Polls as accurate as they have ever been, study says

It seemed to be a hat trick of polling catastrophes: Brexit, the 2016 US presidential election and the 2017 British general election. But researchers now say that despite popular perceptions, polls are as accurate as they have ever been.

They say a new analysis of political polls shows that errors have not increased over the decades since the 1940s – and might even have diminished.

“A lot of people have claimed that polling is in crisis, that there have been political events that surprised us over the last year … [but] what does the data say?,” said study coauthor Dr Will Jennings of the University of Southampton.

Concerns over polling have not only been aired in the media: a House of Lords committee launched an inquiry into the issue last year.

Lord Lipsey, chair of the committee, said at the time: “We are seeing more opinion polls than ever in recent elections but their greater frequency has not been matched by greater accuracy. In the last seven general elections pollsters have got the result wrong three times.”

Source: theguardian