Shy Labourites. Jim Mangles writes:
You say, "The explanation (why opinion polls have underestimated Tory support for years) is that the media, talking heads, academics, comedians and the like, portray the Conservatives, or Republicans in the US, as the party of those who are unfeeling and/or uneducated."
I'm sure a similar effect will become apparent here after the next general election, but my bet is that this time it will be the Labour vote that's underestimated. This is because "the media, talking heads, academics, comedians and the like, portray" Tony Blair as a reckless liar who got us into an evil war in Iraq, but in the privacy of the polling booth most people, faced with the prospect of Michael Howard as Prime Minister, won't turn out to care all that much about Iraq.
Could be, could be. We might have the novelty of an election in which neither main candidate is endorsed by the elite. However the obvious difference messing up the Bush-to-Blair (or John Howard-to-Blair) parallel is that however angry the talking heads are with Blair they still like him better than any Tory ever born.
The prospect of Michael Howard as Prime Minister reminds me of how and when I first got to know his name. Michael Howard was Home Secretary in 1996 when Thomas Hamilton massacred sixteen primary schoolchildren and their teacher in Dunblane. He introduced stringent laws against handguns that stopped a little short of banning them all. For a while angry shooters filled the shooting press with proclamations of their intention to vote Labour. One or two supportive Labour MPs assisted them in their delusions and may even have shared them. Naturally, one of the first acts of the Labour government elected a few months later was to institute a complete ban.
The position of an anti-war left wing voter now is like the situation of a pro-gun voter then. However, as Mr Mangles points out, it's all a minority pursuit. Most voters don't care all that much about Iraq and of those who do care there may even be a significant bloc of voters who are more inclined to vote for Blair because of his stance on Iraq. Stranger things have happened.
posted by Natalie at 3:29 PM
