Will the Tories really win by a landslide?

[juneau]

Everyone seems to be assuming that they will, but will they?

They won convincingly in 2015, but TM is asking people to vote Tory in this GE to give her a mandate to take to Brussels to negotiate Brexit.

So how many of those 2015 Tory voters voted to remain in the EU? Because nationwide 48% of people did and those who voted Tory in 2015 surely won't do so this time, since it will be giving TM a mandate to do something they don't want? I am in this camp and planning to vote LD, because they're the only major party who are explicitly anti-Brexit.

So is TM heading for a fall? Or am I living in cloud cuckoo land and the Tories will get their landslide and we'll head straight for hard Brexit off the back of it?

1. I hope so.
2. No I don't think they'll win by a landslide.

But it's simply too early to say imo. One false move by any one party could bring a cataclysmic error for them.

I suspect it will indeed be a Tory landslide-the opposition is too weak and divided to be otherwise.

I will not be voting conservative but it won't make a blind bit of difference here-this area is bluer than a blueberry.

Hopefully.

What about how wrong polls have been lately though? They failed to predict a convincing Tory win in 2015, failed to predict Brexit, failed to predict Trump, etc.

Well if no one can be bothered to get out and vote for the opposition then yes she will win by a landslide.

So register to vote, then actually go and vote. Even if it's raining!

They won narrowly in 2015. An overall majority of 12 is not a convincing win. Labour had a majority of 179 after the 1997 general election.

The Conservative vote is generally more Eurosceptic than the nation as a whole. The evidence is that most Conservative voters who voted Remain accept the outcome of the referendum and will stick with the party. They will also be helped by the collapse of UKIP who got 12.7% of the vote last time round and seem likely to only get around half of that this time with most of their voters switching to the Conservatives.

It is possible the opinion polls are wrong but they would have to be much further out than they have been before if this is not going to be a big win for the Conservatives. Further, when the polls have been wrong in the past they have always overestimated the Labour vote and underestimated the Conservative vote. So, not only have they got to be wrong, they have to be wrong in the opposite direction.

Things rarely change much in the campaign but it is possible that something could happen that will be a game changer. But we currently have opinion polls showing the Conservatives with a 20%+ lead, indications of a Conservative revival in Scotland and rumours of a poll coming out tomorrow showing the Conservatives doing well in Wales. And, in the "best PM" stakes (usually a better guide to outcomes than voting intention polls) Theresa May currently gets more votes than Corbyn, Farron and Nuttall combined. As things stand we seem to be heading for a Conservative majority of around 140. So yes, I think the Tories will win by a landslide.

By the way, the opinion polls weren't as wrong about Brexit as people seem to think. They were pointing to a close result (which it was) with online polls generally suggesting that Leave would win. YouGov in particular repeatedly warned that the confidence in a Remain win shown by the media, betting markets and others was misplaced. Two of the three online pollsters predicted a Leave win in their final polls.

It is true that none of the polls were showing a Trump win but don't forget that Clinton won the national vote. She lost the election because she didn't win enough states.

But the most significant thing is that, as per my last post, for this to be anything other than a Conservative landslide the polls have to be wrong by a huge margin, far more than they were wrong in any of the other cases, and they also have to be wrong in the opposite direction to previous errors. That doesn't mean the polls today will be an accurate reflection of the final result. But it does mean Labour has a mountain to climb to prevent a landslide.

Thanks prh, informative posts.

Good points bridge. Best PM - yeah that's true too. I'm not anti Tory, generally speaking, but I feel all this 'respecting the will of the people' stuff is bullshit. Almost half 'the people' voted to remain in the EU and they are being tossed aside and ignored and it pisses me off. Of those who voted leave some now feel they were misled by the campaign (which they patently were), and no one at all voted to leave the single market, yet that's we're heading for.

Has the 'Brexit manifesto' been published in any shape or form? Genuine question.

Voting tactically to 'block Brexit' just seems ridiculous if there is no communication as to the extent of Brexiting or it is not clear.

No, no Brexit manifesto has been published. But even if it had it would be no more than a wish list, since every single thing has to be negotiated with the EU. So we're, once again, being asked for vote for something that it totally unclear. What does Brexit mean? What are we aiming for? What exactly are we voting to mandate (or not)? Nobody knows.