even by our electoral norms we have not seen anything like this for more than a decade: nothing less than 60% in all but two winning constituencies, with 15 constituencies polling over 70% (in tharman’s constituency they took a whopping 79.28% of the votes — but then, it is tharman. when the result was read the reaction in the room, even from those who strongly supported other parties: “just who on earth are those 20% who voted against him?!“)none of this, surprising in itself, would have been so staggering had not the pundits predicted with dead certainty that this would be their worst election showing ever, that they would poll even worse than the 60% at the disastrous 2011 elections, that they would lose another 5-10 seats (they gained one marginal ward and very nearly took back 5.) how did we get the ground sentiment so wrong? all this recalls the uk general elections in may,when pollster after pollster for weeks had predicted a hung parliament, so unanimous was this opinion that early exit polls were dismissed as obviously flawed until the result brought in a clear tory victory more favourable than even the exit polls had indicated.
whichever side you were on, it teaches you something about social media and voting behaviour, about what we say (or don’t say) and how we vote. and it makes me once again glad for compulsory voting, and for preventing the self-sabotage of not voting that we all — of any party affiliation — might have committed had we taken predictions at face value.
Best of the Transparent Hummingbird