Anthony King

The Tory lead is more solid than you might think

The Conservatives last won a general election in 1992. That was also the year when the opinion polls met their Waterloo.

issue 27 September 2008

The Conservatives last won a general election in 1992. That was also the year when the opinion polls met their Waterloo. The results of 50 nationwide surveys were published during that campaign. All but six showed Labour ahead, and they all suggested that the outcome of the election would be a hung Parliament, with Labour probably the largest party. They were all wrong. The largest Tory lead reported by any poll during the campaign was only a single percentage point. In the event, the Conservatives’ lead over Labour approached eight points.

To this day, no one knows why the polls came a cropper in 1992. Indeed, no one knows for sure why the polls went on to perform with only indifferent success in 1997 and 2001. To be sure, they forecast comfortable Labour victories on both occasions, but most of them — as in 1992 — exaggerated Labour’s share of the vote.

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