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The unpopular Conservative government led by the new prime minister is about to be ousted after more than a decade in power – that’s the unanimous verdict of opinion polls.
Almost every poll shows Labor in the lead, pointing to a stinging general election rejection of the Conservative government that last won a majority.
Then the actual votes are counted and something strange and completely unexpected happens. The Conservative Party defied all predictions and achieved the most unlikely of victories.
It sounds like a fantasy one of today’s beleaguered Tory politicians might conceive in their wildest dreams. This is actually a true story from 1992. John Major’s victory that year was a real surprise as he won a 21-man majority and pollsters’ predictions were wildly wrong. And now some conservatives think history could repeat itself.
With Labor now clearly in the lead, the outcome is unlikely. That would have to even surpass the astonishing turnaround of 1992.
Opinion polls at the time showed the Conservative Party trailing by an average of 1 percentage point throughout the campaign. Exit polls taken as voters left the polling stations came to the same conclusion, with Labor in the lead, albeit by a narrow margin.
Still, on April 9, the Conservatives surged ahead of Labor by 7.5%, securing their fourth successive seat in Downing Street. Their vote total of around 14.1 million votes remains the highest ever won by a single party in British political history.
Surprise of 2015
A similar thing happened 23 years later, when opinion polls showed the Conservatives and Labor generally evenly matched and predicted Britain was headed for the next coalition government. None of the polls predicted a Conservative lead of as much as the 6.4 percentage points achieved by David Cameron, who won an unexpected majority in 2015. Today, there is a real belief among Tory supporters that the polls have once again been wrong.
“Some people are questioning the methodology they’re using,” said a senior Conservative Party official, who said Labor was leading by more than 20 points in the polls. “Internal party polls show it is very close to the Redwall seat at 10 points, and in some areas it is only 5 points behind.”
Labor won a landslide victory in last week’s by-election, flipping sizable Conservative majorities in Wellingborough and Kingswood, but that scenario may not work out. But even these defeats can be explained under the Conservative Party’s more optimistic outlook.
Michael Fabricant, former Conservative party vice-chairman, said: I The result of the by-election had no effect on the Conservative Party’s chances of remaining in government. “Conservatives are staying at home at the moment, but if we see results, we can win,” he said.
Current Conservative Party chairman Richard Holden also consoled himself over the low turnout in the by-election, saying his job now was to get his supporters “enthusiastic” and ready to vote in the general election.
“Everything is for fun”
” [by-election] The result was not good for Labor,” said another Conservative MP. I. “At Wellingborough, we got about 100 points more than in 2019, when we should have been far ahead. 2019 was a bad year. At Kingswood, we got 5,000 fewer people than in 2019.
“If Starmer really has momentum, the numbers are going to be huge. The Conservatives are not participating.” The country’s most at-risk Tory MP, Bury North, a super-marginal seat. Even defender James Daly declared there was still “all work to be done”.
At the root of all this is a suspicion among some conservatives that the bleak picture of the nation painted by opinion polls is wrong. Skeptics like Fabricant don’t believe they know how people will vote in the general election in the coming months.
“People know this is a poll, not an actual election.” “Polling organizations try to compensate for that, but people like to manipulate polls by claiming to vote unilaterally to get their favored party to act differently.”
A former Conservative Party minister said: I He said he believed Labour’s support was “broad but soft”, saying: [lead] Support has begun to fall below 10%, making the election more of a contest than a landslide victory for Labor. Being asked your preferences today is very different than voting six months from now. ”
Labor leader Sir Keir Starmer is particularly hopeful. Conservative Party officials say private opinion polls show that he is unpopular with voters and that Labor as a party scores low on the “favourability index” (a factor not reflected in ratings in major opinion polls). said. Some people point out the instability of public opinion.
“I honestly believe Labor is leading in the polls,” admitted Conservative MP David Morris. “But power dynamics can move and change,” he said, pointing to the move towards David Cameron in 2015 and the significant defection from Theresa May in the general election two years later. He claimed that undecided former Tory voters could still return to the Conservative party. “What we’re hearing clearly is that for one reason or another, there are about 30% of people who are not sure how they will vote,” he added.
The Tory high command believes Labour’s recent woes could help, including the chaotic Rochdale by-election and infighting sparked by a U-turn over a £28bn green investment plan. .
And last week, there was further hope after all four published opinion polls showed Labor’s lead had fallen by at least three points.
Savanta’s poll showed Labor’s lead down seven points to 12 points, but its director of political research Chris Hopkins warned against reading too much into a single poll. did. He also questioned claims that 30% of voters were undecided, saying the figure was closer to 12% and stressing that not everyone would ultimately choose the Conservative party.
Can voters forget about trusses?
Nevertheless, the 1992 victory is in mind. But the debate hinges on whether interest rates and inflation come down in the coming months, and whether voters can forget about Liz Truss’ disastrous mini-budget.
Moreover, the Conservatives are in a much deeper voting hole than they were 32 years ago, and this time they are falling even further behind the opposition. The current deficit raises the possibility of another election campaign, which Tony Blair’s Labor won in a landslide in 1997.
But what if, as in 1992, the polls really were fundamentally wrong again? A survey of failures from that year found that around a quarter of the collective errors were made by Conservative supporters, whether in person or over the phone. concluded that this was explained by his refusal to reveal his allegiances in an interview. Additionally, the pollster was judged to have used a sample of constituencies with a majority of Labor supporters, a mistake repeated in 2015. Finally, the Conservatives benefited from very late support for them that was not captured in the survey.
This time, the party will do its best to make a late comeback. Is it also possible that true supporters of the Conservative Party are once again fooling pollsters by being reluctant to admit that they support such an unpopular party?
Shy Trees
Tim Bale, a political science professor at Queen Mary University of London, thinks otherwise. He downplays the theory that “shy Tories” are distorting today’s picture and points to significant changes that pollsters have made since 1992. Many polls are now conducted online, and experts such as Professor Bale believe that this increases the likelihood that voters will be more truthful. Among them.
“Internet surveys, which are so common these days, are less susceptible to ‘social desirability bias,’ where respondents hide their true opinions on a subject in order to make themselves look good to others. “It is considered,” he said.
Labor says it is confident and private opinion polls confirm it has a healthy lead. “It’s clear that people are really, really fed up with the Conservative Party,” the source said. “It’s also clear that people think we’ve changed, and we’re being recognized for it.”
But the party refuses to put numbers on its front page for fear of fostering complacency among its MPs, activists and supporters. “We treat it like level pegging,” the official added. “It’s difficult because there are a lot of members of Congress who spend too much time polling.”
Savanta’s Hopkins believes the Conservatives’ fortunes could improve. “For almost two years we have seen a lot of movement away from the Conservative Party through Partygate and Trasonomics,” he said. “If they can get some of that back, they could close the gap in the polls, but they still face an uphill battle.”
He warned that the party was also struggling to reconnect with voters due to its “inability to deliver on some of its policy promises and a general malaise and malaise with the Conservative Party”. “So many things are working against them that I think everything needs to go well for them to turn things around.”
Election expert Sir John Curtis, professor of political science at the University of Strathclyde, believes the polling “trajectory” is closer to the run-up to the 1997 election. “Polls overstated Labor’s position in 1997 as they did in 1992,” he said. “But with such a large lead late in Congress, repeating the mistakes of previous polls probably won’t be enough to close the gap.”
Professor Bale said voters who supported the Conservatives in the last election were wary because of the economic situation and “not all of them will go back to the party this year”.
“This is not 1992 – especially since Mr Sunak seems to have had far less of a public break with the previous government than Major – and Starmer is not Blair, so it is not 1997,” he concluded. Ta. “But it’s worth remembering that he doesn’t need to be Blair to win. Labor can win without being a Conservative.”