Amsro will be approaching the media organisations and other clients who commission political polling to participate in the review and will also ask the companies doing the polling to be involved. The review will start this week by establishing the terms of reference and forming a review panel. It is expected to release its report in July.

Craig Young, Amsro president, said: “As the election results started to roll in on Saturday night, a lot of Australians would have been asking the question ‘How could all of the polling companies call the Federal Election result incorrectly?’

“It is important that polling companies take this opportunity to improve their collective accuracy, because nowadays accurate polling underpins modern well-functioning democracy. It’s also important for the credibility of the polling companies, as well as the wider market research industry, that the public has confidence in the results of the major polls,” he said. 

Young also pointed to the need to explore whether access to a single, comprehensive, national sample source for telephone interviewing, such as the Integrated Public Number Database, should be available to the industry. 

Simon Wake, Ipsos CEO, said: “We welcome the review and as an Amsro member company we look forward to participating. While our published figures on the two party preferred outcome did not accurately predict the final outcome, they were within the poll’s margin of error. We do, however, believe it is important we do better in future.”