UK: Why Aren’t The Conservatives Further Ahead?
In any Country Risk analyst’s tool kit, opinion polls play a very important role. Finding a large enough data series for serious analysis though is often a problem. However, for the UK there is hardly a better treasure trove of information than Anthony Wells’ excellent website UK Polling Report, where he has collated polling data from 1983 to the present day.
Looking at the past two months of data brings up a rather interesting question. Why are the opposition Conservatives not further ahead? Their lead in the polls has varied between 8% and 22%, but the party is struggling to move its share of the vote much beyond 40%. A number of commentators have suggested that these leads will not be enough to secure an overall majority for the Conservatives after the 2010 general election. Niall Ferguson and Glen O’Hara in the Financial Times are but two.
Their article – Do Not Count On The Tories Winning Just Yet – rightly points out the mountain the Conservatives have to climb. The rise of the minor parties (the BNP, UKIP, the Greens etc), together with the pro-Labour bias in the electoral system (Labour seats tend to be smaller and have lower turnouts), and the fact the Conservatives are struggling in Scotland are all weighing on the outlook for the Tories. To this, the authors should really have added the huge number of seats the Conservatives need to win to take control of parliament. At the last general election, the Conservatives won only 198 seats, but need to take 118 more (after a favourable set of boundary reviews have created more notionally Conservative seats) to secure a majority of 1. Even in the 1997 landslide, Labour ‘only’ gained 147 seats.
However, with my psephologist’s hat on, I would like to take issue with the massive straw man set up by Ferguson and O’Hara – the observation that Labour managed to amass much bigger poll leads in the mid 1990s than the Conservatives are managing now. Wells’ excellent database lists the largest Labour lead at 39.5% in the Gallup poll of 30 December 1995, with Labour on 61% support, against the Conservatives on 21.5%, and the Liberal Democrats on 14.5%. In the end Labour had a 12.5% lead, and polled 43.2% of the vote.
How were the 1990s opinion polls so wrong? Firstly, the methodologies were light-years behind where we are today, and took no account of Labour voters being statistically much more likely to agree to answer a canvasser’s questions than Conservative voters. Since then polls have used ‘past vote weighting’ to ensure a politically balanced poll.
Second, the Conservatives suffered from a massive ‘spiral of silence’: simply put, there were hundreds of thousands of ‘embarrassed Conservatives’, who would not admit to voting for the party. Some pollsters now make an adjustment for this, and allocate some voters unwilling to give a voting preference to parties.
Now, turning away from why the Conservatives are ‘behind’ where Labour was at a similar point in the political cycle a decade ago, it is worth considering whether the Conservative lead is enough to secure a workable parliamentary majority. Wells calculates that the Conservatives should be able to secure a majority of 64 based on the current numbers. I would contend that there are a number of factors which will mean that the oft-bandied about 9% poll lead required by the Conservatives to gain a majority may not be as accurate as many think:
• In 2005, the electoral system was highly biased against the Conservatives. Labour scored just 3% more of the popular vote than the Conservatives but scooped another 158 seats. Not only has there been a boundary review since then, which has helped the Conservatives, but tactical voting may now be working against Labour, with polls showing more Liberal Democrats considering voting Conservative than Labour.
• The Liberal Democrats performed very poorly in their key heartlands in South West England in the June County Council elections. They lost control of Devon, Somerset and Cornwall, with the Conservatives gaining control of all three. This could open up opportunities for the Conservatives in the region at the next parliamentary poll.
• While the Conservatives continue to perform badly in Scotland (perhaps at most taking four of the seats on offer), this means that the Conservatives can look forward to bigger swings in the Midlands and Wales, which are very target rich environments for them, and where their lead is over 13%, or so. Winning a good majority of the seats in England, and making gains in Wales and Northern Ireland (on a joint ticket with the Ulster Unionists) would be enough to gain control of parliament.