Leonid Bershidsky, Columnist

The Non-Poll That Got the U.K. Vote Right

The YouGov model used big data and was tailored to the British system. The rest of the world should take note.

June 9, 2017 at 12:23 PM UTC

Leonid Bershidsky, formerly Bloomberg Opinion’s Europe columnist, is a member of the Bloomberg News Automation Team. He recently published Russian translations of George Orwell’s “1984” and Franz Kafka’s “The Trial.”

Maybe he knew.
Photographer: Jason Alden/Bloomberg

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Once again, well-informed people, including British politicians, are surprised by an election result because they put too much trust in traditional polls. It's time to get smarter about assessing voter preferences. The tools are there for those who want them.

On the eve of Thursday's election, U.K. newspapers and many outside observers expected a Conservative Party victory. Even a 100-seat majority in the 650-seat parliament was still being discussed. That's because both polls and prediction markets signaled such an outcome. The Financial Times's polling average showed that Prime Minister Theresa May's Conservatives would win 44 percent of the vote to 36 percent for Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party. On Wednesday, Betfair oddsmakers had the Conservatives at 2 to 9 to win a majority and no majority at 5 to 1. On the surface, there was every reason to expect success for May's plan to get a strong mandate for her party.