Eight Nerds, a Sealed Room and One Big British Political Secret
How eight eminent voting scientists huddle together on polling day to produce the projection that counts.
At a secret location in London on Thursday, eight men will sit in a sealed room, hunched over laptops. They are Britain’s leading experts on the science of voting, and their mission is to produce the first authoritative projection of the day’s election result.
The exit poll, published as Big Ben, the bell in Parliament’s clock tower, strikes 10 p.m., has delivered shocks in the past two elections, heralding the first postwar coalition government in 2010 and an outright Conservative win in 2015 when the money was on another coalition. It is produced in conditions of high security, with those involved sworn to secrecy about the exact methods used.