**** Elections thread *****

[wufwugy]

You can't take the polling numbers as 100% accurate; they're only an estimate. Sometimes they're off because of systematic bias (bad poll-taking), other times because of random error. So if you don't know what the true % of Leave/Remain/Undecided voters were to begin with, you can't say anything really about what undecideds decided to do.

Okay, cool, that's true. My statements are assuming the polls are showing the general level of undecided. Within that frame, undecideds broke such and such percent. However, if we're assuming the polls are so egregiously inaccurate that they don't even show undecided trends, then I wouldn't make that argument. I would then make the argument that polls show close to little next to nothing.

[Poopadoop]

Okay, cool, that's true. My statements are assuming the polls are showing the general level of undecided. Within that frame, undecideds broke such and such percent. However, if we're assuming the polls are so egregiously inaccurate that they don't even show undecided trends, then I wouldn't make that argument. I would then make the argument that polls show close to little next to nothing.

They seemed to have been off in the case of Brexit but whether it was 'egregious' or not is open to debate. I think it was 7/10 polls that were outside the margin of error but an overall 2% error is not completely outrageous or anything.

The polls being "wrong" only caused a stink there because the result was so close to 50% and the polls just happened to be on the other side of the threshold than the result was. If the result was 60/40 and the polls had said 62/38 no-one would have gotten excited about the 2% error *. The polls are always going to be "wrong" to some extent, they're never going to nail it exactly.

* Edit: it's 2% error not 4% as I said at first - I'm tired.