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20-10-2018

Predicting general election outcomes: campaigns and changing voter knowledge at the 2017 general election in England

Authors: Ron Johnston, Todd Hartman, Charles Pattie

Published in: Quality & Quantity | Issue 3/2019

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Abstract

There is a growing literature suggesting that the result for each constituency at British general elections can be predicted using ‘citizen forecasts’ obtained through voter surveys. This may be true for the majority of constituencies where the result at previous contests was a substantial majority for one party’s candidates: few ‘safe seats’ change hands. But is it true in the marginal constituencies, where elections are won and lost? Analysis of such ‘citizen forecast’ data for the Labour-Conservative marginal constituencies in 2017 indicates not. Although respondents were aware of the seats’ relative marginality and of general trends in party support during the campaign, they could not separate out those that were eventually lost by each party from those that were won again, even in seats where the elected party won comfortably.

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The exit poll conducted for the country’s main TV stations was remarkably successful and predicting to allocation of seats, however: Curtice et al. (2017).

Interestingly, this argument runs counter to that of Achen and Bartels (2016, 277) who stress ‘the sheer magnitude of most people’s ignorance about politics’.

Scotland and Wales are omitted from the analyses because of the important presence of nationalist parties there, notably in Scotland where the SNP won 56 of the 59 seats in 2015 and 35 in 2017. Northern Ireland was not covered by the BES.

Elsewhere in the United Kingdom the main focus was on the number of seats that might change hands in Scotland as a result of a decline in support for the Scottish National Party: because of the very different pattern of party competition there, we have looked separately at what happened in Scotland (Johnston et al. 2019).

Early responders were those interviewed between 5 and 12 May, inclusive; Early-Mid responders were interviewed between 13 and 22 May; Mid-Late responders between 23 and 30 May; and Late responders between 31 May and 7 June.

One of the 533 constituencies was excluded since that being defended by the incumbent Speaker was, following convention, not contested by either of the two main parties.

Few correctly predicted that the Green party would win again in the seat its candidate held at both the 2010 and 2015 general elections: the mean score for a Conservative win in Brighton Pavilion in 2017 was 41 and for Labour 51.

In each survey, respondents were asked whether they had been contacted by any of the parties in the preceding four weeks.

They may of course also suggest under-specified models, but exploration identified no others that made substantial, readily interpreted, contributions to the ‘explanations’. In addition, the wide range of values for the dependent variable (1–100) suggests that there may be a great deal of measurement error: one person expecting a party almost certainly to win may give a score of 85 whereas another may give 95. The larger the measurement error the larger the standard errors of estimates and hence smaller the likelihood of finding a significant relationship (see Blackwell et al. 2017); the significant relationships reported here are thus very likely conservative and we can be relatively confident that we have identified ‘real’ relationships.

Several other variables were included in exploratory regressions, such as UKIP’s performance in the 2015 election and whether it fielded a candidate in the constituency in 2017: none were significant. Interactions between the variables included in the regressions were also explored, again with insignificant outcomes.

In all of these analyses we use any contact with the party as the independent variable. Such contact may be little more than receipt of a leaflet through the door and it has been argued (e.g. Pattie and Johnston 2003, 2012) that personal contact—on the doorstep or in the street, for example—provides a better indicator of the party seeking to inform and convince. However, exploration with alternative definitions of contact provided no substantially different results.

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Title: Predicting general election outcomes: campaigns and changing voter knowledge at the 2017 general election in England
Authors: Ron Johnston
Todd Hartman
Charles Pattie
Publication date: 20-10-2018
Publisher: Springer Netherlands
Published in: Quality & Quantity / Issue 3/2019
Print ISSN: 0033-5177
Electronic ISSN: 1573-7845
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11135-018-0819-1

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