Last week Italians voted "No" to constitutional reform. The Economist reports that The 20-point margin of defeat—--60% to 40%—--was almost double what pollsters had foreseen. Yet again, polling has failed. However, come the French and German elections next year who doubts that we'll continue to celebrate or denounce each poll result with partisan fervor? There's a hunger for this kind of … [Read more...]
RIP polling
Polling died last night. It's been terminally ill for a while now. The predictions for the UK general election in 2015 were abysmal. Brexit polls were unreliable. And polls put the Scottish independence referendum result in 2014 as a close call when it was a resounding "No". After its performance in last night's US presidential election, we have to reach for the life support switch. Here are … [Read more...]
Don’t trust the polls
2016 is the year of the US presidential election. Prepare to be besieged by polls. The embarrassment of the 2015 UK parliamentary election predictions is a distant memory. We get to start over. However, Mona Chalabi reminds us, via the Guardian's Datablog, of the challenges facing pollsters. She lists five: The media are fallible. They follow fashion and make the news. Journalists are fallible. … [Read more...]
Election polling errors blamed on bias
A report has concluded that the spectacular failure of pollsters to predict the result of the 2015 UK Parliamentary elections was largely due to systematic over-representation of Labour voters and under-representation of Conservative voters The report, compiled by a panel of academics and statisticians, was commissioned by the polling industry to determine why they had predicted a … [Read more...]