ABSTRACT
The article looks at the Conservative Party's approach to opinion polling in the aftermath of defeat in 1945 and in the context of the electoral politics up to 1964. It considers how polling was related to electoral strategy in a period in which the Conservatives won three consecutive elections and then experienced decay and defeat in 1964. A key theme of the contribution is the party's attempts to understand the political consequences of mass affluence. The article also relates Conservative thinking on electoral strategy to the emerging academic analysis of mass electoral behaviour.
