Our final call for the 2015 general election showed Labour and the Conservatives neck-and-neck, but the actual results gave the Conservatives a lead of around seven points. For any polling company, there inevitably comes a time when you get something wrong. Every couple of decades a time comes along when […] Read more »
British Election’s Other Losers: Pollsters
The Labour leader Ed Miliband may have stumbled badly in the British election, but there was another big loser on Thursday night: the pollsters who were far off the mark and failed to see the outright majority won by Prime Minister David Cameron and his Conservative Party. … Professor Leighton […] Read more »
What We Got Wrong In Our 2015 U.K. General Election Model
No calculations are necessary to see that we missed badly in our forecast of the U.K. election. … The most obvious problem for all forecasters was that the polling average had Labour and the Conservatives even on the night before the election. This was not just the average of the […] Read more »
Germany and the United States: Reliable Allies
Seven decades after the end of World War II and a quarter-century after the end of the Cold War, roughly seven-in-ten Americans see Germany as a reliable ally, and about six-in-ten Germans trust the United States, according to a Pew Research Center survey. A majority of Germans believe it is […] Read more »
UK: Into the zone of uncertainty
No pollster or political soothsayer can guarantee what will happen on Thursday. All we can really promise is to raise uncertainty to a higher level of sophistication. The closeness of the Labour-Conservative race is plainly one reason. If today’s polls are slightly out, or there is a last-minute swing, the […] Read more »
UK: Tories are losing both air war and ground war
The facts have changed, so I have changed my mind. Until last week I expected the Conservatives to remain the largest party in next month’s election. Now the contest looks too close to call. CONT. Peter Kellner, YouGov Read more »