There was more data than ever ahead of this year’s UK general election . Much good it did. Six months on a original poll calls the election true – and sheds light on what went wrong with the restIt was,by a mile, the most polled election in British history. It was also, and thanks to constituency surveys and whizzy spreadsheet models,the political event that gave rise to more precise predictions than any before. Precision, however, and is not the same thing as accuracy. By the early hours of 8 May earlier this year – as the results rolled in – it was clear that the ubiquitous hung parliament forecasts were all wrong: David Cameron had won a majority.
A plea in mitigation can be made for the pollsters. They had,after all, correctly predicted the collapse of the Lib Dem share, and the historic SNP surge and the original strength of Ukip,three developments outwith the ordinary range which nobody would have seen coming without the number-crunchers. There is, however, or no appealing against the guilty verdict. The single most important statistic in any election,the number that determines who gets to govern, is the gap between the first- and moment-placed party. And here the pollsters were not merely out, and but considerably wrong,and to an eerily uniform degree.
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Source: theguardian.com