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RISK MANAGEMENT“What you need to known is that [conducting polls] is a marriage of the art of asking questions and the science of sampling”This example illustrates the power of polls in Thai politics. Despite being created in order to understand public opinion and behaviour, polling is more often used as a tool for politicians to advance their goals.For Jerome Hervio, managing director of Ipsos (Thailand), a re- spected research firm, there are a few things the public and media need to know about polls before reading, writing or making decisions based on their results.He was a speaker at the forum “Understanding Polls in Thailand and Asia”, held at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Thailand (FCCT) on July 30. The other speaker was Daranee Charoen- Rajapark, managing director of GfK Marketwise, a global marketing research firm.“What you need to known is that [conducting polls] is a marriage ofthe art of asking questions and the science of sampling,” Mr Hervio said. “It is not about predicting results and it is often misunderstood and misused.”Over 17,058 opinion polls were conducted during the US presidential election in 2012. “Opinion polls in that case were about the election and trying to predict and forecast,” Mr Hervio said. “But I think an opinion poll is better when it is used to explain why people vote instead of what they vote for.”Polls form a subset of research, governed by the rules of statistics, scientific sampling and data collection. They need to be conducted by people who understand their application and treated by media that know how to analyze them. There have been many past examples of polling errors used for political purposes.During the most recent Bangkok26 Elite+