Professor John Curtice is integral to the UK’s general election coverage. He's the psephological expert who pops up on various political TV shows and manages to help us mere mortals make sense of the complicated election statistics. Not only that but John, a 70-year-old professor of political science at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, will most likely know the likely outcome of our latest general election before anyone else, given that at 10pm on July 4 2024, having analysed the results of a national exit poll, he will make a bold prediction, announcing the winner.
“The lovely thing about the period between 10 o’clock and 11.30pm is that nobody knows,” he says. “It’s that moment when we don’t really have a government.” But John can take some comfort in the fact that in the past six general elections his team’s exit poll has proved accurate, correctly predicting the largest party each time. In the meantime, we’re happy to let him guide us through the process.
