Canada PoliticsPollsters slammed for false predictions in B.C. election
Politicians are fond of saying that 'the only poll that matters is the one on election day.'
Gosh darn it — they might be right.
After embarrassing flops in both the Alberta and Quebec elections, it looks like Canada's pollsters got 'it' wrong, again, with the B.C. election.
The final opinion polls, released Monday, suggested that the NDP would win a majority government with a six point lead on the Liberals in terms of the popular vote.
That didn't happen: As it turns out, Christy Clark's Liberals won a majority with a five point lead on the NDP.
[ Related: Liberals pull off surprise victory in B.C. election ]
Pundits, analysts and bloggers certainly need to assume some of the responsibility for publishing polls without proper explanation. But, on Tuesday night/Wednesday morning, the public scorn was reserved for the pollsters.
Banishment! RT @johnsherry1 Wonder how many pollsters are looking for last minute flights on expedia or travelocity. Just sayin. #bcpoli
— Pete Quily (@pqpolitics) May 15, 2013
If you wondered:MT @premier_redford: @christyclarkbc Welcome to club! Proving pollsters & pundits spectacularly wrong. Congrats! #bcpoli — CBC Vancouver(@CBCVancouver) May 15, 2013
While BCNDP will now need to reinvent themselves, it appears pollsters have even more soul searching & reinventing to do. #bcelxn13
— Tony Roy (@VirtualFellow) May 15, 2013
The big story of this campaign is that pollsters have become irrelevant. #bcelxn — Lesli Boldt (@LesliBoldt) May 15, 2013
So a lot of pollsters in #cdnpoli have @justintrudeau in a runaway win if a fed elxn were held today. Still feel good on that one everyone?
— David Akin (@davidakin) May 15, 2013
There are certainly several challenges to the polling industry: Cell phones, caller ID's, and lower voter turnout levels, to name a few. But how could they have gotten this so wrong? Didn't America's Nate Silver successfully predict all 50 states in the presidential election last Fall?
[ Related: Andrew Weaver makes history in B.C., becomes first Green in provincial legislature ]
A couple of pollsters offered their theories on Tuesday evening.
Polling analyst Eric Grenier gave this explanation on his website:
The results will fall within the high and low forecasted outcomes, but they were considered to be an unlikely event. It seems, instead, that with the polling we have in Canada we can expect these sorts of surprises more often. It is very disappointing.
Ipsos Reid's Darrell Bricker also 'faced the music' on Twitter:
@davidakin @justintrudeau Nobody in polling should be feeling good about anything tonight. NO pollster said Libs would win majority.
— Darrell Bricker (@darrellbricker) May 15, 2013
@seanleslie980 @adriandix @bcndp As they should. Pollsters have a lot of explaining to do. We'll do our part to explain what went wrong. — Darrell Bricker (@darrellbricker) May 15, 2013
In a recent op-ed column for Postmedia News, Peter Loewen, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Toronto, suggested that pollsters cannot be certain of the accuracy of new technologies such as online and text message polling.
Pollsters simply do not know enough about who responds to polls via some media, who replies through others, and what kinds of people ignore polling requests entirely.
The problem isn't getting sample, it's getting good sample. Simply knowing a respondent's demographic information is not enough to correct for bad sampling. The result is that we cannot extrapolate with sufficient accuracy from our samples to the whole population.
We cannot, in other words, know with much confidence the likely outcome of an election before the votes are cast.
Kudos to Grenier and Bricker for not going into hiding.
But the B.C. election is clearly another black-eye for the industry.
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