Reply #40: I think, in the UK in 1992

[Febble]

the pre-election polls were genuinely closing, probably as the "undecideds" decided in favour of the status quo. It was a miserable time in the UK, the economy was in a mess, but no-one really trusted Labour (I have to say, with good reason, their previous term in government had been disastrous) to fix it. People had too much to lose, with mortgages larger than the plummeting value of their property. I think it was a question of the devil you know being better than the devil you don't know.

So the margin in the pre-election polls may have been correct in terms of decided voters but not in terms of the undecideds.

The exit polls nonetheless still underestimated the size of the Tory win. So even in a poll in which undecideds are, by definition, excluded, there was still a pro-Labour bias. I am still trying to find out the MoE of the exit poll. But shy, or embarassed, Tories were certainly cited as part of the problem, not just sampling error.

And it must have been the poll, not the count, because, in our picturesque medieval way, we still cast paper ballots, and count them by hand, under the scrutiny of bipartisan volunteers, the general public, and television cameras!