Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris
Maybe, maybe not. I have no doubt that the Left, including the liberal, metropolitan left that fancies itself as the authentic voice of Twitter, is absolutely crapping its pants over the thought of Boris as Tory party leader because, regardless of what extrapolations the Telegraph has made, as things stand he clearly does have the reputation and voter recognition that other candidates don’t, he is the arch-Brexiteer, closely associated with the battle bus and the £350 million slogan that brings them out in hives, and he beat Ken Livingstone to be London mayor twice in a city that, at its default setting, is Labour territory.
Far be it from me to argue the technicalities of poll construction as I’m not an expert, but I absolutely don’t believe that anyone frantically tweeting a multi-part rebuttal after hastily deleting a first attempt that basically read “bull5hyt, bull5hyt, bull5hyt” is coming at this purely from a desire to defend good social science.
Another objection I see being raised is that May was also popular until she went up in front of voters; this cheerfully ignores the fact that Boris has been up in front of voters in a way few other of our current generation of politicians have and, as I’ve already said, won Labour London against the most Laboury, Londony Londoner ever to run for office. Twice.
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Not everything is a lefty conspiracy. The guy is a Professor of Social Sciences and has written a lot on polling. He was one of the senior people working with John Curtice for the Exit Poll at the last election and is a frequent commentator on how polling works and he is also backed up by a Director at YouGov:
https://twitter.com/anthonyjwells/st...04304527855616
The point is precisely that Boris is well known and most of the others are not. However the latter will change if they were to become Prime Minister. It's taking this scenario and run with it as if there was a General Election today with the idea that at that point nobody has heard of whoever is leading the Tory party as would be the case with Mark Harper. All based on one poll.
As for Boris winning in London this was Pre-Brexit when he was perceived quite differently and not just from the 'metropolitan-left' but also the more liberal wing of the Conservative Party. A very different Boris Johnson would be running now. For example if you plug the Telegraph's assumption into electoral calculus itself you have the Tories winning Brighton Pavilion from the Green Party which seems unlikely....