Published earlier in July 2016 in my earlier Blog – Ported here in Aug 2017:
As the dust settles and UK has officially elected to leave the EU with the BREXIT referendum, an event of epic geo-political implications that has sent shockwaves across financial markets, raised doubts over the fate of the European Union and forced the British Prime Minister Prime Minister to resign. Leading up to voting day, the vast majority of polls predicted the remain side would prevail. However the final results gave the leave side a victory margin of more than one million votes.
The inaccurate Brexit prediction is just one of multiple misses over recent years, including last year’s U.K. general election, the Scottish referendum in 2014 and most recently during Bernie Sanders’ upset over Hillary Clinton during the Michigan primary. One wonders how the Pollsters on both sides of the Atlantic got this result so wrong (again). We think this could be attributed to at least some of the following causes:
- Exit Poll participants sample size: may not be right?
- Exit Poll Samples does not appear to be representative with overall populace
- Participants not being honest i.e. lot of supporters did not want to say they voted for Brexit so that they are not considered “racist” or “backward”
- London out of synch with the rest of the country and too much weightage given to London opinion
- Group think Bias:
It is hoped that Pollsters realize that the Polling Prediction Process is not perfect and attempt to correct these abnormalities so that such a shocking deviation does not occur in future elections.