The good, the bad and the ugly: How plausible are opinion polls?

Following the outcome of the August 2017 General Election, a mixture of anger and contempt has been showered on the pollsters and their poll results by all and sundry across the political divide. But arguably, election polls still remain an important source of political information in all modern democracies.

The margin difference in the poll results for the final survey done days before the Election Day between the two major pollsters in Kenya raised questions on the credibility of either of two pollsters and sought for more clarifications on the methodologies and sampling done.