Angus Reid pollster explains how Alberta election predictions went so wrong

You couldn't blame Angus Reid VP Mario Conseco if he chose to go into hiding today.

He, like his pollster brethren, were embarrassed Monday night for badly misjudging the results of the Alberta election.

But Conseco says the pollsters did have it right - if the election was held on Saturday.

In a telephone interview with Yahoo! Canada News Tuesday, Conseco claims the poor analysis had nothing to do with bad science or poor methodologies - it was just that people made up their minds to vote PC after all the opinion surveys were concluded.

"The problem in Alberta is you're basically looking at a situation where you would have to go into field on Saturday night/Sunday morning because you have to publish [results] before midnight mountain time otherwise you're in contravention of Elections Alberta rules," he said.

"We took at as close to the finish line as possible. We went into the field Friday and closed it Saturday morning but it wasn't enough because obviously something happened in the final couple of days or hours that really led everybody to basically not get it right."

Conseco suggests many Albertans had a "do I really want Danielle Smith as my premier?" moment.

"It's similar to what happened to us in the Ontario election last year. Where we kept having the PCs ahead of the Liberals and then the final poll we did we saw a 6 point shift," he said.

"We saw that shift drastically in the final day and half of the [Alberta] campaign."

Conseco admits he's never been part of a situation where all the pollsters got it so wrong.

"The closest to this was the New Hampshire Democratic primary back in 2008. Everybody was calling it for Obama and in the end Hillary pulled it off. These kinds of things happen. Its not the best feeling in the world but its the kind of thing that happens," he said.

"The one lesson I think we learned from this is get as close as possible to the final moment to make the call.

"This time, because it was Sunday, because we didn't see a lot of movement in the numbers in the last week -certainly nothing that would suggest the PCs would win - we didn't think it was necessary. Next time we're going to be polling people util 11:59 - I can assure you."