X-MR research activities

Principles

X-MR conducts and promotes our survey research using both outsourced interviewing and our own web platform.

We believe respondent attention and engagement are too precious to dissipate in long or complex questionnaires.

Our own research emphasises either very short transactions with respondents or exploiting in-the-moment opportunities such as QR codes on bus stops.

Research

UK General Election 2015

During late 2014 up until May 2015 we conducted continuous wisdom-of-crowds research anticipating the forthcoming UK General Election. From these results David Cameron's continuation as Prime Minister was never in doubt.

We published the first report of our work on April 16th 2015

We published an experimental constituency level forecast on the eve of the election, which had remarkable prescience in several respects.

EU referendum

We are conducting fortnightly polls of the expected outcome of the forthcoming referendum. Presently there seems little likelihood of a Brexit. For details, see UK European Union membership referendum

Labour Leadership election

We conducted weekly polls between the announcement of the candidates and the close of the election. Jeremy Corbyn emerged as the leading candidate in the second week and showed an increasing lead as the election approached.

This survey was especially interesting because the respondents were selected from the general population. A conventional poll would have been far harder to conduct because the electorate (Labour party members and affiliated supports) were a closed list amounting to around 1% of UK adults, with around 420,000 people actually voting.

For details, see Labour Leadership Election 2015.