Pollsters predicted Labour's victory but were still wrong

Polling companies are keeping their heads down after getting last month's election wrong. Political polls are their shop window and, unsurprisingly, they don't want to advertise their mistakes to their more lucrative commercial clients.

- ANDREW GRICE

When you ask pollsters why they messed up in July, they say they forecast a Labour landslide and that’s what happened. But to suggest they got it right is disingenuous.

Does it matter? Yes. The pollsters forecast a 20-point Labour lead, and the result was a 10-point winning margin. It was their worst collective performance since their annus horribilis of 1992, when the Conservatives’ “surprise victory” would not have been a surprise if the polls had been accurate.

The reaction this time is much more muted because the race was less close than 1992 and so pollsters did not name the wrong winner. They have got away with that one. That shouldn’t spare their blushes, and they should launch an inquiry into what went wrong, as they did after another bad election in 2015.

There’s no sign of one this time. British Polling Council members will compare notes next month but issued a remarkably complacent statement saying: “The polls told the story of the election campaign, including the prospect of a Labour landslide and the rise of Reform UK as a serious electoral force.”