On 30 May, the YouGov model for the 2017 General Election was posted here and created a firestorm. At that time, most polls showed double-digit leads for the Tories and nobody else was suggesting that the Conservative majority was at risk. …
In addition to the public skepticism, insiders in both the Labour and Conservative parties repeatedly told us that their assessment of the situation was wildly out of line with our estimates. … Sometimes political insiders really do have access to better data and analysis than the public polls. But not this time.
We are still absorbing the results and trying to understand where the model performed well and where it performed less well. But the general picture is clear: the model was a huge success in an election which most politicians, pollsters and commentators got badly wrong. Here is some more detail on how and why the model worked. CONT.
Benjamin Lauderdale & Douglas Rivers, YouGov