This week there have been two reports published into the failures of the 2015 General Election, one by the Labour party and one by the pollsters.
The Labour Party's report shows how far the party has to travel in order to be electable. Not by the eloquent way in which it describes how Labour had piecemeal populist policies, but no overriding economic plan. Or by the way in which it aptly suggests that they chose the wrong leader in 2010 and couldn't ever recover from that. Or even that Labour became a complete joke with the EdStone.
No, the report didn't tackle these issues. It said that Labour had let them be blamed for the economic crisis but it wasn't their fault. Ed Miliband was a great leader, but those nasty media types had it in for him. Or that their policies were great but most people didn't know about them.
Ostriches and sand come to mind.
Labour lost due to the horrible Tories, the nasty media, and I guess, the public's stupidity. Not a problem with Labour at all.
It should be remembered that only three Labour leaders have ever commanded a majority in parliament in their 100 year odd history. In my lifetime there has only been one, in which there have been three Tory PMs. The only Labour leader in recent times to be successful has been the one nearest the centre of the electorate and not on the left. This is where the public is. And if there is no viable centre, the public likes to dress to the right rather than the less.
Since the election Labour has moved even further left under Jeremy Corbyn. I guess Labour will have to wait for the next electoral disaster report.
The second report went into the reasons why the pollsters got it all wrong in the lead up to the election. This report was more reasoned and explained that the methodologies weren't really to blame. It also said that there wasn't much bunching of polls, although that is slightly hard to believe. Their main finding was that they hadn't sampled enough Tories.
Which when you think about it - is obvious, after all that was the outcome. But what they mean is that the voters they contacted - and had responses from - were more likely to be Labour voters and so were more represented. The theory is that Tories are less likely to answer the phone to pollsters and have less time to fill in online polls. That's probably a reasonable theory, but it's difficult to make adjustments, maybe they have to add more weight to the Tory voters. They already have to do this since the 1992 election fiasco. But it makes you wonder if the bias is so great smaller fluctuations will be exaggerated.
There's two ways joe public can handle these polls until any new polling techniques have been proven to tally accurately with election results. On normal voting intention polls, add three percent to the Tory percentage and subtract three from the Labour percentage.
Alternatively, if you just want to know who will win the general election for sure forget voting intention polls and look at the leader ratings, and who the voters trust with the economy. If both these are favouring one party (and they invariably do) then that party will win. This has been proven in each election since 1979 even in 1992 and 2015.
Maybe this is the last time to discuss the 2015 GE, but it's making me want to watch the election programmes again!
Squiffy.
