Mr Ottewill - How he won a hundred pounds with ease
By Arthur Cheung (Yr12)
It was on 7 May 2015, it was the last general election without the participation of fanatical Corbynites. Two great pollsters in the history of the UK, Survation Ltd and Mr Ottewill made history its by predicting the Conservative Party winning the general election with about 37% of the votes or winning 310 seats in the 2015 general election . Yet what makes a good statistic and what makes a bad one, how come a survey of more than 20 teachers of Dulwich College failed so miserably (with the exception of Mr Ottewill) yet other professional surveyors also failed miserably? A survey/poll of the general election is actually a statistical model, its not the same as the real general election, where people voted in 650 constituencies across the UK each with a different voters turnout, there are also safe seats created by the simple-plurality system that creates safe seats which makes it difficult to create a statistical model base on different constituencies since sampling all the 650 constituencies is logistically difficult, therefore instead of a nationwide sampling, a much smaller sample is required to allow quick and cheap statistics results to be produced. After that the pollsters will weigh their data to produce a rough percentage of the votes received by the different parties and then calculate the number of seats ( due to the use of a simple plurality system the portion of votes received by the party does not reflect the number of seats in the House of Commons.) This article will explore what went wrong in the process of the creation of the polls and why the statistical models failed miserably. Firstly, the questioning method in use by most pollsters requires the voters to mention the party they supported, this method required people to reveal their political affiliation. For example, if a survey is conducted asking people directly whether they have murdered someone or not , the result will be obviously useless since people rarely admitted to a serious crime. The same applies to polling in the general election, yet a similar problem existed because it is known that people rarely admitted to be a Tory (Conservatives) since Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher controversial but successful policies lead people to support the Conservative Party without revealing their support. The use of online surveying and mobile surveying helped to mitigate
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