Flatliners: Why are the polls so flat and so close?

John Lanchester has written an interesting blog on why the only thing that stands out in the piolls is that “nothing stands out” for the London Review of Books.

Or as he puts it: “The parties are passing the tiny lead back and forth between them like dope-smokers conscientiously sharing a joint.”

The most interesting point he makes is the important advantage the right to call an election can be for the party in power – and the quicker they call it the better. He writes:

The fixed-term parliament might be playing a role. When the government can choose the timing of an election, the electoral game turns on picking a moment of waxing popularity. If the right moment doesn’t come, the government hangs on as long as it can, in the hope of a convenient accident (small war, big scandal). When it clings on like that, recent history suggests, it tends to lose. Here are the last eight elections, arranged in order of how long the government waited before calling it:

1997 – 5 years 1 month – lost 2010 – 5 years – lost 1992 – 4 years 10 months – won 1979 – 4 years 7 months – lost 2001 – 4 years 1 month – won 1983 – 4 years 1 month – won 1987 – 4 years – won 2005 – 3 years 11 months – won

As his table shows parties that are scared they will lose cling to power for longer, those who think they’ll win call an early election. This time it’s different – we’ve known it was coming for too long and so there is none of the drama, the humanity of a rushed, sudden hive of activity.

Maybe that’s a problem, he says. “Our opinion of the contestants is all too fixed and definite and well-known.”