Donald Trump is President-Elect of the United States. Britain is leaving the European Union. Ed Miliband’s not Prime Minister. The past eighteen months have left the reputation of both pollsters and poll aggregators in tatters. Failure of the polls in Britain led to calls for regulation. There is talk they should be abandoned altogether in favour of alternative sources of data, or that journalists’ time would be better spent going to speak to people in their own communities.
The polling misses in the United Kingdom and United States are damaging not just because they have misled people about the likely outcome of the race. They also add fuel on the fire in an age in which experts are mocked. Pollsters – and the pundits that use them – are yet another elite to be put back in their place. To populists, the unpredictability of voters is another feather in their cap. Can polling survive its recent troubles?
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