Jeremy's Den: An Dubhlachd Election

Four Days Until Doomsday
39th anniversary of John Lennon's murder and 28th anniversary of the dissolution of the USSR
Would also have been Jim Morrison's 76th birthday

People Are Strange 🔊
© Jim Morrison, 1967

The main recent event in the polling universe is of course YouGov's new Scottish poll, conducted between 29 November and 3 December and polling both Westminster and Holyrood voting intentions. Let's just say for now their Holyrood polling would return a pro-Independence majority and I'll come back to it after the General Election. YouGov's polls of Scotland have in the past steadily been the most 'SNP friendly' of all, be it their full Scottish polls or the Scottish subsamples of their GB-wide polls. This is not the case here as their findings are within margin of error of what Ipsos MORI found ten days before. So their data project onto a 10-seat gain for the SNP as I still rate Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath as a Labour hold despite the overall collapse of the Labour vote. But the Conservatives bagging almost the same vote share as in 2017 makes the SNP-Con battleground quite competitive and potentially uncertain. Here we have four predicted SNP gains (Angus, Ayr Carrick and Cumnock, Gordon, Ochil and South Perthshire) and four predicted Tory holds (Aberdeen South, Banff and Buchan, East Renfrewshire, Moray) decided by less than 4%. Where these seats go will tell whether we have a minor SNP success or a major one, and as always turnout will be the key, though I don't expect anything as bad as my earlier DoomSNP scenarios. Just to be on the safe side though, remember every vote counts until 10PM on Thursday.

The influx of new GB-wide election polls has slowed down over the last few days, which is quite surprising so close to Election Day. Only the now mandatory batch of Sunday polls delivered some fresh perspective. You have to wonder if pollsters think that it's already in the bag for Boris Johnson and that further polling is irrelevant. The day-to-day plot of voting intentions tends to support such views as it again shows Labour definitely underperforming when compared to the 2017 polls. This is something we have seen before this year and it only confirms two of the main points routinely raised by pollsters: the Conservatives have successfully managed to squirrel the Brexit Party vote away from their competitors but have probably reached their peak when current voting intentions match their actual 2017 vote share, while Labour still haven't gained back enough Remain voters from the LibDems and now need a more massive surge in four days than they achieved in 2017 over two weeks. Good luck with that.

In 2017 the Conservatives led by 21% on Dissolution Day and by 1% on E-5 (within margin of error of the actual 2.4% Tory lead on Election Day), Labour had closed the gap by 20% in 45 days. This year the Conservatives led by 11% on Dissolution Day and 11% on E-5, massively more than in 2017 and more worryingly Labour have failed to close the gap in 30 days. And the longer gap between dissolution and the election is certainly not the one factor that explains why Labour are doing so blatantly worse this year. Now there is renewed speculation that pollsters might fuck up as massively as they did in 2017, part of it bordering on conspiracy theories. Which conveniently overlooks basic facts: the very last batch of 2017 polls (those conducted on E-2 and E-1, 6 and 7 June 2017) got both the Conservative and LibDem vote shares right within margin of error. Only grossly underestimating the Labour vote made them look awful when a predicted 50ish-seat Tory majority turned into a hung Parliament. But if pollsters are wrong this year by the same amount they were in 2017, that would take the current Labour vote only to about 38%, still 3% short of their actual 2017 vote. And I definitely think this would possibly deliver a 2015ish result for Labour and not a 2017ish one. Better than current projections but still not enough to totally rule out a Tory majority.

Ship Of Fools 🔊
© Jim Morrison, Robbie Krieger, 1970

Today's Poll'O'Polls includes the last six ones, conducted between Austerlitz Day and Pearl Harbor Day by five different pollsters (SavantaComres twice for two different clients and delivering different results, Panelbase, Opinium, Deltapoll and the ever-present YouGov). Super-sample size is 11,287 with a theoretical 0.92% margin of error, and it barely shows any change from three days ago, with Conservatives leading GB-wide by 10% and by 13% in England. And it's not really a case of outliers cancelling each other out though they actually do. But rather every new poll shows barely any movement from the previous poll by the same pollster, whatever their supposed bias is; Even the Guardian has to admit it's too little and too late for Labour though some of their readers are still desperately looking for signs of life.

One factor definitely working against Labour is Jeremy Corbyn himself as Johnson still beats him roughly 3-2 on the PMability scale. Which is quite similar to voters admitting they like the schoolyard bully better than the headmaster, and that would never happen or would it? There's a lesson in this: it's more efficient to bumble your way through incoherent waffle-piffling than to give serious answers to serious questions. And the host would probably shout over you anyway if you tried to be the adult in the room, just ask Nicola and Jeremy (The Other One).

Now a lot will have to be said during the post-mortem of this election on how the media handled two hot issues: Labour antisemitism and Tory islamophobia. The Tory-cuddling media were so eager to smear Corbyn and whitewash the Conservatives that they did not care they were treading into very dangerous territory. First they made islamophobia look like a very minor offence and then they made an alleged 'Jewish vote' something of a reality as long as it hurt Labour, while the very concept of a 'Jewish vote' is one of the pillars of real antisemitism. They played with fire and will get away with it. Says a lot....

End Of The Night 🔊
© Jim Morrison, 1966

If the actual election plays out the way current polling predicts, the one real upset on Election Night will be the LibDems actually ending up with fewer seats than on Dissolution Day. Which proves one of the current common wisdom points about PM Jo: the more people see her, the less they like her and the ghosts of dead squirrels glance down at us from the hereafter with vengeful grins on their faces. Then we will have a 54-seat Conservative majority as my model projects, or possibly anything between a 40-seat and an 80-seat Conservative majority as other models predict on the same polling data. So Johnson would do better than Heath in 1970, Thatcher in 1979, Major in 1992 or Cameron in 2015. Quite a feat to write his children about, once he figures out how many letters he should send, for someone who reached his Peter Principle peak as an absentee editor for The Spectator.

Here we have 77 seats changing hands, which might sound like a small number compared to real tsunami elections. But not every election has to be The End Of Civilization As We Know It and a similar number of changes was enough to take Harold Wilson to Number Ten in 1964 or Margaret Thatcher in 1979, which was definitely not her landslide election, 1983 was. And again we have Labour here back to a 1983ish number of seats. The cartography of predicted gains and losses is again merciless for Labour with 21 incumbents going down North of the Red Wall and another 14 in the Midlands.

So don't expect any Portillo Moments in the wee hours of Friday The Thirteenth. And no Balls Moments either as most of Labour's frontbench are entrenched in deep sinkholes, and aye I still do love those mixed metaphors. Unless you count on some really upsetting upsets like Jo Swinson or Dominic Rabb being unseated, which would not be undeserved but is also not that likely. Then I guess this election will again prove rebellion and defection don't cut it with voters as none of the best known rebels who are still standing will be re-elected (Grieve, Gauke, Milton, Field) and neither will the most prominent defectors (Lee, Soubry, Leslie, Umunna, Gyimah). So those who chose to hit the road and head for greener pastures, be it retirement or the £100k-a-night have-dinner-with circuit, probably made the wisest choice. For fuck's sake even Bercow would have been endangered by an official Conservative challenge in true blue Buckingham.

Current polling would spawn 73 marginal seats and the alternate possible outcomes look pretty similar to what we had three days ago. And all pretty bad for Labour as they all mean some variation on Back To The Future. 1983ish on the median projection, 1923ish on the Con Max scenario and just 2015ish on the Lab Max scenario. Then the question would be: would Jeremy Corbyn stay as leader if the result was just as bad but no worse than what Ed Miliband achieved? Genuine question though I can't remember any case when a past Labour leader was granted a third chance at losing a general election.

Making the 'Con Min' scenario become reality would require slashing the Conservative lead to about 4-5%, slightly higher than the final 2017 margin because changes in voting patterns would work marginally in favour of the oppositions in a number of marginals. And once again we would have this loveable situation where PM Jo would face the existential dilemma between doing the right thing or getting the right car. Which she would have to solve in the time Huw Edwards would need to read out the exit poll, and we surely have no doubt about her final decision once she gets over the prospect of daily meetings with Voorhees Johnson as his Deputy First Minister of England.

My real regret this week is that we will never see the First Minister of England interviewed by Andrew Neil as he had Stanley send a note saying he can't come today, nor any other day for that matter though he found time for some entertainment shows, so Paisley Andy is preparing to pitbull an empty chair on Tuesday. Which I doubt will be enough for a 30-minute show but might be fun to watch for a shortish moment. Then all that will prove is that Johnson can be trusted on just one thing: avoiding any questions about his untrustworthiness. There is every reason to believe a fucking lot of people will have a rude awakening on Friday. But buyer's remorse and regretting not having voted won't help, now's the time to choose: get the fuck out to vote and kick out the Tories. Or else....

You weren't there for the zombie invasion in Finchmere
It died down after they were barred from the local pub
(Midsomer Murders, episode Send In The Clowns, 2019)

Jeremy's Den

08/12/2019

An Dubhlachd Election - E-4 Flash Update

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