Opinion Polls

Abstract

Apart from television, the most important new factor which has influenced elections in the post-war period has been the public opinion polls. No politician worth his salt is now ignorant of the latest state of the parties, as revealed by any one of half a dozen polls; and at closely fought by-elections the predictions of the pollsters receive incomparably more attention than the pronouncements of the candidates. At first the polls were used purely by the media, for publication in their reporting. But the political parties quickly caught on to their potential and started to commission private polls for their own use to plan their strategy and test their ideas (with the results kept confidential unless there is any benefit in releasing them). The private polls have been a feature of British elections for around 50 years, but suddenly came to greater public notice in 1997 when Labour’s campaign appeared to be more poll-driven than hitherto.

The history of opinion polls in Britain is told in detail in Nick Moon, Opinion Polls: History, Theory and Practice Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999) and (up to 1987) in Robert M. Worcester, British Public pinion: A Guide to the History and Methodology of Political Opinion Polling (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991). Both discuss methodology and the issues that opinion polling raises. See also Robert M. Worcester and Roger Mortimore, Explaining Labour’s Landslide (London: Politico’s Books, 1999), and David Broughton, Public Opinion Polls and Politics in Britain (London: Prentice Hall, 1995). David Butler and Dennis Kavanagh in their British General Election series invariably include a chapter assessing the impact of the public and private polls on each individual general election.