Ok, so there is no imminent election but there is a message that I would like to pass on, particularly to younger voters. One thing that has struck me is the strong influence of the Sun newspaper on political elections. The Sun is probably the only newspaper that actually changes its political leaning and can mobilise the swing vote. Politicians are totally aware of this but are the wider public and particularly younger voters?
The Sun has had notable success in the past, it switched behind Tony Blair in the 1997 elections when Labour swung into power. After three terms of a Labour government, the Sun newspaper turned to support the Conservatives and in 2010 David Cameron and the Conservative Party gained a majority over Labour. The reason I started to think about the Sun and its link to politics and economics is because of the Brexit result. The polls indicated that the UK would vote to remain in Europe. However, the Sun newspaper was getting behind the Leave campaign.
The voting demographic for BREXIT did suggest that the younger generation were more likely to vote remain, but they also have the lowest turnout for voting. I guess the message of this post is that next time there is an election, have a look at the Sun newspaper… before voting, or deciding not to vote.
Rebel Economics 
Tabloid newspapers generally try to reflect the views of their readership, in order to sustain sales. Causation runs mostly from readers to newspapers, not the other way around. But you’re right that The Sun has a good track record in politics. Under Paul Dacre, the Daily Mail was incredibly successful in understanding the views of its readers. Under its new editor, not so much. I predict a steady decline in its circulation, and ultimately the sacking of its new editor.
In terms of opinion polls and their accuracy in the Brexit and US Presidential elections, there is an argument that the pollsters often have ulterior motives for the results of their polls. It would be a mistake to believe that all pollsters are strictly neutral and unbiased in their own polling activities. In terms of politics, I never assume anyone is strictly neutral when they express a view
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Thank you for your comments, always interesting. However, I do believe that the Sun newspaper is the only mainstream newspaper that will switch political allegiance. The Daily Mail has always been Conservative. The polls are meant to be politically neutral and not sure that they can influence that much. In the case of Brexit the polls were predicting a remain, this might have led to complacency by the remain supporters who would have thought they didn’t need to show up and vote. Whereas the Sun newspaper was behind the Exit campaign, if Remain voters had looked at the Sun as an indicator they might not have been as complacent with their voting turnout.
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Thanks for your comments Jenny! Feel free to stop posting my stuff if it becomes tiresome. You’re right of course that the Sun will switch allegiances, because as you say it has no firm political point of view – I would argue because its readers don’t. So it switches when it judges that readers have switched. The DM is indeed Conservative. But whereas under Dacre it was heavily in the Brexit camp, under Greig it is in the Remain camp. The readers are not happy and I think Greig ultimately will be forced out – because the owners care more about a successful newspaper than trying to make political points or influence the electorate. But this is an interesting test case of our slightly differing points of view. I’m much more sceptical than you are about the motives of opinion pollsters. I followed the US Presidential Election and its associated polls very closely. The pollsters – Nate Silver et al – were all heavily biased in favour of the Democrats, just as CNN, CBS, NY Post, Washington Post remain so. (Whether these media companies are leading or following their consumers I’m less sure about than in the UK.) The thinking is that their ridiculous assessments (near-100% certainty of a Clinton victory) in some cases may have been trying to demoralise the GoP voter. Anyway, that’s speculation. But it is undoubtedly true that in the US, no major media company is unbiased! And that includes the likes of Google, Facebook etc, which are all heavily behind the Democrat Party.
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