‘Canvassing all morning and afternoon. Our vote is holding up.’
So writes a Conservative candidate of my acquaintance.
I wish him well but, in my experience, canvassing - which includes knocking on doors and asking people how they intend to vote - is an extremely inaccurate reflection of voters’ intentions.
For example, during the 1983 General Election I went canvassing on behalf of someone who was standing as the Conservative candidate in Ealing Southall.
Come election day he was convinced, based on canvassing returns, that he was level pegging with his Labour rival who had won the seat in 1979 with a majority of 10,000.
Taking into account the national polls, which predicted a Tory landslide, he was convinced he had every chance of winning.
In my experience however most people who bother to answer the door when canvassers appear are generally polite and many won’t declare their voting intention if they plan to vote for another party.
Often, those who say they will vote for your candidate do so not because they are going to but because they don’t want to get into a debate on their doorstep, and it’s the quickest way of getting rid of you (in the nicest possible way) without being rude (ie declaring for another candidate).
Either way, canvassing returns often provide candidates with an unreasonable expectation of success and should be treated with extreme caution.
As it happens, Ealing Southall was an unusual constituency (at that time) because there was a large Asian community and the sitting Labour MP was understood to spend his summer holidays in India, a move that proved popular with many of his constituents.
Anyway, the eventual outcome was a massive disappointment for my Tory friend because Labour doubled their majority in what was one of the very few seats in England where the vote swung from Conservative to Labour rather than the other way round.
Today, if a Conservative candidate tells you, based on canvassing, that “Our vote is holding up”, I would nod sagely but say nothing. Let them dream.
That said (and I may be wrong), I believe there may be a higher than expected turnout of ‘shy Tories’ who - appalled though they are by the state of the Conservative Party and Rishi Sunak’s government - are nevertheless (like me) reluctant to vote for anyone else.
Labour will still win by a landslide but my guess is that the Tory vote will hold up better than expected.
The problem is, a great many seats will be lost to Labour (and some to the Lib Dems) because of people voting for Reform who will split the Tory vote without winning more than a handful of seats themselves.
Of course, even with ‘shy Tories’ going to the polls, Thursday night is going to be brutal. And let’s be clear.
The responsibility for the unfolding disaster lies almost entirely with the parliamentary Conservative Party and Rishi Sunak’s insipid government, so reap what you sow and all that.