, I'm not a walking dead, my times are these, I'm still hooked on life.
You have seen live how Spain has changed in the last half century. Do you like how it looked?
Look, at 20 years old, I hated what this country was like. The dictatorship, the greyness, everything that led to the lack of freedom. Now I love it. We are a decent, tolerant, peaceful society. And I love that. All international polls see it, except sometimes us. It's in our DNA.
YES YOU KNOW, YES ANSWER
The undecided are the nightmare of any polling firm, such as Metroscopia, the company founded by José Juan Toharia (Madrid, 80 years) in 2004. Professor of Sociology, and doctor by Yale, Toharia was the founder of the magazine Cuadernos para el diálogo and the first director of the School of Journalism of El País.
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