Some companies measure what is, while others measure what should be. Ipsos falls into the second category. It's not a research agency; it's a sentiment-mongering machine. A factory of percentages that reassure politicians, feed journalists, and appease citizens.

Officially "independent," but in practice, the purveyor of desired reality. Whoever pays the piper calls the tune, and Ipsos knows better than anyone how to manipulate figures until they fit perfectly into the narrative of the day.

A slight shift in the question, a tweak in the wording, and suddenly it becomes clear that the Netherlands has "mass" confidence in policies that no one believes in anymore.

Ipsos's art isn't measuring, but modelling opinions. They call it "audience research," but it sounds suspiciously like public influence. Because whoever decides which questions are asked also determines the answers. And those questions rarely come out of the blue; they originate in ministries, newsrooms, and strategy agencies.

In the Netherlands, Ipsos has cleverly entrenched itself in the public domain. Since its merger with I&O Research, it has become the most significant player in government and policy polls. The same government that commissions policy assessments from an agency that thrives on those same commissions. Independent, they claim, with a straight face.

The media does the rest. An Ipsos graph is news, an Ipsos poll is truth. No journalist asks what the sample looked like or who wrote the questions. The number itself is enough. Numbers as a catechism, statistics as a confession of faith.

Meanwhile, Ipsos sells the same moral package worldwide: “We Give People a Voice.” Sounds nice, but if you listen carefully, you'll mainly hear the client's voice.

In France, the company was already condemned for favouritism in government tenders, but that news barely made the headlines here. Polls about trust in politics are apparently more important than trust in pollsters.

Ipsos is the mirror of our times: glossy, professional, but lacking depth. We live in a country where the figures are ready before the questions are even asked, where morality and marketing converge in graphs that always perfectly reflect the current trend.

According to Ipsos, the truth is not reality, but desirability. And as long as we continue to confuse this, power will remain untouchable, neatly expressed in percentages behind the logo of an agency that measures what people want to hear.

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