How accurate are the exit polls?

The 2019 exit polls have predicted that the Conservative party are going to be win the General Election by 86 seats. However, these are only predictions. BUzz news reporter Elliot Cooper took a look at the history of the accuracy of exit polls in past elections.

While there is some disagreement with the number of people that are included in the poll, some sources only putting this at around 20,000 voters in a selection of districts, they have  only been wrong within a small margin in recent elections.

Going back to the 1970s and the first commission of these exit polls they remained accurate right up until the  1990s, they have started to lose credibility.

In 1992 the polls predicted a hung Parliament but were wrong with a Conservative majority being rewarded.

The 2001 poll did not see these inaccuracies improve. It wasn’t until 2005 and 2010 that they started getting back on track again, predicting the results bang on.

In 2015 there were  some inaccuracies creep back in to the predictions with both the BBC and ITV being wrong by 22 seats . 

2017 saw an improvement on the accuracy of the results with the polls only being off by four votes.

If the trend of lowering inaccuracies continue with these polls there might be some marginal inaccuracies with tonight’s exit polls, which has predicted a 86 vote conservative win.