Daily catch-up: why the polls got the election wrong – Tory detoxification worked

It wasn't that Tory voters were 'shy': just that the opinion polls failed to pick up what they were doing

The Thames by Cookham Bridge, by Clive Davis.

• Matt Singh of Number Cruncher Politics has a new analysis of how the opinion polls got the election wrong, using findings from the British Election Study, which is a big academic survey using old-fashioned face-to-face random sampling. His big conclusion is that Tory detoxification worked: that the Conservatives gained more votes in the "centre", from the Lib Dems and Labour, than they lost to the "right", to UKIP. The most striking numbers, picked up by Daniel Finkelstein in The Times yesterday (pay wall), are that 19 per cent of UKIP’s 2015 voters had voted Conservative in 2010; 15 per cent had voted Labour.

The one explanation that does not seem to be supported by the evidence is the idea of "shy Tories" who were unwilling to tell pollsters how they would vote.

• ‏From last year; still relevant: "Five Myths About Isis" by Anonymous Mugwump (via Stuart Ritchie).

• I have written about next week's Spending Review for The Independent today, starting with the debate about police funding after the terrorist murders in Paris and ending with tax credits, the NHS and social care.

• An update to yesterday's catch-up: Labour's National Executive didn't discuss a change to the leadership election rules on Tuesday. So the rules are still unclear on whether an incumbent leader would need to obtain nominations to be a candidate in the event of a challenge. In which case, the National Executive would have to decide, and at the moment Jeremy Corbyn probably has a majority there.

The NEC would be well aware that Corbyn has the support of a third of a million party members and registered and affiliated supporters: 251,000 who voted for him plus 78,000 who have joined as full members since. (Although many of those 78,000 may be £3 registered supporters who have converted to full membership.)

• And finally, thanks to David Smith ‏for this:

"Sad to see the inventor of the scenic route has died. But what a lovely way to go."