Six lessons from the 2024 election

And what they mean for the next one

Once election myths become established they are hard to kill.

One common source of error is bestowing greater significance on campaign events than justified, because they’ve stuck in the memory. Labour didn’t lose in 1992 because they proposed raising taxes on higher earners, or because of Neil Kinnock’s Sheffield Rally moment or John Major’s soapbox. Polls were largely static for a year before the vote, they just consistently overestimated Labour support. Gordon Brown’s “Bigotgate” moment made little to no difference in 2010, neither did the Tory threat of a “coalition of chaos” in 2015, or Michael Howard’s “Are you thinking what we’re thinking?” posters. None of these things shifted the polls.

Another type of mistake is to misattribute the cause of genuine shifts. 2017 was a rare example where there was a big change in vote intention during the campaign, but a lot of that was down to Brexit polarisation, with Remain voters coalescing behind Labour, rather than Jeremy Corbyn inspiring the nation’s youth. Likewise, the increase in Tory vote share in 2017 and 2019 was also Brexit polarisation. A permanent realignment was never likely given the incompatibility of Tory MP’s economic views and many of their new voters.

So learning the correct lessons from elections is critical for developing future political strategy. Luckily the 2024 edition of the longstanding “British general election” series is now available to order, authored by a brilliant team: Rob Ford, Tim Bale, Will Jennings and Paula Surridge. I’ve had an early look and it’s packed with insights and data that allow us to properly analyse what happened last year, hopefully stopping new myths from developing.

I’ve picked out six lessons. These look at: misunderstandings that are partly responsible for the current government’s strategic confusion; new ways of thinking about voting in a more fragmented political system; and changes in media/polling that should affect how we cover future elections.

All these lessons are mine rather than the authors – I’ve just used some of their analysis – and you should definitely get the book, which is as valuable as previous editions in the series.