Response to the British Polling Council general election inquiry
Ipsos reiterates today our gratitude to Professor Sturgis, and the rest of his British Polling Council (BPC) inquiry team, for their work on this inquiry.
Ahead of today’s report we, along with many other polling companies, have been carrying out our own analysis of the reasons behind the error in our final general election poll and the specific issues that apply to our polls, some of which may be different to those of other companies.
Whilst some of the findings of today’s report do of course mirror our own investigations, the polls were not equally inaccurate (for example while Ipsos MORI had too high a Labour vote share in our final poll, we had the highest Conservative share of any major pollster), so each company will have its own path to take in the approach to the next big polling challenges.
We’ve today published a summary of our analysis so far, which we hope will also be useful in understanding the steps we are taking to improve our polls for the future. Of course, we will continue to review our methodology and take into account the recommendations of the inquiry, as far as we can.
We agree that late swing to the Conservatives was not a factor, certainly in our polls. Our analysis has found that we overestimated Labour vote share and underestimated non-voters, by expecting an increase in Labour voter turnout that did not happen, as well as over-sampling people who are politically engaged.
We have applied lessons learned through Ipsos’ international polling experience to improve the way we predict voter turnout, as well as using new weights on our polling which address the oversampling of politically engaged people.
This does not mean our work is done. We will continue to keep our practices under review. We look forward to working, along with the rest of the industry, to respond to the recommendations of the British Polling Council’s inquiry to make sure polling continues to contribute positively to our democracy.”
Ben Page Chief Executive Ipsos
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