May 1st Elections in England. Beware Ephology opinion polls
The late socialist historian E P Thompson wrote the following on opinion polls in the New Reasoner in 1959 (the NR went on to be part of New Left Review from 1960)
A psephologist is a man employed by the mass media to research into what people think the mass media has told them to think. An ephologist is a man employed by the ‘Observer’ or BBC to interpret the results of psephology and who makes an ephing good thing out of it
Opinion polls were still in their infancy 65 years ago and today regular updates from YouGov and other appear. While based on surveys of voters they can tell us little about what is actually happening on the ground in Constituencies.
Historically YouGov polls used to favour the Tories. However YouGov is now a significant commercial polling organisation and deliberately skewed political polls are bad for business.
Recently More in Common polls associated with Luke Tryl are often outliers, looking as if whatever questions are asked of respondents are designed to get not the most accurate results but the most eye catching ones
My prediction based on ad hoc polling in meetings, pubs and shops is that turnout will be low.
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