Should we trust the Polls?

With voting for the UK general election now only a few hours away there are various pollsters throwing out widely differing figures. So should we really pay any attention to them?

Political polling is conducted heavily when there is an imminent election, and tends to be taken from a “sample” of the population to see where their views lie. Every election you’ll see almost daily headlines detailing what the most recent polls say, but recently polls have been growing less and less accurate.

Looking back at recent elections the polls all seemed to think that Hilary Clinton was on course to become the first female President of the United States, but she was in fact beaten by Donald Trump. The polls also said that the Brexit referendum would be remain, but instead the British voted to leave Europe.

So why is there this difference. The problem is many and varied. First, just looking at the UK there are millions of people who are eligible to vote, and therefore just taking a selection of 100 or even 1,000 leaves a huge number of people who haven’t been polled. On a personal level I’ve never been physically asked to enter into a poll, although to be fair my Facebook feed makes my stance well know.

Social Media like Facebook is another issue. Polls tend to take into account campaign coverage and support as well, but in the days of more and more social media coverage, it can be difficult. A political party can put out advertising to select groups within the country and no one else will ever see them. Putting it as an extreme example the Tories COULD put out a message saying that Labour has covered up aliens for years and only those they think are people who are likely to vote for them could ever see it. Those running the polls would have no idea and therefore this controversial issue would never be taken into account.

Admittedly that’s a bit of a silly example, but you get the point. The media itself is slightly to blame as well. Like it or not, almost every media outlet is in one way or another politically biased. Be it a massive corporation that owns newspapers that want to support a party to help them financially, or a local news outlet wanting to back a party because of a local issue. These outlets will of course give more coverage to the polls that support their preferred parties, and likewise the polls you read will usually be in a media format you support and probably favour your own political views.

As it stands the most recent poll results for the UK General Election are still saying anything from a Conservative landslide to a hung parliament. Can we trust those polls? We’ll start finding out in about 48 hours time.