Polls don't make predictions, but pollsters sometimes do

I've seen various people pick up this article by Julian Glover today, so it probably needs some background. On Wednesday there was a joint conference with the BPC and the National Centre for Research Methods and at the end of the day the chairman put all the speakers on the spot and forced them to make a prediction of the election result (actually he asked them to predict the Conservative lead at the general election, but everyone apart from Nick Moon gave predicted shares).

The title of this article is a line that Bob Worcester likes to roll out at election time when he is asked the question (and in fact, Martin Boon from ICM prefaced his answer on Wednesday with it). Opinion polls ask what would happen in a general election tomorrow - apart from the final eve-of-poll figures when there actually is an election tomorrow, they don't try to predict what will happen in several months or weeks time. Wednesday's predictions are just the personal opinions of the particular pollsters who were there.

For the record though, as Julian reports, Nick Moon of NOP predicted an 8 point lead. Simon Atkinson of MORI predicted a tight 4 point lead. Everyone else clustered closer to a 10 point lead, the highest specific lead predicted was Andrew Cooper of Populus who plumped for CON 41% to LAB 29% (though Martin Boon went for a Tory score of "one point more than the next highest", so I suppose he actually gave the most Tory answer).

Martin's answer probably gives you the hint that these were not the most serious of predictions! As Peter Snow says, it was just a bit of fun. Before someone asks, I wasn't speaking so didn't get put on the spot for a prediction ;)

Anyway - for those anxiously waiting for the next poll, I'm expecting at least one this coming Sunday.