Are polls vastly underestimating conservative voters?

(Image credit: Geoff Caddick/AFP/Getty Images)

The United States isn't safe from problems with political polling, if the election results in countries such as Britain, Poland, and Israel are any indication. In the past year, polls across the world have vastly underestimated right-wing turnout, in part because those "who refuse to tell you what they're doing are disproportionately likely to vote Conservative," John Curtice, the president of the British Polling Council, says.

"The industry has a collective failure problem. It's now a mix of random-digit dialing — that is, telephone polls — and internet-based polls based on recruited panels," Curtice elaborated to The New York Times. As such, polls in Britain during the last election greatly underestimated how many seats the Conservative Party ended up winning, warranting a hard look by analysts afterward as to where their methods went wrong. Likewise, in Poland, a candidate who was never ahead in the major polls ended up winning the election.

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Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.