Why Were So Many People Afraid To Admit That They Wanted To Vote Tory?

[anotheoldgit]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/general-election-2015/politics-blog/11591218/Why-were-so-many-people-afraid-to-admit-that-they-wanted-to-vote-Tory.html

/// There is something very ugly going on in our public discourse – and the Left-wing activists (and their media hangers-on) might ask themselves what they think they are accomplishing when they bully and ridicule that vast tranch of the country into being so secretive about their vote. What they have managed to achieve in this election is massive self-delusion. ///

[jomifl]

Mikey, as I said on another thread, the opinion polls are based on the question of intention to vote. The results total 100% which implies that everybody intended to vote but in practice somehow nearly half just didn't get around to it. This is where the opinon polls went wrong, they should have also asked if the intention was likely to be carried out.

[ichkeria]

mikey,
Why people didn't lie to exit pollsters:
because it's a different sort of poll: done AFTER people have actually voted, and is, sort of, confidential, because you don't actually tell the pollster who you voted for, or at least that was the case on Thursday in the UK election
But I still don't accept the "shyness" nonsense for reasons already stated. There is a difference between dinner parties, extreme left wing (or for that matter right wing rabbles protesting) and a phone poll where if people misinform a pollster the chances are it just because they are just being silly.
If one is "shy" about declaring one's political allegiance that all depends on context, as you say. I would have felt rather uneasy declaring myself to be a Labour supporter in the days when I worked for a private company and I was I am ashamed to say scared to join a union until we were threatened with redundancy.
But who knows: almost by definition I think it's probably impossible to know for certain if supporters of any particular party go all coy when Mr Mori or whoever calls :-)

[naomi24]

I don’t think the ‘shy’ explanation is far from the truth. People who are pro-foxhunting meet with similar aggression from those who are anti. Another subject best left alone around the dinner table.

[mikey4444]

Why aren't anti-foxhunting people not met with the same aggression from pro-hunting people, as the other way around ? I have been subjected to ridicule on many occasions by the adherents of what Oscar Wilde talked about as the pursuit of the inedible by the unspeakable. But I never lied and pretended that I liked fox hunting.

And if we left out any discussion about anything that might be deemed controversial in any way, what on earth would we talk about ?

Cuddly kittens perhaps ?

[anotheoldgit]

/// Why Were So Many People Afraid To Admit That They Wanted To Vote
Tory? ///

Well I think that what happened in Whitehall yesterday answers that.

Would anyone had dared to walk amongst those Left-Wing nutters carrying a placard stating "I VOTED TORY"?

[jim360]

They problem with that is that such people remain a minority. Essentially various "dinner party analogies" amount to sitting the extreme left with the moderate right. What happens if you sat the moderate left with the extreme right? Essentially the same thing. If you sit the moderate left and moderate right together there would be a debate but it would not be an unpleasant one.

[tamborine]

Tory voters showed here

http://www.theanswerbank.co.uk/News/Question1418207-1.html

[naomi24]

Mikey, //if we left out any discussion about anything that might be deemed controversial in any way, what on earth would we talk about ?//

Polite society manages. As a guest at someone else’s dinner table creating aggressive argument is the epitome of bad manners.

[zebo]

I wonder how many people were actually canvassed during the campaign? No-one I know here has been, but this is hardly a target area, but living in the North West in 2010, with many target constituencies for all parties, I also don't recall ever being polled. How large are these samples on which the polls are based?

[New Judge]

I have never, ever, been canvassed about my voting intentions nor have I ever been asked my opinion about anything, the results of which are announced as a "national survey". I know only a thousand or so people are polled usually for most things but I would have thought that if the sample was taken at random I would have formed part of a survey by now.

[jim360]

I have been part of a telephone survey once, in the build-up to the Scotland referendum. It does happen. I think YouGov tends to rely on tracking the intentions of the same people where possible. Whether or not this is more accurate than continually picking a thousand-odd random people, never the same lot each time, who knows.