Shy Tory Factor

Shy Tory Factor is a name given by British opinion polling companies to a phenomenon observed by psephologists in the 1990s, where the share of the vote won by the Conservative Party (known as the 'Tories') in elections was substantially higher than the proportion of people in opinion polls who said they would vote for the party.

In the 1992 general election, the final opinion polls gave the Conservatives between 38% and 39% of the vote, about 1% behind the Labour Party – suggesting that the election would produce a hung parliament or a narrow Labour majority and end 13 years of Tory rule. In the final results, the Conservatives had a lead of 7.6% over Labour and won their fourth successive general election, though they now had a 21-seat majority compared to the 102-seat majority they had gained in the election five years previously. As a result of this failure to 'predict' the result, the Market Research Society held an inquiry into the reasons why the polls had been so much at variance with actual public opinion. The report found that 2% of the 8.5% error could be explained by Conservative supporters refusing to disclose their voting intentions; it cited as evidence the fact that exit polls on election day also underestimated the Conservative lead.

After the 1992 election, most opinion pollsters altered their methodology to try to correct for this observed behaviour of the electorate. The methods varied for different companies. Some, including Populus, YouGov and ICM Research, have adopted the tactic of asking their interviewees how they had voted at the previous election, and then assumed that they would vote that way again at a discounted rate. Others weighted their panel so that their past vote was exactly in line with the actual result of the election. For a time, opinion poll results were published both for unadjusted and adjusted methods. Polling companies have found that telephone and personal interviews are more likely to generate a shy response than automated calling or internet polls.

However, with the Labour Party in power from 1997 to 2010, some have speculated about the emergence of the 'Shy Labour Voter'. In 2008, polling had indicated that this was unlikely to be a major factor: polling in the Crewe and Nantwich by-election, 2008 predicted a swing no larger than 10% versus the 17.6% swing actually attained. Similarly, the election for the mayor of London showed an underestimation in Conservative support by all polling groups except YouGov. In the 2010 general election there was some evidence of both a Shy Tory Factor and a Shy Labour Factor at the expense of the Liberal Democrats.

Opinion polls for the 2015 general election also underestimated the Conservative vote, with most polls predicting a hung parliament whereas the actual result was a Conservative majority of 12 seats. Of the 92 election polls which met the standards of the British Polling Council in the six weeks prior to the 2015 election, none foresaw the 6.5% difference in the popular vote between the Conservative Party and Labour Party. 17 polls had less than a 1% gap between Labour and Conservatives, 32 polls had a 1% gap, 22 polls had a 2% gap, 10 polls had a 3% gap, 7 polls had a 4% gap, 1 poll had a 5% and 3 polls had a 6% gap. The result was eventually a Conservative Party majority with a popular vote share of 37.1 with the Labour Party achieving 30.4%. The British Polling Council subsequently launched an independent enquiry into how polls were so wrong amid widespread criticism that polls are no longer a trustworthy avenue of measuring voting intentions.

See also

• British Polling Council
• Spiral of silence
• Bradley effect
• Silent majority