Exit polls are particularly difficult to conduct in the UK. However, following on from the success of a similar exercise in 2005 in forecasting a Labour majority of 66, an exit poll jointly commissioned and published by the BBC, ITV News and Sky and broadcast at 10pm on election day produced a forecast that exactly forecast the eventual Conservative tally of 307 seats, and was within 2-3 seats of the final outcome for the other parties. In this talk I describe and evaluate the methodology behind the 2010 exercise, the challenges that it had to overcome in implementing that methodology, and the analytic decisions and choices that underpinned the final forecast.
Jouni Kuha (LSE), with John Curtice (Strathclyde) and Stephen Fisher (Oxford)