Preceding the General Election last week, every National Opinion Poll forecast that the result would lead to a "hung Parliament".
This fomented endless speculation by Politicians, Electors and Journalists alike, of what could happen afterwards when the final and true results of each party become known after the Vote.
The simple fact that all pollsters were agreed on the outcome of the future result gives the impression that they were copying each others "results" or collaborating in one way or another !
There are two basic rules which "National Opinion Polls" organisers seem not to have respected .
1) The population of voters used in the sample was too small or not wide enough nationally.
2) Exceptional factors were not identified and excluded from general population samples, and then sampled separately .
The perfect example in this General Election was Scotland. There was a wild swing of 40 seats from Labour to SNP (Scottish National Party) and this was expected beforehand. (1) The Liberal Democrats also lost seats to SNP.
The Opinion Polls published do not seem to have taken into account properly the effect of this exeptional loss, this handicap, of 40 Seats on Labour's hopes of winning the Election. When the National Polls were published, Labour and the Conservatives were always reportedly "neck to neck" in the race !
A lot of worry and speculation could have been avoided . One could also wonder if the Sponsors who ordered the Polls were satisfied with the information they obtained .
(1) Read article dated 29 April 2015, "Scottish vote could surprise many".
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