Other factors to add to the mix:
1. Turnout, not just how many voted but how many of a party's core voters went to the polls.
2. Who the media endorsed, particularly the tabloids.
3. The implications of an EU referendum, irrespective of the outcome, were downplayed. So much for learning the lessons of the implications of Scotland's referendum, irrespective of the outcome.
4. Late swings were likely influenced by polls themselves being published.
5. First-time voters voting or not.
But much can also come down to the weather or sporting results in terms of how people are feeling that day or that week. Did Cameron's response to Nepal's earthquake make him appear to be more Prime Ministerial or not? So many constituencies were won by small percentages and Labour appears to have increased their overall vote percentage more than the Tories increased theirs. When Clegg can still win his seat and the Tories can still win a seat in Scotland, a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil can cause a political tornado in Skegness.
Ilan
From: R Johnston <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Friday, May 8, 2015 5:57 AM
Subject: Re: [CRIT-GEOG-FORUM] election
London didn't shift to the right as much as the rest of England - and UKIP did very poorly there! (And the working class is not being squeezed out of London)
The pollsters who designed the exit poll got it right
Possible reasons
1. 'Spiral of silence' - Conservative supporters more likely to 'lie' in polls
2. Many undecideds till very late and majority went to the right
3. Very late swings - as in 1992
4. The fear factor - especially Cameron's 'Vote Labour get the SNP'
More?
On 8 May 2015 at 10:42, Simon P J Batterbury <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
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 BatterburyVisiting 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
--
Professor RON JOHNSTON, FAcSS, FBA, OBESchool of Geographical SciencesUniversity of BristolBristol BS8 1SS+44(0)117 928 [log in to unmask]://www.bris.ac.uk/geography/people/ron-j-johnston
http://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?http://www.mendeley.com/profiles/ron-johnston/
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