The British Election Study is continuing to dig into why the pollsters called the general election incorrectly. Its latest batch of research suggests that the theories of a late swing to the Tories, a shift in the ‘don’t knows’ or ‘Shy Tories’ emerging on polling day may not hold the answer. Instead, the BES’s evidence suggests that ‘lazy Labour’ voters were a significant factor — i.e. those who said they would vote Labour in surveys, but didn’t turn out on polling day.
The BES explains: ‘Labour lead among unlikely voters grew hugely between 2010 and 2015, suggesting that differential turnout is an important factor in explaining the polling miss: considerably fewer of those saying they were going to vote Labour are likely to have actually turned out to vote’. This chart below shows the difference between the 2010 and 2015 elections of the likelihood of Labour voters to turn out.
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