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During 23 years with the BBC, and a 40 year journalistic career (when he was trained to use clear and simple language, avoiding jargon), our Editor, Welshman Phil Parry has covered innumerable elections (indeed his first television interview was with a Welsh MP during the 1987 campaign), so information from surveys was always crucial, but now comes major questions about the effectiveness of polling companies after they over-estimated Labour’s success in the General Election (GE) massively, and failed to predict Plaid Cymru’s (Plaid’s) victory in Caerfyrddin.
Labour did extremely well, but according to the polling organisations they should have done even better.
Around 17 voting-intention polls were conducted immediately before General Election (GE) day, and they suggested that Labour would enjoy an 18-percentage-point lead over the Conservatives.
In fact once the ballots had been counted, Labour’s share of the vote was just 10.3 points ahead of the Tories’.
This was the biggest miss since the GE in 1992.
As the GE was described in the media with the words that it was “a staging post in the far longer trek towards the next Senedd election in 2026″, we are likely to see many more polls in the months ahead, so it seems reasonable to ask: ‘HOW VALUABLE ARE THEY?!’.
Jane Green, Professor of Politics at Oxford University (OU) and President of the British Polling Council, has declared that it is “too soon to know why” the pollsters were so off-target.
But is it really?!
A poll in Wales a month before the election was reported in this way: “The Conservatives look set to lose all but one seat in Wales (they actually lost all of them) in the upcoming General Election, according to an exclusive ITV Cymru Wales poll.
“The latest seat projections reveal Labour are heading for a landslide victory for seats in Wales, with Plaid Cymru on track to win two, perhaps three, seats in July (in fact they won FOUR).
“Whether the Liberal Democrats will end their absence on the Westminster stage in Wales remains too close to call (they did!).”
The report added: “The Barn Cymru poll, conducted by YouGov, suggested that 45% of people in Wales would vote for Labour in the upcoming General Election, up three points from our previous poll in December (their vote share of 37 per cent, was in fact DOWN 3.9 points from last time)…”.
The poll also ‘showed’ that only 26 per cent of people thought Plaid’s leader Rhun ap Iorwerth was ‘doing well’.
In fact if it is measured by the fact that his party group in Westminster was expanded hugely, he did extremely well!
Yet these poll results are treated as Holy writ by ‘experts’.
For example, Dr Jac Larner, from Cardiff University’s Welsh Governance Centre, proclaimed: “These new figures are consistent with trends seen across the UK and add to the growing evidence that Labour are heading for a landslide victory in Wales winning slightly less than half of all votes cast (as noted the vote share was just 37 per cent, and commentators have described it as an election the Tories LOST rather than Labour WON).
Dr Larner added: “The story for Plaid Cymru is a familiar one for them at Westminster elections, with voters switching in large numbers to the Labour Party”.
Yet the real story of Plaid’s party bloc at Westminster going up by a THIRD was an extremely unfamiliar one!
As another media outlet said of the GE campaign: “…what the leaders say and do now in prime-time debates and doorstep discussions could ultimately shape the future of the Welsh Parliament.”.
Just so long as they don’t talk about the latest polling figures, they might be all right!
Some of the political stories Phil has covered over the years, as he was gripped by the rare neurological condition Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), have been released in a major book ‘A GOOD STORY’. Order it now!
Regrettably publication of another book, however, was refused, because it was to have included names.
Tomorrow – how alarming news that the police are alleged to have placed bets on the timing of the General Election (GE), highlights actual failings by them in other areas, especially in Wales.
