A Question on Polls for British DUers

[malthaussen]

How do the actual election results in yesterday's General Election compare with the pre-election polls? Did Labour do better than expected? Any surprises? (Obviously, Reform winning 4 seats is an unpleasant surprise, but weren't they projected to take 7?).

I ask because I've been thinking recently that the polls are getting more and more out-of-touch with the voters, especially when it comes to enthusiasm (or acceptance) for the Left, and the popularity of the Right. It seems to me from across the puddle that the Left performed better than expected, and the Right really tanked. Is this accurate?

-- Mal

[brooklynite]

1. The polling average just before the election was:

Labour 39%
Conservative 20%
Reform 17%
Lib Dem 12%
Other 12%

The actual vote results were

Labour 34%
Conservative 24%
Reform 14%
Lib Dem 12%
Other 17%

I would say not radically different.

Too many people here criticize polling because 1) they've decided that the outset that the media sponsors of polls are intentionally biased, 2) it goes against their personal sense of the race (there are folks who claim Biden will win in a landslide, which is counter to what the Biden campaign says), and 3) poll reporting tends to focus on "winners and losers" rather than margins. Most polling today shows both Biden and Trump below 50% and the marginal difference in single digits, which ice pretty much where the race is.

[muriel_volestrangler]

2. The easiest summary of polls is Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2024_United_Kingdom_general_election

The final MRP models for how things would translate into seats were:
https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/49950-final-yougov-mrp-shows-labour-on-course-for-historic-election-victory
Labour 431 (range 391-466), Con 102 (78-129), Lib Dem 72 (57-87), SNP 18 (8-34), Reform 3 (0-14), Plaid 3 (1-4), Green 2 (1-4)

https://www.survation.com/survation-mrp-labour-99-certain-to-win-more-seats-than-in-1997/
Lab 484 (447-517), Con 64 (34-99), LD 61 (49-73), SNP 10 (3-21)Reform 7 (1-16), Plaid 3 (1-6), Green 3 (1-6)

https://www.focaldata.com/blog/focaldata-prolific-uk-general-election-mrp-final-call
Lab 444 (433-456), Con 108 (94-123), LD 57 (51-63), SNP 15 (12-19), Reform 2 (1-4), Plaid 2 (2-3), Green 1 (1-2)

And, with the expected LD win in the 1 remaining seat in Scotland, it would be
Lab 412, Con 121, LD 72, SNP 9, Reform 5, Plaid 4, Green 4, independents in England 5 (plus the Speaker, who is not opposed by the major parties)

The 5 independents are all left of Labour (former Labour seats with high pro-Palestine votes), so you could say, for rating the national polling purposes, their number should be added to Labour.

So YouGov made a decent prediction with Labour a bit high, and the Tories a bit low; the other 2 overestimated for Labour, with Survation the worst.