General Election Polling - completely off

[Rusty101]

Just been looking at the polling for mine and 2 neighbouring seats and I really do think it is way off the mark. I know the demographic pretty well and the prediction of Labour wiping out these conservative seats doesn’t really seem likely. It’s the shy Tory syndrome where people don’t want to admit that they will be voting for them. Anyone else feel the same when looking at the polling in their area?

www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/newseatlookup.html

Gordon Brown also did a huge tax raid on pensions, and sold half of Britain’s gold reserves off when gold was selling at a 20 year low.

You seem to be describing people who actually support Reform for their policies? That's not tactical voting, that's just voting for your first choice.

Edit- actually are we at cross purposes here? Reading your posts since, although you replied to a post about tactical voting you may not mean that.

Exactly, you're all totally clueless. You'd think you'd have learnt a lesson from Brexit but no, still wanging on about right wing nonsense.

Have to agree. It's the Owen Jones school of politics.

Clifton-Browne is proof that too many voters are tribal and will vote for a donkey with a blue rosette rather than think (red donkeys also apply...).

I think there will be a lot less tactical voting than you think in the sense you believe it will happen.

I think a lot of people who wanted Brexit, but are otherwise labour or Tory will see no option but to vote reform. And there are a lot of them.

So large scale tactical voting to get reform in, yes, but with the objective of keeping the tories out, not so much.

we’ll see on Friday. There’s nothing more to discuss really because it’s all over bar the shouting now.

Couldn't agree more. This country wants US-style low taxation and Scandinavian-style public services and benefits. That doesn't add up and until people understand it is or the other but not both then there is no hope of mature politicsl debate.

Tactical voting doesn't have to be aimed at keeping the Tories out though. People vote tactically against all kinds of candidates. For example, Labour were on the wrong end of some in 2019. There will likely be tactical voting against the SNP in Scotland, which in some cases will involve voting Tory.

40 years ago there were local elections.

Labour gained 88 seats.
The Conservatives lost 164 seats.

@fliptopbin 30 year ago I used to know a local Tory party chairman and he said that traditionally Labour voters didn’t bother to vote.

he knew. He’d door stepped them
and asked their intentions and tracked which houses did and didn’t turn out and he was right.

How did he track which houses did and didn't turn out??

This is a point oft repeated by people who know nothing about Economics.

They don't get that gold doesn't give returns just increases or decreases in value, and that the gold was sold off and used to buy assets that do bring in returns, and over the time since, have brought in as much as the value of gold has increased.

They also don't really understand the "raid" on pensions either and can't explain what it was when pushed, and why the government chose to do it.

With his BS ometer.

May have done, I don’t remember but I do remember the local party chairman saying you could rely on a lower turnout for Labour. They may have won despite that. But he’d done the doors, I hadn’t.

Your polling number gets ticked off at the polling station. You’re on a list. They know if you have or haven’t voted and they know from asking you on the door what your intentions are. Loads of activists driving little old ladies to the polling station etc…

We've had our conservative mp for years. I'd be surprised if he is voted out. I think the only banners I've seen baring 1 have been vote conservative

Or 14 years ! The Tories have been in power for 14 years with five PMs and their record is atrocious. Anyone who votes Tory clearly has no shame about the state of the NHS, sewage in our rivers, overcrowded prisons, crumbling schools etc etc etc.

But they don't give the information about who came out to vote to the political parties.

I've looked up mine, it's traditional true blue tory. Suggests that it will go Labour. The only thing that makes me think that this could be even slightly likely to happen are that

1. current Tory has resigned (true pants down ex public school type)
2. local tory councillor is standing as an independent because the party did not put him up
3. official tory candidate has been parachuted in from the north ( presumably he thought it was a safe seat)
4. the local reform candidate is a terrible specimen that may well gain far right votes. So, if it does go Labour, it will be due to a split vote amongst traditional conservatives.

You’re on the voters roll and you het crossed off the list when you present yourself to vote.
they don’t know who you vote for in the legacy of the cubicle but they know you voted.

the Tory canvassers noted the responses they got on the door and worked out how many votes they thought they’d get.

The party members sit there ticking you off the list. So on the day, in real time, they know.

The staff at the polling station are not party members, they also don't get to keep it.

Why is right wing politics something to aspire to, though? It might sound good in theory, but all it ultimately does is make society more unequal by making rich people poorer and everybody else poorer.

Thing is, whilst there are many disillusioned Tory supporters, who have lost confidence in Sunak so won’t be voting for him, most of them will not vote Labour, as if you’ve been a staunch Tory supporter previously, you’re never going to switch to voting Labour. I think the polls though can’t fully identify where these disillusioned Tory supporters are going to turn to tomorrow. So the polls just can’t be accurate.

The information got out, and they used to run around in cars picking up little old ladies who had said they were voting Tory but hadn’t got to the station yet.

@fliptopbin Even the Brexit result was predicted correctly

Opinion was divided, or recollections may vary ............ whichever way you want to remember it .........

Wikipedia: Online surveys, on average, predicted a "leave" win with a 1.2% margin, whereas those with a phone methodology had "remain" win with a 2.6% margin. All in all, 63% of online polls predicted a Leave victory, while 78% of phone polls predicted that Remain would win.

The Guardian: How the pollsters got it wrong on the EU referendum
It was a bad night for the opinion polls, with few predicting the 52:48 split in favour of leave

YouGov: The online polls were RIGHT, and other lessons from ..
Jun 2016 — Only polls conducted online correctly foretold that Brexit was a real possibility, and five other things we learned about opinion polling

BBC
https://www.bbc.com › news › uk-politics-38402133
Victories for Donald Trump and Brexit have confounded the pollsters again, after most got the 2015 general election wrong.

just a small sample .....................