Monday 12 June 2017

THE ELECTION POLLING

The result may be a blessing in disguise. A final plea to the politicians to show how divided we are on Brexit and to negotiate the withdrawal carefully and on behalf of everyone, not just the 52% who were misled into voting to leave. The rest of us cannot change our mind overnight and our views matter too. We will limp along I'm sure as we always do but my money is on the final deal being signed by someone other than Theresa May. 

It seems we are becoming a laughing stock across the world but in the midst of the unfolding disaster, spare a though for Lord Ashcroft, the tax exile and billionaire supporter of the Conservative party and try to suppress a smile. He rather fancies himself as a polling guru and has run his own polling for years.

At 3 pm on election day, while people were still going into polling booths up and down the country, he released what he calls his final "model" (HERE). He claimed "if turnout matches 2015 [her majority] would be 78; if it matches the EU referendum just 52; or if everyone votes as they say they will, it climbs to 96"  How wrong can you be?

In a deeper analysis (HERE) he claims most voters who switched to Labour did do in the last few days and this may be true but they also gained a lot of young voters and former conservatives as well and the Tories shouldn't overlook this. Some Conservative MPs even seem to think the voters got it wrong (HERE)!  Amazing chutzpah.