How the pollsters got it so wrong

THE VICTOR AND THE VANQUISHED: Former Labour Party leader Ed Miliband, left, former Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg, second left, and British Prime Minister David Cameron lay wreaths during a VE Day ceremony at the Cenotaph in central London on Friday. On the right is Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, whose sweep of Scottish seats banished Labour into the wilderness MOST pollsters, if not all, said this election would be neck and neck; parties would be scrapping for weeks over who was in control. But the Tories have an undeniable majority.

This is not the first time the pollsters have misled us. In 1992, with the BBC suggesting Labour had a 2% lead in the election runup, they said Neil Kinnock was the next prime minister.

I thought that Labour’s position was overstated and the Conservatives’ underestimated.

I was right. The Conservatives won 41.9% of the vote, 7.5% more than Labour.

John Major’s surprise success, I said, stemmed from “shy Tories”: voters who had come out to help him, but felt too awkward to tell anyone. So they were not noticed by the pollsters, leaving the public and the media to think there were far fewer Tory supporters.

The pollsters later i nsisted they had learnt from the mistake. Obviously they had not.

This year, the same sort of experts placed the Tories level with Labour; David Cameron could scarcely hope to win 290 seats. In my experience, if everyone is saying the same thing, they are all generally wrong.

This election, I noticed the disconnect between polls and people. I had a good idea what voters were thinking: they harboured a distrust of Ed Miliband and recognised the government’s economic achievements. Normally, when canvassing, you hear people criticising your party leader. But very few Tory, Liberal Democrat or even Labour voters were really scathing about Cameron.

As poll after poll showed the vote going neck and neck, I was convinced that the pollsters simply were not reflecting what I was seeing on the doorstep.

So why did the polls get it so wrong?

I think they were fooled by the soft Labour vote: those who were initially tempted by Miliband, then shied away from him in the polling booth.

The Tories were also helped by the Lib Dems’ collapse in support. As a result, all the pollsters have egg on their faces and the British Polling Council is about to investigate “bias” across the board.

Back in 1992, when the business was in its infancy and did not command such large sums of money, such teething errors were perhaps forgiveable. Today, though, their work can only be described as something of an embarrassment.