Bill would ban publishing polls in 4 days before primaries

By DAN IZENBERG
No one will be allowed to publish the results of opinion polls regarding party primaries within four days of the vote, according to a bill passed in first reading by the Knesset on Tuesday. If the bill becomes law, the four-day moratorium will be identical to the one that applies to Knesset elections. A fine of NIS 26,100 will be leveled on anyone who violates the law. The bill was first proposed by Labor MK Ophir Paz-Pines, who originally called for a survey moratorium of a week. Paz-Pines told the Knesset Law Committee that he had drafted the bill before the fiasco of the September 17 Kadima primary, in which television networks published the results of exit polls before the voting had ended. Paz-Pines' bill was originally rejected by the Ministerial Legislation Committee in July, before the Kadima primary. The lawmaker told the committee that many of the Kadima ministers who had voted against the bill at the time had now changed their minds. The bill would also require public opinion survey companies to publish more details about the polls that are taken, such as how big the sample was, the type of population that was canvassed, information on the system of data-gathering and other facts. During the committee meeting, Prof. Avi Degani, CEO and president of Geocartography, one of the country's leading public opinion companies, said the reason that all the pollsters had misjudged the outcome of the Kadima primary - in which they projected a 10 percent victory for Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni over Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz - was that the primary was "the most corrupt ever held." According to Degani, many Kadima Party members were recruited by "vote contractors" or Arab communal leaders. Often, individual names did not appear in the party lists and in many cases, those who were asked questions knew nothing about the primary, had no opinions of their own and voted according to the instructions they received from their recruiters.