Jeremy Corbyn and Labour are going to get creamed in the election in two and a half weeks’ time. That, at least, is the consensus: the polls show around a 15-point lead for the Tories; one seat projection suggests that the Conservatives are on course for a 48-seat majority; you can get about 27 to one odds on a Labour majority at Betfair (and even a hung parliament is close to three to one).
Of course, that was the consensus just before the last election, too. And that time Labour did not get creamed. They merely lost, and by doing so outperformed expectations so much that some of their own ministers have since convinced themselves that it counted as a win.
Over the last few days the party manifestos for the 2019 election have been published, Labour’s having been designed with what looks suspiciously like Microsoft WordArt. Since they came out — especially since Labour’s — people have been eyeing the polls, looking for any movement; lo, there has been none. The release of the polls back in 2017 coincided with a collapse of the Tory predicted vote share and a surge in Labour’s, but there has been no such “manifesto bounce” this time around.
I’m a bit intrigued by the idea of the manifesto bounce. I am not a political journalist, but I’m inside the bubble of people who pay a wildly disproportionate amount of attention to political news. There’s a good chance, because you’re reading this, that you are too. But most people are not. According to polling, only about 5% of the general public were aware of, for instance, Jacob Rees-Mogg’s ill-judged comments about Grenfell; only 2% were aware of Tom Watson’s resignation or Ian Austin telling people to vote Tory.
More recently, a Labour manifesto pledge that was heavily trailed ahead of publication, the promise to provide nationalised broadband, reached the consciousness of a whopping 12% of people. Around half of people haven’t heard of any of the most-talked-about stories; in fact, about half haven’t heard of John McDonnell, as Danny Finkelstein pointed out in the Times last week. Finkelstein also says, rightly, that this is not because people are stupid or lazy: it’s because their lives are busy and this stuff is not vital to know. But still, it is the case.
If these numbers are even close to being right, it seems prima facie implausible to me that most of these stories have the faintest impact on polling. Let’s be generous and say that 20% of people are aware not simply that Labour have a manifesto out but that it pledges, say, increased investment in rail infrastructure and spending 3% of GDP on green research and development.
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