U.K. Poll Inquiry Raises Global Questions as Voter Habits Change

An inquiry into the failure of Britain’s pollsters to predict last year’s election found they failed to contact the right kind of voters, raising questions about whether their counterparts in other countries may face similar problems.

Following seven months of analyzing the hundreds of polls published in the run-up to the U.K. election, a panel of academics and opinion experts concluded the fault lay in “sample error” -- the people the companies were speaking to weren’t representative of the general population. In particular, they struggled to get apathetic people to answer questions.