Since all 18-year-olds were given the vote in
1969, there have been eleven general elections.
Technical point (skip this if you don’t like statistics).
If we asked a representative sample of eleven British people how they intended
to vote in May 2015, the margin
of error on the results would be +/- 30 percentage points. That means that if
50% of them said they would vote Labour, the actual figure for Labour support
across the population could be as low as 20% or as high as 80% – i.e. not a
very accurate estimate at all.
So when people put forward general rules for
rare events like elections, World Cups, and earthquakes, be sceptical.
One thing we know for certain is that not
only will the 2015 General Election break long set precedents, but it will also
be very difficult to predict – causing us pollsters plenty of headaches!
At an LSE seminar on Wednesday pollsters,
academics and forecasters had their say about the state of polling in advance
of next year. The forecasters presented their models and explanations, and
historical precedent plays an important role in many of those predictive
models. But do these precedents apply in 2015?
- There have not been two successive hung Parliaments
in the UK since 1910, while recent history in Canada, where they recently
experienced three in a row, suggests that once you’ve had one, it makes another
more likely. Many predictions and estimates point towards another Hung
Parliament here next year.
- The Conservatives are aiming to be only the
third Party since 1900 to increase their vote share after more than two years
in office, the last time being 1955.
- Labour too are trying to make their own bit
of history and become the first Party since 1931 to win a majority after just
one term in Opposition.
This all tells us then that whatever the
result, it will be something we have not seen in a while. What makes it even
more difficult to predict are the number of “known unknowns”.
While Simon Cowell claims to look for the
indescribable “X Factor”, it is exactly that surprise package that pollsters
want to avoid, because it makes accurately measuring it more challenging.
In 2010 we experienced “Cleggmania” where it
appears that the Liberal Democrat leader’s first TV debate performance
attracted a number of “bandwagon supporters” seemingly pushing the then third
party of British politics into contention for the second spot. Of course, this
never materialised and much like many of the X Factor’s winners, the fortunes
of the Lib Dems have spiralled downwards after a brief appearance near the top
of the charts.
In previous elections the Liberal Democrats
have benefited from increased, equal coverage during election campaigns and
have tended to increase their position in the polls compared with “peace time”
when they were often overlooked. It would be difficult to argue that they have
been starved of the oxygen of publicity in this parliament. Instead they are
suffering from the reality of being a party of government. They have had to
make hard decisions all governing parties have to make, but have not received
any of the benefits as they are still not sufficiently regarded as a credible
party of government.
With the Liberal Democrats being in the
inconvenient position of being in government, the Conservatives following in
the tracks of all governments before it and becoming ever more unpopular, and
Labour’s 14 years in power all too memorable, it is little wonder that we now
have a fourth dimension in British electoral politics.
UKIP, having passed the audition stages of
the local elections last year and the European bootcamp stage in May 2014 where
they showed their mettle by winning a national election, are now on their way
to the live finals of a General Election campaign. They have everything Simon
Cowell looks for: the plucky underdog, denied fame for years, and appealing to
the masses with a strong narrative. And they do no harm at all to viewer
ratings.
It is the new prominence of UKIP, a Party
which registered just over 3% of the vote in 2010 but now consistently outpolls
the Liberal Democrats, which is perhaps the biggest imponderable of General
Election 2015. It is fruitless looking to the past for clues to how well UKIP
will do in the future.
The disruptive effect of UKIP on the result
is probably the biggest unknown of 2015. Although there are political
conditions which are particular to Britain, this is part of a wider European
trend of division among the Right. However, UKIP, as evidenced at their conference
this week, are now shifting their battlefield beyond just ex-Tories and are
hoping to appeal to disgruntled Labour supporters too. UKIP have capitalised on
voter frustration with the status quo. ComRes’s polling finds immigration to be
the public’s top priority and yet Westminster often struggles to talk about it
in a way which voters find appealing. It follows then, that UKIP are the Party
the British public most trust on the issues of immigration. UKIP have certainly
added a certain amount of “X factor” into the 2015 General Election.
Many have predicted prematurely the decline
of UKIP – after all, history tells us that they have previously done well at
European elections and then disappeared. What we have learnt is that perhaps
history won’t be much help in looking at 2015.
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