IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/jorssa/v181y2018i3p757-781.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

An assessment of the causes of the errors in the 2015 UK general election opinion polls

Author

Listed:
  • Patrick Sturgis
  • Jouni Kuha
  • Nick Baker
  • Mario Callegaro
  • Stephen Fisher
  • Jane Green
  • Will Jennings
  • Benjamin E. Lauderdale
  • Patten Smith

Abstract

The opinion polls that were undertaken before the 2015 UK general election underestimated the Conservative lead over Labour by an average of 7 percentage points. This collective failure led politicians and commentators to question the validity and utility of political polling and raised concerns regarding a broader public loss of confidence in survey research. We assess the likely causes of the 2015 polling errors. We begin by setting out a formal account of the statistical methodology and assumptions that are required for valid estimation of party vote shares by using quota sampling. We then describe the current approach of polling organizations for estimating sampling variability and suggest a new method based on bootstrap resampling. Next, we use poll microdata to assess the plausibility of different explanations of the polling errors. Our conclusion is that the primary cause of the polling errors in 2015 was unrepresentative sampling.

Suggested Citation

  • Patrick Sturgis & Jouni Kuha & Nick Baker & Mario Callegaro & Stephen Fisher & Jane Green & Will Jennings & Benjamin E. Lauderdale & Patten Smith, 2018. "An assessment of the causes of the errors in the 2015 UK general election opinion polls," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 181(3), pages 757-781, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jorssa:v:181:y:2018:i:3:p:757-781
    DOI: 10.1111/rssa.12329
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/rssa.12329
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/rssa.12329?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Daniel de Munnik & Mark Illing & David Dupuis, 2013. "Assessing the accuracy of non-random business conditions surveys: a novel approach," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 176(2), pages 371-388, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Carina Cornesse & Ulrich Krieger & Marie‐Lou Sohnius & Marina Fikel & Sabine Friedel & Tobias Rettig & Alexander Wenz & Sebastian Juhl & Roni Lehrer & Katja Möhring & Elias Naumann & Maximiliane Reife, 2022. "From German Internet Panel to Mannheim Corona Study: Adaptable probability‐based online panel infrastructures during the pandemic," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 185(3), pages 773-797, July.
    2. Andreas Lagerås & Mathias Lindholm, 2020. "How to ask sensitive multiple‐choice questions," Scandinavian Journal of Statistics, Danish Society for Theoretical Statistics;Finnish Statistical Society;Norwegian Statistical Association;Swedish Statistical Association, vol. 47(2), pages 397-424, June.
    3. Levene, Mark & Fenner, Trevor, 2021. "A stochastic differential equation approach to the analysis of the 2017 and 2019 UK general election polls," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 37(3), pages 1227-1234.
    4. Charcon, D.Y. & Monteiro, L.H.A., 2020. "A multi-agent system to predict the outcome of a two-round election," Applied Mathematics and Computation, Elsevier, vol. 386(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. David Amirault & Paul Fenton & Thérèse Laflèche, 2013. "Asking About Wages: Results from the Bank of Canada’s Wage Setting Survey of Canadian Companies," Discussion Papers 13-1, Bank of Canada.
    2. Sarah Miller & David Amirault & Laurent Martin, 2017. "What’s Up with Unit Non-Response in the Bank of Canada’s Business Outlook Survey? The Effect of Staff Tenure," Discussion Papers 17-11, Bank of Canada.
    3. Matthieu Verstraete & Lena Suchanek, 2017. "Understanding Monetary Policy and its Effects: Evidence from Canadian Firms Using the Business Outlook Survey," Staff Working Papers 17-24, Bank of Canada.
    4. Burger Joep & Delden Arnout van & Scholtus Sander, 2015. "Sensitivity of Mixed-Source Statistics to Classification Errors," Journal of Official Statistics, Sciendo, vol. 31(3), pages 489-506, September.
    5. David Amirault & Naveen Rai & Laurent Martin, 2020. "A Reference Guide for the Business Outlook Survey," Discussion Papers 2020-15, Bank of Canada.
    6. Angelika Welte, 2017. "The Bank of Canada 2015 Retailer Survey on the Cost of Payment Methods: Sampling," Technical Reports 108, Bank of Canada.
    7. Simon Richards & Matthieu Verstraete, 2016. "Understanding Firms' Inflation Expectations Using the Bank of Canada's Business Outlook Survey," Staff Working Papers 16-7, Bank of Canada.
    8. Simon Richards & Matthieu Verstraete, 2016. "Understanding Firms' Inflation Expectations Using the Bank of Canada's Business Outlook Survey," CESifo Working Paper Series 6090, CESifo.
    9. Matthieu Verstraete & Lena Suchanek, 2018. "Understanding Monetary Policy and its Effects: Evidence from Canadian Firms Using the Business Outlook Survey," CESifo Working Paper Series 7221, CESifo.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:jorssa:v:181:y:2018:i:3:p:757-781. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/rssssea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.