Federal election 2019: How the polls got it so wrong

While plenty of pundits — this one included — have their faces covered in egg, the pollsters also will have to look at what went wrong, writes Dennis Atkins.

WHILE plenty of pundits — this one included — have their faces covered in egg, the pollsters also will have to look at what went wrong.

So many polls and so far from the result on the night.

Even the gold standard of Australian polling, Newspoll, looks to have been out by almost 2 per cent on the two-party-preferred vote.

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Newspoll had the Coalition’s primary vote a point lower than it was late on Saturday night — and that gap might grow with the prepoll counting — and Labor’s primary was a much bigger three points lower than the last poll.

Our polling, conducted by YouGov/Galaxy, was out in more seats than it was right and the primary vote was usually off by a point or two.

The Fairfax/Channel 9 Ipsos poll was closer when it came to the Labor primary — they found 33 per cent, which looks like where it will be when it’s all done and dusted — while they were at least a point down when it came to reading the Coalition first preferences.

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What none of these polls had a good handle on was the resurgence of One Nation.

The YouGov/Galaxy polls came closest but they were often 10 per cent or more short of where Pauline Hanson’s party has ended up.

Perhaps polling as it is presently conducted is not capable of measuring an atomised electorate where as many as five or six right-of-centre parties — all of whom seem to be attaching themselves to the Coalition through preferences — are in the field.

Just as the British polling industry had to have a searching post mortem after it completely misread the 2015 national elections there, Australian pollsters will have to go back over what they did and where they got it wrong — as well as the occasional instance where they got it right.