The director of the Center for Sociological Research (CIS), José Félix Tezanos, appeared this Wednesday before the Constitutional Commission of the Congress of Deputies so that the parliamentary groups could supervise the activity carried out by this institution, especially during the last political year marked by electoral periods and, therefore, by the most interesting CEI voting intention surveys.
What stands out most from this appearance are the “deviations” to the left that the CEI tends to make when it publishes the results of voting intentions before elections. Some “deviations” that the Popular Party and Vox assure that they “always tend to the same side”, the beneficiary always being the Government and the loser the opposition. First of all, Tezanos rejected the accusations, assuring that of the 39 elections that took place during the six years that he led the CEI, its previous estimation surveys “have only failed four times”.
an argument which was mitigated when, in his response, Tezanos himself stated that “it is true that the CEI surveys tend to overestimate the left-wing vote”, but that this is due, assured the sociologist, to the fact that Spain is a country with a greater predisposition to vote left. It is “the media that support the PP” that end up dissuading the population from carrying out this voting intention, which ends up turning to the right, affirmed Tezanos.
“I have been a member of the PSOE since the Franco era, yes, but since I was captain of the CEI, I understood that I could not be both at the same time,” said Tezanos, trying to avoid the accusations that the opposition continually makes about the conflict of interests that the Center for Sociological Research may be going through since the Socialist Party has been in power. The problem is not the surveys, said the sociologist. “ANDor I do not falsify the data“The problem is that you (PP) do not win the elections with enough votes to govern.” “If your theses were true, I would be in the opposition and you in the government,” Tezanos said.
There were few of them the reproaches regarding the CEI, those who were heard in the Constitutional Chamber of the Congress of Deputies. Its director tried to avoid accusations about the way in which the surveys are carried out, the arbitrariness and opacity with which the sample of the population that participates in them is chosen, the high budget with which the center is endowed and even accusations of “nepotism” when making appointments.
The deputy José Antonio Bermúdez de Castro, of the PP, accused with particular harshness a formation that most often suffers from the “discrepancies” in the results of voting intentions published by the CEI. In the last elections, European, “the CEI failed in all the ranges of estimation of votes to give victory to the PSOE”, noted Bermúdez de Castro. The exchange of barbs between the spokesman of the PP in the commission and the director of the CIS ended with Tezanos assuring again and again that “he has never falsified the data” and that “sociology is not an exact science”, since it works with predictable margins of error of up to five points.
Tezanos has not escaped criticism, even from those to whom he “diverts” the greatest voting intention, the government partners. Sumar, whose spokesperson in the commission, deputy Txema Guijarro, asked the same question as Junts, asked the sociologist “why the CEI no longer asks questions about the Monarchy”, while Vox and PP regret that he no longer does so about the Monarchy. “immigration problems”.
The letter to citizens
“I paid the fine, but I will appeal,” Tezanos said of the sanction he received from the Central Election Commission (JEC) for not informing this body of a “flash” survey in the middle of the Catalan election campaign. The one carried out by the CIS to take the pulse of public opinion on the letter from the President of the Government, in which he threatened to resign because of the ongoing judicial investigations into his wife’s companies. This survey was published in the context of an election, the Catalan one, and as it was a political survey, the CEI should have informed the JEC.
The fine amounts to 3,000 euros. and the content of this investigation has been strongly criticized by the opposition. From Vox, the reproach came from some of the questions that Tezanos posed to citizens: “How is it that the CEI questions the investigative work of a judge who accuses Begoña Gómez? A subject that, for the sociologist, had public importance and therefore has its place in an investigation financed by the Spanish treasury. In this way, the director of the Center for Sociological Research avoided accusations of possible political bias in the investigations carried out and published by said institution. “There is no success in the task of discrediting the CEI,” Tezanos concluded.
