It wasn’t just at the May 2015 general election that the polling did not cover itself with glory
September 2010: Final LAB members leadership poll
| YouGov LAB members poll Sept ’10 | YouGov 1st round | Actual 1st round | YouGov Miliband preference | Actual final votes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ABBOTT, Diane | 11 | 7.3 | 0 | 0 |
| BALLS, Ed | 9 | 10.1 | 0 | 0 |
| BURNHAM, Andy | 10 | 8.6 | 0 | 0 |
| MILIBAND, David | 38 | 44.1 | 48 | 54.4 |
| MILIBAND, Ed | 31 | 29.9 | 52 | 45.6 |
What should be noted about this poll was that it took place six days after the postal ballot packs had gone out and for many of those sampled was actually an exit poll.
The striking figure here is the final Miliband preference after the AV preferences had been worked out. Ed Milinand 4% ahead while the actual result for this section had David 8.8% ahead.
Ed won the leadership, of course, because of his commanding lead in the trade union section.
October 2014: The Heywood & Middleton by-election polls:
At this by-election we had a real foretaste of what happened on May 7th. The two phone polls had many more of those sampled saying they would vote Labour than actually did so and in the end UKIP came very close.
London Mayoral election final polls May 2012
The London mayoral polling in 2012 shows that polling over-statement is not just restricted to Labour. Boris/CON was over-stated in all the surveys.
Maybe this was down to the Boris factor.
General Election May 7th 2015
This is not just a British problem. This year we have also seen the Israeli election polling and, of course, last weekend in Greece