Had lots of people asking what I'm basing the opinion below on, which is fair enough. I've been saying since the start of the election that I think Johnson is going to lose and be out of Downing St after Dec 12th, and I stand by that. Here's why (thread) 👇
Firstly, parliamentary arithmetic. Johnson has one plausible route to government, which is an outright majority - his only potential partners are the Brexit Party, who will win a tiny number of seats, if any. Labour has many more pathways to power.
The upshot of that is that the Conservatives probably have to improve on their 2017 result to remain in office, whereas Corbyn could end up as prime minister with very little variation in the total balance of seats. Bear that in mind through everything that follows...
Secondly, polling methodology. The gap between Labour and the Tories is already narrowing, and it will be squeezed further as election day approaches and the binary choice between two different governments - 'whose side are you on' - feels more salient.
Crucially, try digging deep into the raw numbers. Pollsters weight their samples demographically, but also - understandably - via the probability that respondents will actually turn up and vote on election day. One of the most important predictors of this is age.
Historically, young people have had the lowest turnout rates, and so pollsters are inclined to be sceptical about their likelihood of casting a ballot and this impacts the headline figures - especially for Labour, who have overwhelming support among under-35 year olds.
Take ICM's latest poll. Among the respondent base, the Conservative lead over Labour is 4%, just about within the margin of error. Factor in weighting for turnout though, and that lead jumps up to a more significant 7%. Other pollsters show a similar pattern.
The challenge for Labour of convincing a Labour-inclined young person to go out and vote on election day - rather than stay at home - is far more easily overcome than that of convincing someone who currently dislikes Labour to switch over and support them
The point here isn't that the pollsters are necessarily doing anything wrong, but that the headline lead for the Tories is much softer than it looks and liable to crumble if Labour can motivate young people to turn out in decent numbers.
Given the huge surge in voter registration among young people, particularly in the past few days, and the size of Labour's far superior and youth-inflected ground game, that feels very possible.
Thirdly, the material circumstances under which Labour defied the polls and confounded the pundits in 2017 have not altered - in fact, they've intensified. More and more people who might once have been bound into the economic status quo are instead open to radical change.
There was a time, hard though it is to imagine, when someone who left university with a good degree and a graduate job would expect to soon own their own home and enjoy a degree of financial security. Generally-speaking, they would be on a path to voting Tory.
Now housing is impossibly unaffordable, and economic precariousness increasingly the norm, even for those in traditionally middle-class professions. 'Emergent service workers' are Britain's second-biggest social class, and late capitalism is failing them.
Hence why the majority of those not just in their twenties, but also thirties and forties are voting Labour. And what's more, precisely because inner city housing has become so expensive, many of them are moving out to Tory-leaning constituencies and rendering them more marginal.
This is all on top of the devastation wreaked by a decade of austerity, especially in working-class & post-industrial communities that Conservatives are targeting to make up for expected losses elsewhere. Anger at the shrivelling of our public realm is under-reported in the media
And lastly, and most importantly, politics in this country - and popular political sentiment - is mainly framed for us by a political & media class that is woefully divorced from the reality of life in post-2008 Britain, and that hugely skews dominant narratives on the election.
It's not just that most of the analysts and pundits tasked with guiding us across the political terrain come from unrepresentative demographic backgrounds - more white, more male, more London, more wealthy (although all of this is true).
It's that the majority remain mired in an 'end of history' mindset that defines the borders of 'sensible' politics as Third Way centrism at one end & an increasingly hard right at the other, and refuses to consider big, transformative ideas a legitimate part of political debate.
But I don't think that allows for the ways in which our politics has been altered by the financial crash and its fallout, nor the return of ideological antagonism to the formal political arena. Our social fabric is in tatters and the planet is burning: people are open to change.
Too many journalists still see politics as a parlour-game played out at Westminster, rather than something that alters ordinary people's lives and which ordinary people are capable of altering for themselves. It makes them sceptical of anything outside the Thatcherite consensus.
That makes Labour's mountain all the harder to climb, and I may well be wrong about the outcome (as almost all the experts were in 2017...). But for all those reasons, despite all the noise and fury, I continue to believe that Labour will do much better than expected.
One thing is for certain: nothing is pre-ordained, and there is everything to play for. After forty years of relative stasis, this is a moment of profound political possibility - even if many of those covering it can't see it #GE2019
And on the polling methodology points, just want to add this excellent thread which goes into a lot more detail about the potential limitations of headline figures, including the latest YouGov MRP that is causing such a stir - by @prospect_clark
