by Atul Hatwal

Vote Leave are living the dream. Ed Miliband’s dream of the final weeks of the general election campaign that Labour was en route to power. The same dream which Alex Salmond had in early September 2014 as the independence referendum approached.

Dreams abruptly interrupted, for Miliband and Salmond, on election night as the exit polls were released.

About four years ago, within progressive circles, there was much chatter about a campaign concept which came to be deployed at the heart of both the SNP’s independence effort and Labour’s general election campaign: reframing.

Based in cognitive behavioural therapy, it offered a route to recast the way key issues, such as the economy, were perceived by the public.

Rather than face tough choices about public spending, Labour thought it could reframe the economic debate around fairness instead of debt, focusing discussion on the impact of cuts rather than the net fiscal position.

In the general election campaign, Labour led with this approach, highlighting the iniquities of Tory non-dom tax breaks and cuts agenda while being bombarded by Tory attacks on Labour profligacy.

At the independence referendum, the SNP tried to avoid fighting on the main macro- economic battlefield to refocus on the threat of Tory cuts to Scotland’s economy and way of life, most notably to the NHS, if Scotland remained part of the UK.

Last week, Vote Leave took a leaf out of the Labour and SNP playbook and attempted their own version of reframing.

By doubling down on immigration they moved the question at the heart of the day to day debate away from the economy.

Tactically there is a logic there but the net result will be the same as for Labour last year and the SNP in 2014.

The reality is that running away from a difficult question, particularly when that question is about the economy and impacts peoples’ jobs and livelihoods, is not an answer.

Campaigns might able to change what is being reported on the news but that isn’t the same as changing the way that people decide their vote.

At the general election and Scottish independence referendum, the polls tended to reflect the tenor of the news cycle, not the eventual decision of the public.

The same thing is happening again.

The longer immigration is top of the bulletins, the better the polling will be for Vote Leave.

It is seductive for them. But the longer they spend on their favoured topics, the longer the central Remain charge of a major hit to the economy, goes unrebutted.

Mark Textor, the Tories’ pollster at the last general election, suggested that one of the big reasons the opinion pollsters got the general election result so wrong was not skewed samples but poor questioning.

“We were polling massive numbers of voters every night and assessing how they looked at their choices, so we knew that in normal public-style polls they were saying they preferred Labour … but at the end of the day the actual outcome they wanted was a David Cameron-led Conservative government, and the only way to do that was to vote Conservative in their local seat. We measured their preferred style of government … they might say: ‘Normally I prefer Labour’, but we asked: ‘Which scenario do you want as an outcome?’…so we knew there were a lot of voters who on traditional voting patterns were Labour voters but had made the tactical decision that the best choice was to vote for David Cameron … we were measuring outcomes and not just voting preference.”

Left-leaning voters, who would back Labour on a straight voting intention question, actually did not want a Labour government led by Ed Miliband, propped up by the SNP and pursuing the economic policies that they associated with his Labour party.

A few months earlier, Scots voters might have been telling pollsters that they wanted independence but equally they did not want to be booted out of the EU, to have to float a new currency and have their taxes raised to plug a burgeoning spending gap.

In both cases, to paraphrase Mark Textor, voting intention differed from the preferred outcome for a critical number of swing voters.

At the EU referendum, there’s a significant section of the public who tell pollsters that they back Brexit but also who don’t want to run the risk of an economic shock which might threaten their job and tip Britain back into recession.

In the voting booth, when these types of contradictory impulses collide, there is normally only one winner. As the well-worn phrase goes, “it’s the economy, stupid.”

It’s just under three weeks to the referendum. At this stage in the general election, with 17 days to go, the average polling for the week had the Tories ahead by 1 point, which equated to a Labour-led government.

By the last week, Labour and the Tories were exactly level in the polls.

On polling day, the Tories won by 8 points and secured an overall majority.

In the Scottish referendum campaign, at this stage, the No campaign were an average of 2 points ahead in the week’s polls. By the last week, the lead had extended to 4 points.

On polling day, the No campaign won by 11 points

In both cases the polls significantly under-represented the majority in favour of the status quo.

For the general election and Scottish independence referendum, the final vote boosted the status quo option over the polls’ predictions by a roughly similar margin – 8 points in the general election, 7 points at the independence referendum.

Coincidence?

Think about that and Mark Textor’s dichotomy between voting intention and preferred outcome when you read reports about Vote Leave’s momentum in the run up to referendum polling day.

Atul Hatwal is editor of Uncut

Tags: Atul Hatwal, economy, EU referendum, general election 2015, immigration, Scottish independence referendum, Stronger In, Vote Leave