Why Are We Shocked by A Tory Win?
Admit it – we all like a bit of hyperbole. But scrolling through my social media on Friday morning, I found it surprising how many of my friends a) seemed to be predicting the downfall of the world, and b) seemed utterly shocked by the election outcome.
If you didn’t notice yet, the Conservative party won a huge outright majority in the general election and will now be in power for 5 years. In the coming weeks, you’ll probably read countless articles about why it happened, or what Labour needs to do next. And trust me, I’m just as angry about it as you are. We were lied to by a barely human mop and his band of cretins. But I want to say something different – should we really be surprised at all? Why is it that we’re so confused by the idea of a Tory majority?
The Tories were never less than 10% ahead of Labour in the polls, and Labour didn’t seem able to make the gains they made in 2017. The largest UK poll, the Yougov MRP, predicted the Conservative majority almost exactly only 3 days before the election. So why did we think it would be different?
Well first, let’s chat about echo chambers. No, that’s not the nice dark room you retreat to when someone says something that makes you angry. Don’t laugh, I know you have one too.
Think of it this way instead. We surround ourselves with friends who, mostly, agree with us. Would you really hang out with someone whose political views you found repulsive? Similarly, we usually either have similar political views as our parents; or completely the opposite and we laugh down all of the crazy things they say. This means that your views are simultaneously not challenged and also amplified by the people around you. This is called an echo chamber.
I’m willing to bet that scrolling through your social media in election time, you mostly saw posts that you agreed with. More than that, you probably didn’t see many posts from the other side. It’s suddenly not so hard to forget that Tories exist. And ta da, suddenly you find yourself waking up to shock and confusion when you find the Tories have won and you have no idea who actually votes for them.
It’s actually much worse than this though, because it means that you never engage with the other side. You never get a chance to convince other people around to your point of view, so politics stays polarised. I think we can agree this is a pretty bad thing.
There’s a more insidious side to this social media thing, however. The internet is an amazing thing which lets us get limitless information at any of the day and blah blah blah. But there’s a trade-off there – you can’t see all of it. Everything you see online has already been filtered, based on data collected while you browse. This is why you don’t see adverts selling life insurance to you on Facebook. Hang on though, that can’t include politics, right? I think you already know the answer here.
Targeted social media advertising is the new gold standard in political campaigning. In 2020, political advertising on social media is expected to double to $2.8bn. But targeted is the key word here. If you read Labour-sympathetic pages, then you simply aren’t the target audience when the Conservative party go out to advertise. You do not see the adverts as the algorithm doesn’t think it will be effective to sell it to you.
The Conservative party had 6 times as many social media adverts as Labour by the later days of the campaign, but I don’t think I saw a single one. Is it really any wonder we’re confused about what happened when we didn’t even see most of it?
This links quite nicely to the idea of so called “shy Tories”. This was something discussed in the early 1990s, when polls massively underestimated Tory public support. The theory goes that people are embarrassed to admit that they voted Tory, so lie about their voting intention when they are asked. The Conservatives haven’t done much to improve their public image in the 25 years since then, and many pollsters believe that this is still a significant factor. So not only do the polls you see probably underestimate the size of the Tory lead, but if you do have any friends inclined to vote that way, they might not say anything to you. Both things probably mean that you assume the election is going to much closer than it was.
So the next thing I want to talk about is why optimism and hope for Labour winning ultimately skews what we see. Scientists call this confirmation bias. We all know Labour came from massively behind in the 2017 general election, and if you’re reading this article you probably wanted them to do the same again. This will influence the way you interpreted information about the election. Maybe it meant you didn’t believe the polls “because they were wrong in 2017”. Or maybe you believed your left-wing friends more than your right-wing friends. Or maybe it’s a simply because you just remembered the Labour party manifesto more. This is a very natural thing to do, and extremely difficult to spot. It ruins experiments all the time! However, it does explain why you were probably pretty surprised when the election results came out. They just didn’t fit with your understanding of how the election had gone, because your understanding was tainted by how you wanted the election to go.
I think that’s about enough negativity from me there. Now onto answers… So, what can we do about it? How can we insulate ourselves from these constant post-election hangovers?
You might have noticed a common theme in everything I’ve written about. It’s all about information, where we get it from, how it’s presented to us, and how we process it. And there’s something we can control about that. Get your news from different sources. Actively seek out the opinions of people you don’t agree with and engage with them. Question what you’re told. It will definitely be uncomfortable, but it’ll be worth it. If nothing else, it’ll make the next election a little bit easier to swallow.
Written by Griffin Farrow
I’m Griffin – hi! I’m a PhD student in Physics in London, and yep, that makes me about as boring as it sounds. In my spare time, I try to work out what to do with myself. I’m new to this writing thing, so please be sympathetic!