Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

British Pollsters Failed in the Increasingly Difficult Struggle to Get it Right
Townhall.com ^ | May 15, 2015 | Michael Barone

Posted on 05/15/2015 5:07:07 AM PDT by Kaslin

"The world may have a polling problem." That's the headline on a blogpost by Nate Silver, the wunderkind founder of FiveThirthyEight. It was posted on 9:54 ET the night of May 7, as the counting in the British election was continuing in the small hours of May 8 UK Time.

That was an hour after the result in the constituency of Nuneaton made it clear that all the pre-election polls were wrong. Nuneaton, in the Midlands just east of Birmingham, was No. 28 on a list of 42 marginal two-party contests. Projections based on pre-election polls were that Labour would win 35 of these 42 seats. Instead, Conservatives won 34 of them.

Nationally, the pre-election polls predicted that Conservatives would win about 280 seats, barely ahead of Labour and far short of a 326-seat majority. The exit poll pegged them at 316. They ended up winning 331.

Something similar happened in 1992, when pre-election polls showed the two parties tied but Conservatives won by a 7.5-point margin. The most common explanation, advanced by Conservative analyst Rob Hayward: "Shy Tories" were unwilling to tell pollsters they favored the Conservative Party.

British pollsters made adjustments then, but as Hayward notes, they didn't work this year. Internal party polls apparently did better. American pollster Stanley Greenberg, working for Labour and using a longer questionnaire, found the party's numbers sagging. Australian consultant Lynton Crosby, running Conservatives' campaign, assured party leaders they would win 300 seats.

Silver correctly points out that Britain isn't the only country where recent polls have been off. Israeli polls projected that Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud Party would win 22 seats in the Knesset. Instead, it won 30 and Netanyahu formed a government.

And writing just after America's November 2014 off-year elections, Silver concluded that polls tilted toward Democrats. Reviewing the data then, I noted that in seriously contested statewide races, Democrats tended to get percentages of the vote close to their numbers in the polls. But many Republicans, notably in Kansas, Kentucky and Georgia, ran far ahead of the polls. "Shy Republicans," apparently.

Readers may have noticed that all these errors seem to come from one ideological direction. In nations where the dominant media -- the New York Times and the old-line TV networks here, the BBC in Britain, Haaretz in Israel -- lean left, opinion on the right has been understated in the polls. Evidently, some people don't want to identify themselves as troglodytes to telephone interviewers or even on robocalls.

But, as Silver notes, there are other, not necessarily ideological challenges facing pollsters. Current polling techniques were developed in countries with universal landline telephones and populations that answered the phone. Americans, Britons, Israelis and many others no longer live in such countries.

The Pew Research Center reported in 2012 that only 9 percent of its telephone calls resulted in completed interviews. Is that 9 percent an accurate representation of the larger population? Unclear; no poll can tell you the opinion of people who refuse to be polled.

Nor, despite the relative accuracy of Britain's exit poll this year, do exit polls always get it right. In American elections, the Edison/Mitofsky exit poll numbers are massaged by experts from its news organization clients gathered (and deprived of cellphones) in a room in Rockefeller Center at 5:00 p.m. ET Election Day.

Exit poll interviews have tended to tilt Democratic especially, according to a report by the late exit poll pioneer Warren Mitofsky, when the interviewer is a female graduate student. In the 2008 Democratic primaries, exit polls were so heavily tilted toward Barack Obama as to be useless.

The massaging gets the results closer to, but not quite on, the mark. On election night 2004 the exit poll showed 51-48 Kerry. The actual result was 51-48 Bush. On election night 2012, the evidently over-massaged exit poll came in 49-49. The actual result was 51-47 Obama.

Perhaps the next step is to go back toward the beginning, and to conduct interviews, as Gallup did in 1935, in person -- still fairly common practice when I started working for pollster Peter Hart in 1974. In-person interviews are standard practice in Mexico and other countries where telephones are not universal.

Polling provides useful information, but information whose reliability is often ephemeral and increasingly, it seems, limited. Good luck to British and other pollsters in the continuing struggle to get it right.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Politics/Elections; United Kingdom
KEYWORDS:

1 posted on 05/15/2015 5:07:07 AM PDT by Kaslin
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: Kaslin

Current polling techniques were developed in countries with universal landline telephones and populations that answered the phone.


Money quote.


2 posted on 05/15/2015 5:12:55 AM PDT by cuban leaf (The US will not survive the obama presidency. The world may not either.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin; AuH2ORepublican; fieldmarshaldj; BillyBoy

Many freepers have posted of gleefully lying to pollsters.


3 posted on 05/15/2015 5:13:25 AM PDT by Impy (They pull a knife, you pull a gun. That's the CHICAGO WAY, and that's how you beat the rats!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin

Caller ID is a wonderful thing.

Pray America is waking


4 posted on 05/15/2015 5:18:27 AM PDT by bray (Cruz to the WH)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin
Evidently, some people don't want to identify themselves as troglodytes to telephone interviewers or even on robocalls.

No. They just don't want to be targeted by vicious marxists.

5 posted on 05/15/2015 5:23:08 AM PDT by agere_contra (Hamas has dug miles of tunnels - but no bomb-shelters.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin
These pollsters didn't "fail." They presented the results they intended to present. That those results didn't drive the end they sought speaks more to the decline of their influence than to any error on their part.

They are blinded by the agenda they seek to promote. And the "erroneous" results are intended to present that agenda as a fait accompli. In the past it has worked. But with a more informed -- and increasingly dissatisfied -- electorate, the old scams don't work as well any more.

The pollsters tried to make trends, not report them. THAT was their failure.

6 posted on 05/15/2015 5:42:59 AM PDT by IronJack
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin

They “failed” in that they did not throw the election the way they wanted.


7 posted on 05/15/2015 5:43:00 AM PDT by minnesota_bound
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin
British Pollsters Failed in the Increasingly Difficult Struggle to Get it Right

Translation: British Pollsters Failed in the Increasingly Difficult Struggle to Sway People Left.

8 posted on 05/15/2015 5:46:30 AM PDT by Mr. Jeeves (Heteropatriarchal Capitalist)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin

AR-Sen 17 point actual Republican margin of victory versus 8 point lead in the polls
AZ-Gov 12 versus 7
GA-Sen 8 versus 3
IL-Gov 5 versus -2 (i.e., the polls showed the Democratic to be ahead)
KS-Sen 11 versus -1
KY-Sen 16 versus 7
LA-Sen 12 (in the run-off) versus 5 (pre-first round)
MD-Gov 5 versus -5
ME-Gov 5 versus 0
SD-Sen 21 versus 12
VA-Sen -1 versus -8

In other closely-monitored races, the difference between the actual result and the predicted was within the Margin of Error, sometimes to the Republican’s advantage and sometimes to the Democrat’s. But, in NO case was there an outcome outside of the Margin of Error in the Democrat’s favor.

BOTTOM LINE: Even if the Republican is indicated to be down by twice the Margin of Error on the eve of the election, he still has a chance of winning. Therefore, as Jimmy Valvano said, Don’t give up. Don’t ever give up.


9 posted on 05/15/2015 6:22:02 AM PDT by Redmen4ever
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Impy

Given their legendary Monty Python-esque sense of humo(u)r, I’m sure a WHOLE LOT MORE Brits enjoy lying to pollsters even than we do.

They ought to be grateful they did not project The Silly Party as the winners.


10 posted on 05/15/2015 6:24:27 AM PDT by Buckeye McFrog
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson