Portugal: Costa also defeated the polls
The final result of the elections in Portugal marked an epic fail of the polling companies in the country.
If he made a very big impression on the Portuguese elections that took place last Sunday (except, of course, for the wide victory of the Socialists) it was spectacular, one could make a discrepancy between the final result and the previous polls, especially the last days before the match.
The whole count predicted a very big derby for the first place between the Socialists (of the current Prime Minister, Antonio Costa) and the Social Democrats (actually center-right) of Rui Fernando da Silva Rio. Instead, the Socialists not only prevailed comfortably but also secured autonomy, something no measurement had predicted.
It is characteristic that in the last week before the elections, the polls that saw the light of day gave a difference to the limit of statistical error, while there was one that "gave" the (small) lead to the center-right. In any case, everyone expected a hand-to-hand battle and domination that would not include autonomy for the final winner.
The poll that saw the light of day on January 28, the last day of the election campaign, was sufficiently indicative of the general climate.
The poll, published in the weekly Expresso, gave the Socialist Party 35% and the center-right Social Democratic Party 33%.
In the end, the ballot box, which surprised everyone, gave Costa a triumphant victory with a difference of almost 13.8 points and the coveted, for him, autonomy that seemed until Sunday afternoon as a summer night dream.
Francisco Pereira is a reporter for CNN Portugal. The divergence, of course, did not go unnoticed in the country. He told us: " It is true that the polls turned out to be inaccurate. However, at the same time it seems that there was a last-minute shift from the two smaller parties of the Left, the Bloc and the Communist-Green Alliance, to the Socialists. Of course, the polls may have played a role in this.
It was clear, of course, that the Socialists were ahead. "The center-right has never come as close as the latest measurements showed, while of course the prediction that it could form a government together with smaller right-wing formations did not correspond to reality."
The fact of the ... inconsistency of the polls shows that the problem is not found only in Greece (typical in Greece are the examples of the 2015 referendum, the elections that followed, and even the recent elections to elect the leader of KINAL). Companies around the world seem to be facing serious issues in terms of their research methodology, which often leads to "poor" and particularly problematic performance.
