Two years, almost to the day, before the 2010 election (after 11 years of Labour government) - opinion poll - Tories 49, Labour 23.YorksHammer wrote: ↑Mon Dec 05, 2022 10:44 am Thing is Tenbury, it becomes about perception. Labour will be hammering the 12 years thing, completely rightly and accurately, and some will see that. Sunak showing himself to be leading a party that a) is no longer in chaos (and they have a bit of time to work this out), and b) improving the economic state of the country (which, as pointed out, will come naturally because there simply can't be year on year 10% inflation) will be the Tory angle, I'm sure.
The 12 years thing holds a lot of weight for a lot of voters. It's the same thing that got Cameron/Clegg in in 2010, realistically, 13 years of Labour in power made the campaign straightforward for them especially given the global crash.
Two years on, Final Outcome - 37, 29 -minority government.
The last 30 years of elections are littered with this type of thing, where one supposedly inept and chaotic party is pronounced dead and buried yet either comes back to win, or takes significant chunks out of their opponents lead - Major reduced Blairs from 40 to 13, Corbyn cut a 20 point lead to 2, the Tories were on 16% just five months before winning an 80 seat majority.
The lessons of electoral history tell us that hypothetical 'if there was an election tomorrow' questions have questionable value, certainly in terms of margins, because the respondents know there isn't one and aren't at 'make your mind up time'. And then there are 'events'.
The telling questions at this point are usually about Best PM and the Issues Indices. They tell us what's on people's minds, what they really think matters and what they think of the figureheads.