He cannot be serious, but I fear he is, Daniel Finckelstein opines in the Times that it is opinion polls and not local elections that count. He suggests that although that local elections matter locally they cannot be used as a barometer to the feelings of nation as a whole, because those who take part in local elections are a bunch of self selected unrepresentative political junkies.
He might well have something of a point but, then he admits that opinion polling is also conducted by a pre-selected bunch, the questions asked and the way they are presented can make a great difference to the outcome. Yet for some reason pollsters selecting 1000 thousand people and asking them a set controlled questions, and then playing with the answers will produce a better result than people actually voting. This is just so much codswallop as Clive Mathews discovered to his horror a couple of weeks ago, answering a series of questions does not produce the answer to your voting intentions.
Finkelstein misses the most important factor, voting in an election is the expression of the power of the people, something that really matters and really affects those who would make our laws, whether locally or nationally, because our votes empowers them or confines them to obscurity. Opinion polling places the power in the hands of the rulers, as they decide which answers they will accept and which they will ignore, they do not have that luxury when we use the ballot box.
On Friday morning Ken Livingstone will either be setting out for his office as usual or he will not even have an office because he will not have a job, no opinion polling can achieve that dramatic effect.
