I am slightly intrigued that there hasn’t been much debate (that I’ve seen) about how wrong the option polls were in terms of percentage gap between.
It didn’t ultimately (fortunately) matter but the ‘Labour 20 points ahead’ up to a day or to before the election was basically halved in the actual vote.
Not really. People had a better understanding of the electoral system so voted for the party most likely to beat the Conservative candidate in their area. We’ve seen many example of this on the Gasroom alone.
This led many who wanted a Labour government to vote for a different party. Only PR would give you a true idea of each party’s true support.
Tactical voting isn’t the answer to the vote share question - non-Labour supporters will have voted Labour tactically as well as Labour supporters voting tactically for other parties.
I have read that the explanation for at least some of the difference is that the polls express the vote share in Eng/Scot/Wales, and the overall vote share result includes NI where none of the mainland UK parties stand.
Tories stood in 4 of the 18 NI seats (fared badly in all), but the relatively small size of NI to rest of UK, about 2 or 3% I think, wouldn’t sway the overall percentages much.
Opinion polls are tricky, you can't ask everyone, it's very difficult to get a representative set to survey and even in groups that look similar demographically they won't all have the same experiences or opinions, not all those you ask tell the truth, people who are likely to even answer the question are likely to be a set all on their own, and not all have decided.
We don't need better polls, we need better politicians and better media.
Comments
Whereas amusingly, the toad that is Rees-Mogg is claiming that Tory voters left the party when Johnson was forced out. Awful shame.
New Poll
Lab 405
Con 154
Lib 56
Ref 4
No chance Con are getting anywhere near that.
Well, they got over 100 seats........but we'll take it!
Come on England!!
I am slightly intrigued that there hasn’t been much debate (that I’ve seen) about how wrong the option polls were in terms of percentage gap between.
It didn’t ultimately (fortunately) matter but the ‘Labour 20 points ahead’ up to a day or to before the election was basically halved in the actual vote.
Not really. People had a better understanding of the electoral system so voted for the party most likely to beat the Conservative candidate in their area. We’ve seen many example of this on the Gasroom alone.
This led many who wanted a Labour government to vote for a different party. Only PR would give you a true idea of each party’s true support.
The very notion of "tactical voting" is evidence enough that the electoral system is not fit for purpose
And I'm speaking as someone who voted tactically
Tactical voting isn’t the answer to the vote share question - non-Labour supporters will have voted Labour tactically as well as Labour supporters voting tactically for other parties.
I have read that the explanation for at least some of the difference is that the polls express the vote share in Eng/Scot/Wales, and the overall vote share result includes NI where none of the mainland UK parties stand.
Tories stood in 4 of the 18 NI seats (fared badly in all), but the relatively small size of NI to rest of UK, about 2 or 3% I think, wouldn’t sway the overall percentages much.
Happy to be corrected! It did seem unlikely to me that polls wouldn’t already have factored this in given they do this for a living.
I put it down to the quiet tories. An awful lot of the people who vote tory don’t admit to doing so for obvious reasons.
I put it down to a lot of tory voters in 2019 not voting
Also a lot of them likely died during covid.
Opinion polls are tricky, you can't ask everyone, it's very difficult to get a representative set to survey and even in groups that look similar demographically they won't all have the same experiences or opinions, not all those you ask tell the truth, people who are likely to even answer the question are likely to be a set all on their own, and not all have decided.
We don't need better polls, we need better politicians and better media.