The Conservative Party’s loss of its parliamentary majority in the UK’s snap election has proved political pundits, pollsters and other prognosticators wrong once again. In addition, once again, various explanations are being offered for an outcome that few expected.
For example, many have said that British Prime Minister Theresa May campaigned poorly, and that pollsters’ models underestimated turnout by younger voters. At the same time, opposition Labor Party candidate Jeremy Corbyn managed to appear competent and confident. However, these explanations might all be irrelevant, because they focus strictly on how the campaign was conducted.
A better explanation comes from the field of psychology. If pundits had paid attention to a well-established theory about the psychology of snap elections, they could have foreseen the UK election’s outcome.
According to research by New York University political scientist Alastair Smith, who has examined British general-election polling data and results dating back to 1945, decisions by prime ministers to hold early elections often backfire.
By holding an election three years ahead of schedule, May seems to have made a serious, although hardly unprecedented, miscalculation. She assumed that the popular support she had when she announced the election would translate into actual votes.
Former British prime minister Harold Wilson made the same mistake in May 1970, when he tried to take advantage of Labour’s popularity at the time. During the ensuing campaign, Labour’s support collapsed, and the Conservatives ended up winning 330 of 630 seats.
Similarly, in 1997, former French president Jacques Chirac’s decision to call an early parliamentary election resulted in large electoral gains for opposition parties on the left. The same thing happened in Australia in 1998.
In a 2003 study published in the British Journal of Political Science, Smith concluded that popular support for leaders who call early elections tends to wane in the run-up to the vote. His analysis shows that the more popular a leader is when calling an early election, the more likely it is that he or she will lose support during the campaign.
When May called a snap election in April, she was riding so high in the polls that she and the Conservatives had expected to win in a landslide.
However, as Smith argues, an early general election is a psychological poker game in which the electorate often calls a leader’s bluff.
May thought that she had a strong hand, because she has more information than the average voter about the country’s future prospects. As prime minister, she has been fully briefed on the UK’s near-term economic conditions and the probable outcome of the Brexit negotiations with the EU.
However, as Smith’s theory shows, May’s decision to hold an early election tipped her hand to voters, who probably suspected that she was exploiting her informational advantage to reinforce her own political position. To illustrate this point, Smith uses the example of former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, whose own strategy in the election poker game was the opposite of May’s.
In 1982, Thatcher was at the height of her popularity, having just declared victory in the Falklands War. While she was not required to call an election before May 1984, she could conceivably have parlayed her enormous popularity into another five-year term. Public opinion polls from 1982 suggest that Thatcher almost surely would have won had she called an election that year. Instead, she waited, despite the risk that future policy failures might erode her popularity.
How Thatcher assessed that risk depended on her own anticipated performance in the coming year. If she was convinced that she would have effective solutions to problems that might emerge, then there was little risk in waiting to be tested at the polls. On the other hand, if Thatcher had not been confident about her policies, she would have had a stronger incentive to cash in on her popularity by calling a snap election, lest she jeopardize her chances down the road.
Thatcher eventually called an election for June 1983. Later, in their autobiographies, she and then-British chancellor of the exchequer Nigel Lawson explained that their timing had been influenced by fears about inflation in the coming year. By calling the election one year early, they avoided a scenario in which worsening inflation would have sapped the Conservatives’ popularity.
The key takeaway is that the timing of elections can reveal how well incumbents expect to perform. All else being equal, competent governments wait longer before going to the electorate, whereas insecure leaders try to capitalize on their popularity when they have it.
According to Smith’s theory, any leader who calls a snap election should expect to see their support decline, as has just occurred in Britain.
May has proved to be a far less confident leader than anyone had expected. She led an uninspiring campaign in which her promise of “strong and stable leadership” rang hollow.
However, her humiliating defeat could have been predicted before the campaign had even begun.
Adrian Furnham is professor of psychology at University College London. Raj Persaud is a consultant psychiatrist in Harley Street, London.
Copyright: Project Syndicate
Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described NATO as “the most powerful and successful alliance in history,” but the organization’s early years were not without challenges. At its inception, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty marked a sea change in American strategic thinking. The United States had been intent on withdrawing from Europe in the years following
My wife and I spent the week in the interior of Taiwan where Shuyuan spent her childhood. In that town there is a street that functions as an open farmer’s market. Walk along that street, as Shuyuan did yesterday, and it is next to impossible to come home empty-handed. Some mangoes that looked vaguely like others we had seen around here ended up on our table. Shuyuan told how she had bought them from a little old farmer woman from the countryside who said the mangoes were from a very old tree she had on her property. The big surprise
The issue of China’s overcapacity has drawn greater global attention recently, with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging Beijing to address its excess production in key industries during her visit to China last week. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said that Europe must have a tough talk with China on its perceived overcapacity and unfair trade practices. The remarks by Yellen and Von der Leyen come as China’s economy is undergoing a painful transition. Beijing is trying to steer the world’s second-largest economy out of a COVID-19 slump, the property crisis and
As former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) wrapped up his visit to the People’s Republic of China, he received his share of attention. Certainly, the trip must be seen within the full context of Ma’s life, that is, his eight-year presidency, the Sunflower movement and his failed Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement, as well as his eight years as Taipei mayor with its posturing, accusations of money laundering, and ups and downs. Through all that, basic questions stand out: “What drives Ma? What is his end game?” Having observed and commented on Ma for decades, it is all ironically reminiscent of former US president Harry