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Showing posts from June, 2007

Results Confound Pollsters Numbers Meant Little In The End Were People Lying To Them?

Saturday, 24th March, 2007    - Richard Farmer   State Opposition Leader Peter Debnam, and anybody else hoping for a Liberal victory in NSW today, should get a copy of the Toronto Star of 28 June 2004 where those headlines appeared above a story describing how the Canadian Liberals won an election. As Stephanie Levitz of the Canadian Press Agency put it, "Canada's electorate appears to have confounded the pollsters. Weeks of speculation, number crunching and supper-hour phone calls to more than 25,000 Canadians over the last five weeks meant little in the end as the Liberals beat projections that they were headed for a sound thrashing in the election..." That Canadian election was a wonderful reminder of the power of the underdog effect and a lesson in why election watchers should studiously ignore the opinion polls. For weeks the Canadian pollsters and pundits were predicting a massive decline in support for the governing Liberal Party with the opposition Conserv