Pollsters scramble to explain how polls could be so wrong in three provinces

OTTAWA – Canada’s pollsters have struck out and are now scrambling to explain how their predictions in three consecutive provincial elections turned out to be so wildly wrong.

Strike three came Tuesday when Christy Clark’s Liberals came back from the polling dead to easily recapture government in British Columbia.

The polls were similarly wrong in last September’s Quebec election and the April 2012 Alberta election.

Ipsos Reid, the country’s largest pollster, conducted an exit poll in B.C. that it says explains why the poll one day before the election — which gave Adrian Dix’s NDP an eight-point lead — was so far off the mark.

Ipsos senior vice-president John Wright says the exit poll suggests 11 per cent of B.C. voters made up their minds in the polling booths.

But Harris Decima chairman Allan Gregg says it’s just not plausible to blame three consecutive polling failures on last-minute shifts among voters.