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.
An SBI Holdings representative told Cointelegraph that the company had not filed any crypto-asset ETF applications.
Homelessness minister Rushanara Ali has resigned after reportedly hiking the rent on a property she owns by hundreds of pounds – something described by one of her tenants as “extortion”.
That was just weeks after the previous tenants’ contract ended, The i Paper said.
Four tenants who rented a house in east London from Ms Ali were sent an email last November saying their lease would not be renewed, and which also gave them four months’ notice to leave, the newspaper reported.
The property was then re-listed with a £700 rent increase within weeks, the publication added.
In a letter to the prime minister, Ms Ali said that remaining in her role would be a “distraction from the ambitious work of this government”.
She added: “Further to recent reporting, I wanted to make it clear that at all times I have followed all relevant legal requirements.
“I believe I took my responsibilities and duties seriously, and the facts demonstrate this.”
Laura Jackson, one of Ms Ali’s former tenants, said she and three others collectively paid £3,300 in rent.
Weeks after she and her fellow tenants had left, the self-employed restaurant owner said she saw the house re-listed with a rent of around £4,000.
“It’s an absolute joke,” she said. “Trying to get that much money from renters is extortion.”
Sir Keir Starmer said Ms Ali’s work in government would leave a ‘lasting legacy’. Pic: PA
Ms Ali’s house, rented on a fixed-term contract, was put up for sale while the tenants were living there, and was only relisted as a rental because it had not sold, according to The i Paper.
The government’s Renters’ Rights Bill includes measures to ban landlords who end a tenancy to sell a property from re-listing it for six months.
The Bill, which is nearing its end stages of scrutiny in Parliament, will also abolish fixed-term tenancies and ensure landlords give four months’ notice if they want to sell their property.
Something Sir Keir’s increasingly unpopular government could have done without
Rushanara Ali’s swift and humiliating demise is a classic example of paying the price for the politician’s crime of “Do as I say, not as I do”.
She was Labour’s minister for homelessness, for goodness’ sake, yet she ejected tenants from her near-£1m town house then hiked the rent.
A more egregious case of ministerial double standards it would be difficult to imagine. She had to go and was no doubt told by 10 Downing Street to go quickly.
MP for the East End constituency of Bethnal Green and Stepney, Ms Ali was the very model of a modern Labour minister: a degree in PPE from Oxford University.
In her resignation letter to Sir Keir Starmer, she said she is quitting “with a heavy heart”. Really? She presumably didn’t have a heavy heart when she ejected her four tenants.
She’d previously spoken out against “private renters being exploited” and said the government would “empower people to challenge unreasonable rent increases”.
She was charging her four former tenants £3,300 a month. Yet after they moved out, she charged her new tenants £4,000, a rent increase of more than 20%.
In an area represented by the left-wing firebrand George Galloway from 2005 to 2010, Ms Ali had a majority of under 1,700 at the election last year.
Ominously for Labour, an independent candidate was second and the Greens third. No doubt Jeremy Corbyn’s new party will also stand next time.
In her resignation letter to the PM, Ms Ali said continuing in her ministerial role would be a distraction. Too right.
A distraction Sir Keir and his increasingly unpopular government could have done without.
Responding to her resignation, shadow housing secretary Sir James Cleverly said: “I said that her actions were total hypocrisy and that she should go if the accusations were shown to be true.”
A Liberal Democrat spokesperson said: “Rushanara Ali fundamentally misunderstood her role. Her job was to tackle homelessness, not to increase it.”
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Previously, a spokesperson for Ms Ali said the tenants “stayed for the entirety of their fixed term contract, and were informed they could stay beyond the expiration of the fixed term, while the property remained on the market, but this was not taken up, and they decided to leave the property”.
The prime minister thanked Ms Ali for her “diligent work” and for helping to “deliver this government’s ambitious agenda”.
Sir Keir Starmer said her work in putting in measures to repeal the Vagrancy Act would have a “significant impact”.
And he said she had been trying to encourage “more people to engage and participate in our democracy”, something that would leave a “lasting legacy”.
Politics
Rushanara Ali: Humiliating demise for Labour minister after a most egregious case of double standards
Rushanara Ali’s swift and humiliating demise is a classic example of paying the price for the politician’s crime of “do as I say, not as I do”.
She was Labour’s minister for homelessness, for goodness’ sake, yet she ejected tenants from her near-£1m town house and then hiked the rent.
Politics Hub: Minister’s resignation as it happened
A more egregious case of ministerial double standards it would be difficult to imagine. She had to go and was no doubt told by 10 Downing Street to go quickly.
Rushanara Ali reportedly hiked the rent on a property she owns. Pic: PA
‘A heavy heart’ – really?
MP for the East End constituency of Bethnal Green and Stepney, Ms Ali was the very model of a modern Labour minister: A degree in PPE from Oxford University.
In her resignation letter to Sir Keir Starmer, she said she is quitting “with a heavy heart”. Really? She presumably didn’t have a heavy heart when she ejected her four tenants.
She’d previously spoken out against “private renters being exploited” and said her government would “empower people to challenge unreasonable rent increases”.
The now former minister was charging her four former tenants £3,300 a month. Yet after they moved out, she charged her new tenants £4,000 – a rent increase of more than 20%.
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The report about the Labour MP first emerged in the i newspaper. Pic: UK Parliament
A fragile constituency for Labour?
In an area represented by the left-wing firebrand George Galloway from 2005 to 2010, Ms Ali had a majority of under 1,700 at the election last year.
Ominously for Labour, an independent candidate was second and the Greens third. No doubt Jeremy Corbyn’s new party will also stand next time.
In her resignation letter to the PM, Ms Ali said continuing in her ministerial role would be a distraction. Too right.
A distraction Sir Keir and his increasingly unpopular government could have done without.
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