Nery Alaev writes about the polls‘ relation to Brexit and the changing nature of polling.
This week, I’ve decided to write about the underestimation of the Brexit vote by many pollsters and intellectuals.
Several articles have summarised the mistaken efforts of pollsters to predict the vote, which came as a shock to some but not to others who followed the vote since its announcement in February 2016.
I will react to the summaries made and subsequently draw my own conclusion.
Gamble paid off?
One interesting article in Bloomberg points towards the role of gambling institutions in the vote and the somewhat dubious stance people took towards their importance. This is further divulged upon by a senior figure in the UK gambling industry:
Matthew Shaddick, head of political betting at Ladbrokes, wrote in a blog post that even though most players in the market were actually backing leave, more money was bet on remain by the affluent, who were generally behind staying.
‘Bookies’ are trying to make money, not help people forecast results, so the vote worked out fine for Ladbrokes, Mr. Shaddick said. He also added:
“Is this just one of the inevitable, normal occasions where an outsider wins, or a fatal blow to the idea of betting markets as being a useful forecasting tool?
Maybe unsurprisingly, I tend to think the former, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have to reflect on all of their potential flaws and decide how we best interpret them in the future.”
The end of phone surveying?
Brexit has occurred: did the polls get it right?
A Quartz article points towards the decidedly more accurate results received by online and mobile polls as opposed to phone polling.
Why is this? Maybe it is the anonymity of the online world that enables the true feelings of people – even on the phone one’s voice is heard, which may lead to hesitance through fear of judgement of the person on the other end of the line.
What it means, as the article also highlights, is that some methods of prediction such as phone polling, betting odds and so on are growing less reliable in a changing era of overwhelmingly digitised communication – something especially true for developed nations such as the UK.
In summary
In summary, it seems to me that new methods of polling are clearly needed and people all around the world must very careful about the polling statistics they’re presented with from now on.
Why do I say this? The incorrect EU result isn’t the first shock to pollsters – last year’s election in the UK wasn’t expected to produce the existing Conservative majority, but it did all the same.
Moreover, in the US, polling is also going through a large series of changes due to the way in which people are polled and just who those being polled are.
Nery Alaev
Nery Alaev is the current Director of ESN Investments GmbH, which engages in acquisition and development of commercial and residential property in Germany and Austria.