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Terror Attacks Overshadow Polling Results
The sad news of yet another terrorist attack in the UK over the weekend was clearly the major focus for UK traders. However, the latest polls published over the weekend, which was the final weekend ahead of the elections, proved to be extremely interesting. The Conservative party, which had been showing a strong lead in polls up until recent weeks, saw yet a further narrowing of their lead, with the size ranging from 12% according to ComRes and 1% according to Survation.
Huge Swings In Opinion Polls
While the election campaign has been particularly short due to the unexpected announcement of the early election, volatility in opinion polls has been strong. Initially, after the announcement of the election on April 18th, the Conservatives were as much as 23% ahead in the polls while they are just 7% ahead on average now. This is a dramatic shift in sentiment which would typically take several years to play out and is unprecedented over the course of an election campaign. Indeed, some polls released recently have even put Labour ahead. Despite the volatility in polling results and the narrowing of the Conservatives lead, the majority of polls still support a Conservative victory.
While the campaigns themselves have clearly had a big impact on public sentiment, another important aspect has been the revival of two-party politics as UKIP’s collapse in support has seen focus shift back primarily to Labour and the Conservatives. One key question is whether this portion of the electorate is going to instead vote for the
Conservatives or Labour?
Initially, it was assumed that the majority of former UKIP voters would back the Conservatives because of PM May’s commitment to both Brexit and curbing immigration. However, according to recent research conducted using two focus group, half of one the groups stated that they would now back Labour after Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn declared that we would continue to negotiate Brexit and that there would be no second referendum.
Problems With Polls
Despite the reliance on polls to try and gauge the likely outcome, markets are clearly aware of the fallibility of these polls as shown by the unexpected outcome of both the Brexit referendum and the US elections. One of the issues is that it is becoming increasingly difficult to poll people by phone and as higher numbers of people aren’t able to be contacted, poll makers are having to make more assumptions. Poll makers who mainly use self-reported likelihood to vote, such as YouGov, typically display the tightest gap between the two parties.
Read full report: https://www.orbex.com/blog/2017/06/unprecedented-swing-public-sentiment-ahead-uk-elections/