Obsession with polls

Some preoccupation with polls is inevitable, and indeed healthy, in the run up to a general election. The parties need to know where they stand, as do the electorate. Polls do have shortcomings- quite massive ones as it turned out in the 1992 election- but they are still useful indicators of opinion.

And yet there also appears to be an unshakeable obsession with pre-election opinion polls. We are bombarded with them. Polls often paint a confusing pciture. Depending on your political proclivities, you can console yourself by relying on the ones that support your view the most, albeit you may have to be rudely awakened on 6 May.

Given the consistently small difference between the parties, polls matter less in this election. We know that Labour would win, thanks to demographics, even if the Conservative stake in the popular vote was slightly higher. The only interesting polls would be ones that consistently showed a massive Conservative lead. My wish for this election has been made clear in another blog- this is a statement of fact not aspiration.

This is being billed as an ‘important election’ (as if newspapers, with an eye on sales figures, would call it anything else). For Labour, we are told it is an ‘anxiety election’, the anxiety not helped by the torrent of opinion polls. Yet the level of debate is lacklustre considering that it is such an important election. There is nothing but frustration for anyone seeking penetrating analysis of the issues before us. Blair, having taken us to war on a false pretext, must be hoping it stays that way.