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Were the Polls Wrong about the Lib Dems All Along?

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Political Communication in Britain
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Abstract

Opinion polls in modern elections serve several purposes. From the amount of attention that tends to be paid after the election to analysing the accuracy of the final ‘predictions’, it might seem that this rather trivial game of trying to give the newspapers news of the result a few hours ahead of the vote-counting is the only important one. But of course it is not.

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References

  • Boon, M. and Curtice, J. (2010) ‘General Election 2010: Did the opinion polls flatter to deceive?’, http://www.research-live.com/comment/general-election-2010-did-the-opinion-polls-flatter-to-deceive?/4003088.article, accessed 7 December 2010.

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  • Wells, A. (2010) ‘Why the polls got the Lib Dems wrong in 2010’, blog post 10 October 2010, http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/archives/2831, accessed 7 December 2010.

  • Whiteley, P., Clarke, H., Sanders, D. and Stewart, M. (2010) ‘Polling and forecasting the general election of 2010’, International Journal of Market Research, 52: 687–91.

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© 2011 Simon Atkinson and Roger Mortimore

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Atkinson, S., Mortimore, R. (2011). Were the Polls Wrong about the Lib Dems All Along?. In: Wring, D., Mortimore, R., Atkinson, S. (eds) Political Communication in Britain. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230305045_6

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