True facts

Everyone presumably pays for accurate polling even if it shows them losing because how else can they adjust strategy unless they are in possession of the true facts. Now 3 failed polling predictions in 3 major Anglo democracies raise the question of how they could be so wrong?

David Cameron called the Brexit referendum confident Remain would win. The Hillary Clinton victory fireworks were already laid out. The Australian bookies had already paid those who had bet on Labor to win. Then the unthinkable happened. The sure thing didn’t happen.

Just as historians will forever wonder why the Titanic’s lookouts didn’t see the iceberg so also will political scientists wonder at how pollsters, presumably in honest search of the true facts, with vast sampling resources at their disposal, got it so totally wrong.