His exit poll model has previously proved accurate, but ‘we will spend a lot of the day really worrying’, he says
Ask Prof Sir John Curtice, Britain’s most trusted elections guru, about his plans for polling day on 4 July, and the answer is visceral.
Instantly recognisable for his tall, lean frame and the independently – minded tufts of grey hair that frame his angular features, Curtice is appreciated as much for his refusal to take himself too seriously as his analytical prowess. But the fieldwork on this election day will bring Curtice into “uncharted psephological waters”, he says, with evident delight.
“It’s all over bar the shouting: ‘There’s not much difference between the parties. Oh, and by the way we’ve got a bunch of boring politicians who don’t inspire anybody. Why bother?’” But it’s a “fundamental misconception” that voters are automatically put off by tax rises, he says. He suggests two possible explanations: first, that people still think public services are in a mess, and so are willing to pay to fund improvement.
His intellectual enthusiasm seems boundless – it began, he says, growing up in Cornwall, with the 1964 general election. His parents, a carpenter and a market researcher, allowed him to stay up to watch the results programme on television “and I remember following it the next day, because it was very, very close”. As a teenager, he read books on voter behaviour and went on to study PPE at Oxford, a transition he found “fairly challenging, coming from a working-class background”.
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