Introduction

It's the end of April 2010. The UK's in the middle of what might either be the most eventful election in over a decade or just business as usual. The Americans will, at the end of summer, issue their first major electoral 'report card' on the Obama administration. Canada, the country I live in, is in a constant state of nail-biting, hand-wringing angst brought on by its dysfunctional parliament. In short, electoral politics are on the minds of many in English-speaking countries, and the pollsters, who regularly find different ways to quantify and interpret all this, are busy little beavers, releasing new polls on a regular basis.

This blog is an ongoing effort to discuss some of the results of polls, some of the implications of polls, and some of the downsides of polls. And, of course, not just the polls but ultimately the elections themselves they are supposed to predict.