Stephan Shakespeare: Who is driving the volatility in the polls?

First, a concession: I over-estimated Gordon Brown. I thought him a stronger politician than he has since proved. I thought his ‘bounce’ would be sustained longer. Had he announced a general election in the middle of the Labour Party conference, he would have easily beaten the Conservatives. But he proved weak, Cameron rallied, and of course now the tables have turned.

What is the true extent of that turnaround? Can the electorate really have moved from a double-digit lead for Labour to double-digits lead for the Tories? Has politics really changed that much? If true, then the volatility is quite extraordinary.

It may not be true. I have a pet theory about this, which I developed while polling in America around the party conventions of 2004. It’s a theory I’m all the more fond of because it’s almost impossible to prove.

As we all know, opinion poll ratings move sharply during the political conference season. There’s always a bounce in favour of the party in the spotlight, and under normal circumstances that bounce diminishes pretty quickly. But why should there be a bounce at all, when we know that people don’t pay much attention, and generally don’t enjoy what they see? Do people really change their mind as a result of some snippets of speeches on the TV and in the papers? And do they then change back when the snippets are gone? It seems inherently implausible.

My theory is based on the trickiest part of any pollster’s task, working out who will and who will not end up actually voting. When pollsters ask people how likely it is that they will vote, more people say they will than end up doing so. We can divide the electorate into three: those who know that they will vote (and do), those who know that they will not vote (and don’t), and those who say they will but won’t.

This third group, which I think is the cause of most of the volatility in the polls, is not necessarily a bunch of liars: many people feel they ought to vote, they think of themselves as people who do vote, but on the day itself, for one reason or another, they don’t actually do it.

These ‘would-but-won’t’ voters are less likely to take an active interest in politics. They are less likely to have a strong and settled view about which party they prefer. They probably have no view at all, but they don’t like to say ‘don’t know’. The easiest answer to a pollster is to reflect whatever they’ve just picked up from media.

I don’t believe that the media has a strong influence on actual voting behaviour (academics have tried to measure the strength of the influence but it’s just too slippery to do). I do however believe the media buzz has a disproportionate influence on those without real views who are called upon by pollsters to find a view pronto.

If that’s right, and I admitted earlier that I can’t prove it, then much of the volatility we’ve seen in the past few months is froth. Labour wouldn’t have won an election at the end of October by 11%, and the Conservatives wouldn’t have won it at the end of November by 11%.

Nevertheless, one might argue, the exaggeration has a consequence. It creates momentum. It makes a politicians look like a winner, or a loser. The froth therefore gains substantiality. The unreal becomes real.

There is a big danger for politicians here, when they take that appearance of momentum too seriously. We see it in another area which I (as a market researcher) measure and study, sentiment in the stock market and its effect on share-price. And here we observe a familiar pattern: when investors have become over-enthusiastic about the prospects for a company, and if the company then fails to deliver the real results, the share-price comes down with equally exaggerated effect.

That’s what happened to Gordon Brown when he dithered. The anti-reaction balanced the initial reaction. David Cameron must not make the same mistake. He will have to offer genuine advantages for the voter if he is to make the most of his undoubted upswing.

Comments

[Tony Makara]

Gordon Brown certainly got lucky during the opening weeks after his coronation. A number of events fell onto his lap and he was able to look fairly competent. People who don't follow politics on a day-to-day basis will have seen this and been, if not impressed, then at least assured. This was very much in the 'getting on with the job' image that Brown cultivated for himself. However public perception of Brown changed after he led everyone a merry dance over the election that never was. That moment was significant because it ended Gordon Brown's love-in with the media and the hacks became very annoyed that they had been cheated out of an election that they had been all geared up to cover.

Of course the role of the Conservative party in responding to all this should not be downplayed. David Cameron played his cards excellently and won people over with his honesty and genuine anger over the cancelled election. The very act of cancelling the election will have had a psychological effect on the British people too, suddenly they went from thinking there might be an election soon to then having to deal with the reality of facing another two years of Labour. Once Brown ruled out an election completely people realised they were stuck with Brown and perhaps then realised that they really didn't want him after all.

[Robin Young]

"Genuine anger over the cancelled election?" You must be a very gullible type, Tony. There is nothing very much genuine about Cameron (except his belief that an Eton education gives him a special understanding of evry child's educational needs), and the relief evinced by Messrs Cameron and Osborne when the Broonie Mr Bean made his disastrous wrong call was perfectly palpable.

[Tony Makara]

Robin Young, I can't see how being educated at Eton disqualifies a person from being able to understand the educational needs of state sector schools. Eton is a fine establishment that has served our nation well. Not everyone is in a position to attend such an institution, but that is no reason to despise though who could attend. As for Cameron and Osborne being relieved not to have the election, how do you arrive at such a conclusion? David Cameron was the one who called for the election in the first place as a way of Gordon Brown confirming that he had a mandate. It was Gordon Brown who didn't have the courage to face the British people and not David Cameron.

[Yet Another Anon]

Given that they are supposed to be a snapshot of opinion I would have thought the respondents were the ones driving it, as to why that's another matter!

[Patsy Sergeant]

Not that stale bit of envy Mr. Young, its as bad as this governments MP's eternally blaming their lack of proper achievment in education or health or anything else come to that, on the state of things as they found them in 1997. So how long do they need 25yrs? or 100yrs in power to actually ACHIEVE?