Why the Opinion Polls were Wrong (and an inquiry won’t help)

Why the Opinion Polls were Wrong (and an inquiry won’t help)

It’s official, the opinion polls conducted in the run up to the UK general election were wrong – even the polling companies have said so. The good news is that there is going to be an inquiry into the pollsters’ failures. The bad news is that this is going to be carried out by the British Polling Council – an organisation that clearly has a vested interest in perpetuating the use of opinion polls. This is a much like asking the Astrological Association of Great Britain (and yes, there is one) to conduct an inquiry into why your horoscope has no useful insight into your future. If your starting assumption is that there is a relationship between astronomical phenomena and events in the human world you aren’t going to be looking for answers with complete objectivity. Similarly, if you believe that people can reliably predict their future actions and will […]

Democracy Mudered by an Opinion Poll

Once upon a time there was a country. They were having a very difficult time indeed.  Some greedy goblins had got out of control and now everyone in the land was troubled.  The money that the greedy goblins had taken had somehow disappeared, some said they had taken money that never existed, and now everyone was having to repay it whether it ever existed or not. Everyone except the goblins that is, who had somehow found a way to get more money  for themselves – but that’s another  story. Anyway, the country had a democratic process of sorts, of which it was most proud.  And in the midst of the “difficult time” it replaced one leader with another one, who thought things should be done a little differently.  This was done through something called “voting”, where those who wanted to shape what the country did explained their ideas and then […]