Can any political geographers tell us why the UK pollsters got the election results so wrong?

 

I was at a big lecture by Mike Savage last night in Brussels on ‘class’ in Britain, and his multivariate reworking on the concept, which follows a massive BBC poll on class a couple of years ago, suggested opportunity and inheritance increasingly define class position defined in terms of ‘capitals’, and redefinitions of traditional Labour-voting working classes as well.

 

With wealth now so concentrated in London and its hinterland, some shifts to the right there may have been expected. But to the whole of England? The Belgian papers are calling it a victory for the conservateurs over the travaillistes but many working classes, increasingly non-white, actually vote Tory (at least where I grew up in suburban London)

 

Dr. Simon Batterbury

Visiting Reseach Fellow, | Brussels Centre for Urban Studies | Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Belgium. (community bike workshops in Europe, 10 March-15 June 2015  https://bikeworkshopsresearch.wordpress.com)

 

Associate Professor| School of Geography | 221 Bouverie St  (rm L2.33) | University of Melbourne, 3010 VIC, Australia.   +61 (0)3 8344 9319  simonpjb @ unimelb.edu.au | http://www.simonbatterbury.net