General election 2017: How reliable are the polls?

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. What they'll drag out this time, I have no idea

The swingometer made a bit of sense when it was almost a two party "left and right" system in Britain, but since the rise of the SDP/Liberal alliance and then the Lib Dems, and then UKIP, plus the SNP and to a certain extent Plaid Cymru complicating things in their nations, that kind of approach been less meaningful. Plus things like Brexit complicate it.

What it was good for was an easy-to-understand visual representation, in the days before loads of computer graphics could be pre-made. I fully expect Jeremy Vine to make a Computer Aided Tit of himself again.

Talking of election coverage, I think Channel 4 will be the best to watch - they've snapped up Jeremy Paxman (I wonder what John Snow thinks of that?), but it's David Mitchell and Richard Osman who may keep it watchable. The best election coverage I remember was done by Armando Iannucci, who had already made The Day Today, and went on to create The Thick of It and Veep. Sceptical comedy is the way to go.