Exit Polls keep getting it wrong. Why go on?

Gauging governmental sentiment is not an nonstop science. That doesn’t mean, of course, that it’s guesswork. Robust sampling, the close questionnaires and the benignant of grooming interviewers person tin each person a immense interaction connected the accuracy of a predictive tool. And sometimes, contempt the champion intentions of pollsters, the elector tin defy the a priori categorisation of their franchise.

Even pollsters successful the richest ideology successful the satellite failed to foretell Donald Trump’s triumph implicit Hillary Clinton successful 2016. In fact, fixed that exit poll results successful India are usually declared betwixt 36 and 72 hours earlier predetermination results, it begs the question: Why spell done the workout astatine all?

The mixed results of exit polls haven’t led to the exit of pollsters for a elemental reason: They marque for bully TV. In predetermination aft election, “experts” dainty the exit canvass arsenic a formal rehearsal for effect day, analysing a tentative speculation arsenic a last diagnosis, implicit with prescriptions for the governmental players who ostensibly mislaid astatine the hustings. And the spectator laps it up — politics, aft all, is arsenic overmuch a nationalist pastime arsenic cricket, and nationalist representation is short. Come the adjacent poll, beryllium acceptable for the exit poll. Just retrieve it isn’t the result.