18/09/2015
After he had spectacularly failed accurately to predict the result of the general election, in early March
forecasting that Ukip already had four seats in the bag, it is interesting to see that Matthew Goodwin has reinvented himself as an EU referendum pundit.
But it says something of
The Times that they are
employing him to interpret the polls, lending weight to the suggestion that the less you know about anything, the more assured is your career in journalism.
Anyhow, from the man who
also told us that Ukip's days of amateur campaigning are over, we now lean that the latest flurry of EU referendum polls "show race will be very tight".
Goodwin is referring to the Survation poll, on which
we've already reported and it is a measure of the man that, despite this poll being the first to refer to whether we "leave" or "remain", he classifies the two sides as "inners" and "outers".
The result, where the leavers beat the remainers by three points, adds "a lot of uncertainty to the state of the campaign", intensified by a later ICM poll that puts the remainers ahead by a margin of 43-40. In each poll, there were 17 percent undecided. This, according to Goodwin, suggests that the race "appears to be tightening".
A similar line is taken by the
Spectator which, on the basis of the ICM poll, thinks the referendum is "too close to call". In coming to its conclusion, it relies on Dominic Cummings,
whose blog evaluates the data to conclude that "leave" voters are much more enthusiastic about the prospect of the referendum than the "remainers". This creates the possibility that a differential turnout might act in our favour.
However, while the technical aspects of the evaluation might be sound, there is actually little of value that can be drawn from polls that seek to measure a campaign that has yet to be defined.
Given that we expect two years to elapse before we go to the polls, and the shape of the proposition will be very different from what it is now, the entire dynamics of the contest may undergo a fundamental shift. In effect, we could be fighting an entirely different battle, on grounds that bear little relation to those over which we are currently arguing.
Part of the dynamic is the "renegotiation" package offered by Mr Cameron. Diverse polls taken over term suggest that a declared success could add around 15 percent to the "remain" vote, neutralising any advantages we might otherwise enjoy.
But the bigger problem is, according to
this poll, is that a renegotiation that kept us in the EU but outside the eurozone could prove overwhelmingly popular.
This might indicate that a slick presentation of an associate membership scenario, sprung on an unprepared electorate, could have such a transformative effect, rendering current assumptions invalid, especially if Mr Cameron appears to de-risk the choice by offering a second referendum.
On the other hand, a well-founded rebuttal of the Cameron pitch, which managed to convince the electorate that a plausible outcome of his strategy was the UK being forced into the euro, could have a massive effect on public sentiment, delivering a victory to the campaign to leave.
The fact is that neither scenario has been tested in the polls, and both are so novel and different to current expectations that any response would have to be tested over an extended period in order to get an informed view â a further complication that makes the timing of announcements a crucial factor.
Putting that all together, we have to concede that we have no idea how the public might react to associate membership scenarios, or the effects of different plays, and rebuttal strategies. Current poll results are of very limited value and may even be dangerously misleading.
In the absence of relevant data, the danger then is that we chase the polls, using marginal changes in sentiment to guide strategy, when the later events might swamp the minor effects we see, giving one or other side an unpredicted (and unpredictable) victory. Even though we are effectively flying blind, this is not a sensible course.
