How did the pollsters get it so wrong?

THE head of YouGov today said polls before the election were far off the mark because voters said one thing, but then did another once they got to the ballot box.

Chairman Peter Kellner admitted pollsters got it wrong after consistently showing the Tories and Labour tied in the run-up to election night.

But he also criticised political parties for relying too heavily on polling data instead of fighting campaigns on what they believed in.

The final YouGov poll before voting began showed both the Tories and Labour on 34 per cent.

A survey of 12,000 voters for former Tor y t re a s urer L ord Ashc ro f t put the share of votes at 34 per cent for Conservatives and 31 per cent for Labour.

Other pollsters also failed to predict the scale of the Tory victory.

Mr Kellner said: “What seems to have gone wrong is that people have said one thing and they did something else in the ballot box.”

He added: “We are not as far out as we were in 1992 — not that that is a great commendation.”

But he blamed politicians for relying too heavily on data during their campaigns.

He said politicians “should campaign on what they believe — they should not listen to people like me and the figures we produce”.

Ben Page, chief executive of Ipsos MORI, said: “One caveat is that a very small shift in the percentage share of the vote makes a big difference to the seat share.

“But nevertheless, [the political map] doesn’t look like the map of Britain people were expecting.”

He added: “There will be an examination of that. We need to understand that.”