Secret ‘bunker’ and 17,000 interviews: The science and security of the exit poll
It is the first big moment of election night. The exit poll is the moment millions tune in for a first sniff of the eventual result of the general election.
And in Election 2024 this poll, with its impressive track record, sometimes down to a margin of only a few seats, will, once again, be a key part of broadcasters’ coverage – including here at Sky News – on Thursday night.
The current model was devised in 2005 by Professor John Curtice and statistician David Firth and it has been consistently reliable, bar 2015 when the seat numbers suggested a hung parliament and David Cameron scraped a thin majority.
But for the most part, its accuracy has been dependable. In 2010, it correctly predicted the exact number of seats for the Conservatives.
Commissioned by the broadcasters – Sky, BBC and ITV – the fieldwork is carried out by IPSOS UK who will have interviewers at 133 polling stations around the country this year.
People who have just voted will be asked to privately fill in a replica ballot paper and place it into a ballot box as they leave their local community centre, church hall or station.
Michael Clemence, from IPSOS UK, says this and the scale are part of what distinguishes the exit poll from the many surveys that have come before it.
Exit pollsters will be at 133 locations this year. Pic: Reuters
“We’re going to be doing over 17,000 interviews on the day. And also we’re dealing with people’s behaviour. So we’re not asking people how they intend to vote.
“We’re talking to electors who just voted. And I’m asking exactly what they just did. So you’ve cut out the error in prediction polling.”
Researchers can only deploy to a fraction of the total constituencies in England, Scotland and Wales, so locations are chosen to best reflect the demographics of the country with an urban and rural spread.
However, many of the locations will be in marginal seats, where the swing between the main parties will be tracked.
The same polling stations are targeted year after year so the swing from the last election’s exit poll, along with other data at constituency level, can be analysed by those crunching the numbers.
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The data collected at the polling stations is sent back by interviewers to IPSOS UK at several stages throughout the day.
It’s processed there and sent via a secure data pipeline to the broadcasters’ statisticians and political scientists who are locked down in a secret location in the capital.
Phones confiscated in ‘the bunker’
“Our phones are taken away from us, there are security guards. So we don’t communicate with the outside world at all, we just talk to each other. So it’s a very strange feeling – as people are still going to the polls – already having a sense of what the result will be,” says Professor Will Jennings.
The Sky News election analyst and political scientist will be one of those inside that sealed and secret room on election day – and the key thing experts will be looking at is that change in voter behaviour.
“We’ll model the change in the vote at each of those polling stations, and we’ll try and look for patterns in that change and also particular characteristics of constituencies that might predict change and might predict what we’re seeing across the country,” says Professor Jennings.
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“We will throw a lot of different variables at the data during the day, whether it’s the percentage of the local constituency that we think voted leave in the referendum, the number of people in working class jobs, the number of people who own a car, for example, it could be anything,” adds Professor Jennings.
“And we’ll try just to look for patterns in that data to explain as much variation as possible so that we know that our estimates are as reliable as they can be.”
By 10pm their work is done – and the fruit of that data gathering and analysis – the first real glimpse of the electorate’s verdict – is being digested and picked apart.
The new trade tariffs announced by US President Donald Trump may place added pressure on the Bitcoin mining ecosystem both domestically and globally, according to one industry executive.
While the US is home to Bitcoin (BTC) mining manufacturing firms such as Auradine, it’s still “not possible to make the whole supply chain, including materials, US-based,” Kristian Csepcsar, chief marketing officer at BTC mining tech provider Braiins, told Cointelegraph.
On April 2, Trump announced sweeping tariffs, imposing a 10% tariff on all countries that export to the US and introducing “reciprocal” levies targeting America’s key trading partners.
Community members have debated the potential effects of the tariffs on Bitcoin, with some saying their impact has been overstated, while others see them as a significant threat.
Tariffs compound existing mining challenges
Csepcsar said the mining industry is already experiencing tough times, pointing to key indicators like the BTC hashprice.
Hashprice — a measure of a miner’s daily revenue per unit of hash power spent to mine BTC blocks — has been on the decline since 2022 and dropped to all-time lows of $50 for the first time in 2024.
According to data from Bitbo, the BTC hashprice was still hovering around all-time low levels of $53 on March 30.
Bitcoin hashprice since late 2013. Source: Bitbo
“Hashprice is the key metric miners follow to understand their bottom line. It is how many dollars one terahash makes a day. A key profitability metric, and it is at all-time lows, ever,” Csepcsar said.
He added that mining equipment tariffs were already increasing under the Biden administration in 2024, and cited comments from Summer Meng, general manager at Chinese crypto mining supplier Bitmars.
Source: Summer Meng
“But they keep getting stricter under Trump,” Csepcsar added, referring to companies such as the China-based Bitmain — the world’s largest ASIC manufacturer — which is subject to the new tariffs.
Trump’s latest measures include a 34% additional tariff on top of an existing 20% levy for Chinese mining imports. In response, China reportedly imposed its own retaliatory tariffs on April 4.
BTC mining firms to “lose in the short term”
Csepcsar also noted that cutting-edge chips for crypto mining are currently massively produced in countries like Taiwan and South Korea, which were hit by new 32% and 25% tariffs, respectively.
“It will take a decade for the US to catch up with cutting-edge chip manufacturing. So again, companies, including American ones, lose in the short term,” he said.
Source: jmhorp
Csepcsar also observed that some countries in the Commonwealth of Independent States region, including Russia and Kazakhstan, have been beefing up mining efforts and could potentially overtake the US in hashrate dominance.
Related: Bitcoin mining using coal energy down 43% since 2011 — Report
“If we continue to see trade war, these regions with low tariffs and more favorable mining conditions can see a major boom,” Csepcsar warned.
As the newly announced tariffs potentially hurt Bitcoin mining both globally and in the US, it may become more difficult for Trump to keep his promise of making the US the global mining leader.
Trump’s stance on crypto has shifted multiple times over the years. As his administration embraces a more pro-crypto agenda, it remains to be seen how the latest economic policies will impact his long-term strategy for digital assets.
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Cryptocurrency exchange OKX is under renewed regulatory scrutiny in Europe after Maltese authorities issued a major fine for violations of Anti-Money Laundering (AML) laws.
Malta’s Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit (FIAU) fined Okcoin Europe — OKX’s Europe-based subsidiary — 1.1 million euros ($1.2 million) after detecting multiple AML failures on the platform in the past, the authority announced on April 3.
While admitting that OKX has significantly improved its AML policies in the past 18 months, the authority “could not ignore” its past compliance failures from 2023, “some of which were deemed to be serious and systematic,” the FIAU notice said.
OKX was among the first crypto exchanges to receive a license under Europe’s new Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation via its Malta hub in January 2025.
The news of the $1.2 million penalty in Malta came after Bloomberg in March reported that European Union regulators were probing OKX for laundering $100 million in funds from the Bybit hack.
Bybit CEO Ben Zhou previously claimed that OKX’s Web3 proxy allowed hackers to launder about $100 million, or 40,233 Ether (ETH), from the $1.5 billion hack that occurred in February.
This is a developing story, and further information will be added as it becomes available.
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Authorities in the US state of Massachusetts continue targeting unlawful cryptocurrency market practices, with a local court fining crypto financial services firm CLS Global.
A federal court in Boston on April 2 sentenced CLS Global on criminal charges related to fraudulent manipulation of crypto trading volume, according to an announcement from the Massachusetts US Attorney’s Office.
In addition to a $428,059 fine, the court prohibited CLS Global from offering services in the US for a probation period of three years.
CLS Global, a crypto market maker registered in the United Arab Emirates, in January pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit market manipulation and one count of wire fraud.
CLS agreed to manipulate the FBI’s “trap token” NexFundAI
The charges against CLS Global followed an undercover law enforcement operation involving NexFundAI, a token created by the FBI as part of a sting operation in May 2024.
CLS Global was among at least three firms that took the FBI’s bait and agreed to provide “market maker services” for NexFundAI, including a fraudulent scheme to attract investors to purchase the token.
In October 2024, the Securities and Exchange Commission announced fraud charges against CLS and its employee, Andrey Zhorzhes. The US securities regulator also filed complaints against two other NexFundAI manipulators, Hong Kong-linked ZM Quant Investment and Russia-linked Gotbit Consulting.
CLS Global’s profile
According to CLS Global CEO Filipp Veselov, the company was founded in 2017 to fill in a “huge gap in the market for high-quality market-making solutions and trading consulting.”
Prior to CLS, Veselov worked at the Russian cryptocurrency exchange platform Latoken, which is advertised as a “global digital asset exchange” and has about 370,000 followers on X.
The CLS team also includes chief revenue officer Pavel Singaevskii, who previously served as sales manager at Stex, a crypto platform that reportedly ceased operations without warning in 2023.
Source: CLS Global
According to CLS Global’s X page, the platform continues operating and has more than 110,000 followers at the time of publication.
How much wash trading is in crypto?
Wash trading is an illegal practice involving artificially inflating trading volume by repeatedly buying and selling the same asset, generating a misleading perception of demand.
According to a January 2025 report by the US blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis, the crypto market has at least $2.6 billion in estimated wash traded volumes, or just about 2% of total daily crypto trading volumes, as reported by CoinGecko.
Estimated wash trade volume in crypto. Source: Chainalysis
Related: Russian Gotbit founder strikes $23M plea deal with US prosecutors
Some studies indicate that wash trading makes up a bigger share of the crypto market.
In 2022, the US National Bureau of Economic Research reported that illegal wash trading may account for as much as 70% of average trading volumes on unregulated exchanges.
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