@Matt.GC[/USER], why do you feel that there has been no historical precedent for this election? Is that not the case for any election to some degree?
No, it isn't. For the following reasons.
1. The Conservatives have never
consistently polled as low as this, not only over the past 3 years, but during the campaign itself. They've polled as low as this before, but it's never stayed like that for such a sustained period of time.
2. A winning party has never won such a large majority on such a small share of the national vote as is being predicted.
3. The pollsters themselves are cautioning that, although they stand by their science, the variability is so large that a tiny swing either way could make a massive difference. There's no other election in my lifetime where so many seats could go either way on the basis of just a few thousand, or in some cases just a few hundred votes.
4. There has never been such a low predicted combined national vote share for both of the biggest parties.
5. Boundary changes. Although boundary changes are nothing new in the grand scheme of things, this is the first 'new world' election being fought where significant boundary changes have taken place. What I mean by the 'new world', I'm talking about elections held since the 2008 Financial Crisis. 2010 was an anti-labour and pro-SNP election. 2015 was an anti-Lib Dem and 'not forgiven Labour yet' election. 2017 and 2019 were about Populism and Brexit. 2024 is an extreme anti-tory election. 2005 was the last election fought on a 'who governs' basis, and I don't think that polling agencies have moved on from that time period in building their models.
That's not to say that tomorrow won't deliver a sizeable Labour majority, because it will. But since 2010, elections in this country have been predominantly about people voting
against rather than
for something. The Conservatives delivered quite a substantial share of the national vote in 1979, 1983, 1987, 1992, and even in 1997 when they lost. They never dipped below 30%. Bearing in mind they won 2019 with a high national vote share of 43.6%, the largest of any party since 1979, and a large majority of 80, the swing away from them being predicted is completely unprecedented. It's never happend.
However, Labour are now set to win a landslide with a vote share that could be as low as it was in 2005, where they won a majority of 'just' 66, not the treble digit+ majority being spoken of now. Another unprecedented moment.
We are in uncharted waters. I don't believe that pollsters, no matter how clever their MRP models are, have any basis for reliably predicting this result as I don't think they understand the reasons why there's such a dramatic change. To be fair, they're pretty much all saying as such themselves. Bearing in mind their models are made of demographic assumptions based on past behaviour. But I'd argue there is no benchmark. This is why they underestimated fears of Labour by Tory voters in 1992, and how they didn't understand the scale of the Lib Dem collapse and SNP success in 2015.
I've tried to factor that in. I could be completely wrong by this time tomorrow, but I think there's still a lot of old school fear among Tory voters of a Labour government, and many of them will come out tomorrow who previously said they wouldn't, and many others who have talked up Reform will put their X in the Tory box at the last minute. Labour on the other hand are not at all popular, and many core voters will either stay at home (I think the turnout overall will be low) or switch to Green, Lib Dem, SNP, Plaid etc and split the vote because they think Labour will win anyway so they may as well ditch any previous tactical voting allegiances and vote for who they want.