Number Cruncher Politics is a political analysis and polling consultancy and blog site launched in 2014. The site is non-partisan and focusses on UK

opinion polling An opinion poll, often simply referred to as a survey or a poll (although strictly a poll is an actual election) is a human research survey of public opinion from a particular sample. Opinion polls are usually designed to represent the opinions ...

psephology Psephology (; from Greek el, ψῆφος, psephos, pebble, label=none) or political analysis is a branch of political science, the "quantitative analysis of elections and balloting". As such, psephology attempts to explain elections using the ...

, and

statistical Statistics (from German: ''Statistik'', "description of a state, a country") is the discipline that concerns the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of data. In applying statistics to a scientific, industria ...

analysis. It is perhaps best known for correctly predicting the polling failure at the 2015 general election.

History

On the eve the 2015 UK election, the site published a lengthy analysis of opinion polling accuracy by its founder

Matt Singh Matt Singh is an election and opinion polling analyst and founder of the website and polling company Number Cruncher Politics, based in London. Singh rose to prominence in mid-2015 for his analysis which correctly predicted the opinion polling f ...

, based on decades of polling and election data. The report suggested that, contrary to the close race suggested by opinion polls and forecasts, the

Conservative Party The Conservative Party is a name used by many political parties around the world. These political parties are generally right-wing though their exact ideologies can range from center-right to far-right. Political parties called The Conservative P ...

would win by more than six percentage points and could win an overall majority. In the event, the Conservative lead in the popular vote was 6.6 points, giving the party an overall majority of 12 seats. After the publication of the broadcasters' exit poll, the post containing the analysis attracted sufficient traffic to crash the website. At the

Scottish independence referendum A referendum on Scottish independence from the United Kingdom was held in Scotland on 18 September 2014. The referendum question was, "Should Scotland be an independent country?", which voters answered with "Yes" or "No". The "No" side wo ...

, the site was credited by

FiveThirtyEight ''FiveThirtyEight'', sometimes rendered as ''538'', is an American website that focuses on opinion poll analysis, politics, economics, and sports blogging in the United States. The website, which takes its name from the number of electors in th ...

with the most accurate regional prediction.

References

External links

Number Cruncher Politics
Psephology Polling British political websites {{website-stub