SIR,—I read with interest Frank Byers's article 'Reform—Yes; Socialism—No.' Mr.
Byers criticises our poll because forty (in fact the real number was thirty-seven) of the constituencies in our sample of one hundred contained no Liberal candidate. As our sample of constituencies is intended to represent all constituencies in Great Britain and not only, those in which Liberals were standing, this situation is approximately as it should be. Of our panel of one hundred constituencies, in sixty-three a Liberal candidate was standing. It follows, therefore, that we were slightly over-representing constituencies where a Liberal candidate was•standing, though it should be added compensating allowance was made in calculating our final figures.
After nomination day, a number of Liberal sup- porters were unable any longer to support the Lib-
erals at the general election because there were no Liberals standing in their constituencies. Hence. following the closure of nominees, there was neces- sarily a decrease in the proportion of electors in our sample who said they would vote Liberal at the general election.
The proportion of electors in Great Britain who voted Liberal was 11.1 per cent. Our poll regrettedly forecast 7.9 per cent. A partial explanation of this difference between our poll findings and the actual voting lies in the greater turnout of the Liberals. If one considers those seats where (a) no Liberal was standing, (b) where a Liberal was standing but did not stand in 1959. and (c) those seats where a Liberal stood in both 1959 and 1964. it will be seen that the greater the Liberal vote the greater the turnout
Conservative Labour Liberal Others Turnout Whilst we have not yet calculated the precise correlation between the Liberal vote and turnout, a fairly safe inference from these figures is that the greater the Liberal vote, the greater the turnout and, as an interesting aside, the greater the Socialist vote, the lower the turnout.
Liberal Intervention
43.4 40.2 16.1 0.3 77.0 Liberal Repeat 46.3 32.7 19.4 1.6 82.5
No Liberal
41.0 57.4 1.6 72.6
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Puna HYETT
Managing Director National Opinion Polls. Ltd.. Tullis Street. EC4
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