Polling
The crisis of election polls
Election polls fail mainly for three reasons: the difficulty of obtaining random samples, low willingness to respond and the biases of online polls.
Every election cycle revives the question: why do polls get it wrong? The problem is methodological, and it has a solution.
Three underlying problems
- Random sampling is ever harder: traditional frames no longer represent the population.
- Low response rate: respondents do not always resemble non-respondents.
- Online bias: non-representative panels and self-selection.
Towards new polling
The solution is not to abandon surveys but to complement them with new methods: Big Data integration, diverse sources and models that correct known biases.
Why ENET Consulting
Rigorous polling is still possible, but it requires careful sample design and an honest treatment of error.
Frequently asked questions
Why do election polls fail?+
Because of the difficulty of obtaining representative random samples, low response rates and online panel biases.
Related services
Surveys and opinion polls
An opinion poll gathers, through a representative sample, what a group thinks about a topic, with a known margin of error.
Read more →Quantitative studies and surveys
A quantitative study measures phenomena using representative samples and statistical analysis, allowing results to be extrapolated to a population with a known margin of error.
Read more →Need a reliable survey? We design representative samples free of avoidable bias.
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