The past 12 months have not been kind to political pollsters. Opinion polls have been well wide of the mark in the U.S. midterms, the Israeli general election, the Greek and Scottish referendums, and the British general election. The U.K. election was perhaps the most embarrassing of all. …
In a new working paper, we examine several theories on why the British polls went so wrong. Two of the most discussed theories focus on survey respondent misreporting – about whom they are going to vote for and whether they are going to vote at all. We examine the evidence for and against both of these in this post. CONT.
Jon Mellon (Oxford) & Chris Prosser (U. of Manchester), The Monkey Cage