But those are all examples of data collection working fine, though, and people not listening to the data because their anecdotes went the wrong way. FiveThirty

But those are all examples of data collection working fine, though, and people not listening to the data because their anecdotes went the wrong way. FiveThirtyEight predicted a 28.6% chance of a Trump victory: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/ https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/ This is a number far greater than zero - it is, for comparison, more likely than flipping two coins and them both coming up heads, or drawing a random card from a deck and having it be diamonds. Opinion polling of the 2019 Conservative Party leadership election showed Boris Johnson favored to win: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2019_Conservative_Party_leadership_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2019_C... Opinion polling on Brexit showed that it clearly could have gone either way, with a narrow margin between the two options: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_United_Kingdom_European_Union_membership_referendum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_United... I'm less familiar with Australian politics, but assuming you mean the 2013 election, opinion polls showed the Liberals were clearly in the lead: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2013_Australian_federal_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2013_A... If people look at data that says "28.6% chance of winning" and they choose to read it as "0% chance of winning," that's not a problem with the way anyone's measuring anything, that's a problem with people trying to treat data as if it's an anecdote.