The image that will endure after this week’s parliamentary elections in India is not of incumbent prime minister Narendra Modi claiming victory in the world’s biggest democracy but of an opinion pollster breaking down in tears on live television for getting the result spectacularly wrong. When challenged on the India Today television channel about his company’s failure, Pradeep Gupta splayed his fingers over his face and started to sob so pitifully that the studio presenter handed him a hanky. Gupta’s company, Axis My India, had forecast a harvest of up to 401 seats for Modi’s party, which only managed to win 240 – 32 seats short of a simple majority – but it was not the only pollster to misread the electorate’s mood.
At least four other polling firms got it wrong too. Nor was it the first plebiscite in the world to leave polling companies with egg and tears dripping down their faces. Before the UK’s Brexit referendum in 2016, more than two-thirds of the total 168 opinion polls that were conducted predicted the majority of voters would opt to remain in the EU .
As it turned out, 51.9 per cent ticked the “leave” box. That same year produced what was probably the most sensational polling flop of all when Donald Trump was elected president of the US following forecasts that his Democratic Party rival Hillary Clinton’s probability of beating him was as high as 99 per cent.
Based on those opinion polls, if anyone had ammunition to malevolently fire off accu.
