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LONDON (Alliance News) - YouGov PLC Chief Executive Stephan Shakespeare Friday tweeted that it had been "a terrible night for us pollsters", as YouGov and its peers came under fire for inaccurately forecasting the outcome of the UK election.
Whilst many pollsters had the Conservatives and Labour neck-and-neck in the run up to the election, the exit poll conducted by the BBC, ITV and Sky showed a very different picture, with the Conservative party predicted to be the biggest party but without an outright majority. In the end, the Conservatives secured an outright majority, meaning they can govern on their own.
Shakespeare apologised for what he called YouGov's poor performance, and said in the tweet that "we need to find out why". YouGov's final poll had the Conservatives and Labour neck-and-neck on 34% of the vote each.
ComRes' final poll suggested that the Conservatives had a 35% lead on Labour's 34%.
ComRes Chairman Andrew Hawkins noted the criticism of polling firms, and agreed that they will "continually review how to fine tune our methods to ensure we can achieve the granularity we desire and you expect."
Hawkins did, however said there is a need to recognise a misunderstanding of what the polls are intended to deliver, and to address misconceptions of what pollsters do.
ComRes' telephone polls consistently did not indicate the Conservatives were behind Labour, Hawkins noted, and the company even published an article indicating that when you looked past the "poll of polls" the Conservatives had been leading all year.
Shakespeare addressed this notion, commenting that whilst some were suggesting the issue was offline against online polling, telephone pollster ICM's final poll had a 1% Labour lead.
"Phone polls and Online polls last night had identical average errors. This is not about offline/online but polling and voter behaviour," Shakespeare said in a tweet.
Based on the actual vote share, not seats, ComRes' final poll put the Conservatives ahead with a 35% lead, with Labour behind at 34%. As at 1000 BST, Conservatives had a 37% share of the actual vote, and Labour had 31%.
"Some commentators have been very quick to put the boot into pollsters for calling it wrong. The truth is that pollsters, when they stick to their knitting, measure vote share," Hawkins said.
"We do indeed, together with academics and the media, need to look at how that vote share translates into House of Commons seats ? that is certainly true. But there is no need to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Most of the polls from most of the pollsters were within the margin of error. How they are interpreted and reported needs to be a matter of collective consideration," Hawkins said.
Shares in YouGov are trading down 0.1% at 121.39 pence Friday morning.
By Hana Stewart-Smith; hanassmith@alliancenews.com; @HanaSSAllNews
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