Will supporting gay marriage help the Tories? It’s all a matter of location, location, location. – Spectator Blogs

Do pollsters and pundits actually understand how British elections work? I sometimes wonder. Take, for instance, the debate concerning whether or not supporting gay marriage might win the Conservative party more votes than it loses. The Prime Minister says there are polls that suggest it would. Not so fast, retorts ComRes’s Andrew Hawkins. He argues:

Your letter of 19 October 2012 to The Rt Hon Cheryl Gillan MP states that “a recent poll by ComRes found that 10 percent of current Conservative voters say that the policy [to legalise same-sex marriage] would make them ‘less likely to vote Conservative’ compared with 7 percent saying it would make them ‘more likely to vote Conservative’.

I should like to put the record straight because the wrong figures have been quoted. Your figures relate to whether current Conservative voters are more likely to vote Labour, not Conservative, as a result of the policy. The correct figures are that 19 percent (of current Conservative voters) are more likely to vote Conservative, while 11 percent are less likely to do so.