PRCA launches enquiry into why political polling is now so wide of the mark | PR Week https://t.co/wotdXzNGks pic.twitter.com/672bvEoh9G
— Will Corry (@slievemore) December 8, 2016
John Starr, MD of Clareville comments
“After the 2015 General Election, there was an exhaustive enquiry by the Market Research Society, the British Polling Council and the National Centre for Research Methods.
“It concluded that the primary cause of the ‘polling miss’ in 2015 was unrepresentative samples. These over-represented Labour supporters and under-represented Conservative supporters. It also concluded that there may have been a very modest late swing to the Conservatives immediately before Election Day.
“The report recommended several steps to rectify this. Did the pollsters learn from and take action by the time of the Referendum?
“Or does the fact that the trend repeated itself here and in the USA in 2016 suggest that there is much more to the issue than the previous expert enquiry found out.? It will be interesting to see whether the PRCA can shed new light on this. “
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The PR and comms industry, PRCA members, the polling industry and those who work politics will all be invited to give their views to the enquiry.
In addition to publishing a range of views as to what went wrong during recent election results, the enquiry include evidence sessions, roundtables and expert briefings, as well as a half-day conference next year.
Francis Ingham, director general of the PRCA, said the purpose of the review was to find out how pollsters got it wrong and to prevent it from happening again.