Polling Problems

"Number Cruncher Politics" has a good piece at

http://www.ncpolitics.uk/2015/06/as-the-investigation-begins-a-summary-of-pollsters-views-on-the-failure.html/

which gives early reports on the excuses, sorry explanations, coming out of various polling companies' inquests on why they got the 2015 election so utterly wrong.

A short summary

* Survation and BES think there was a very late swing to the Conservatives

* YouGov blames "shy tories"

* Ipsos Mori and ComRes think their figures were thrown out by differential turnout (82% of people polled by the former company said they were "certain to vote" which is 16% higher than the share of the electorate who actually did.)

* ICM think the mix of voters in their sample had an imbalance of certain types of voter (C1 and C2s) and that they weighted them wrongly

I suspect all these factors may have had an influence.

I suspect everyone will also remember next time that polls are only a snapshot, not a prediction and that they can be wrong.

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