After this general election is it time to downgrade opinion polls?

If you stayed up to watch the British election results coming in on Thursday night, you couldn’t help but notice how constituency after constituency had their own little “WTF” moment. That, in itself, is nothing new in British elections. But on yesterday’s particularly unusual morning after, those WTFs didn’t have one clear story. That’s because British averages are dead.

They’ve been dying for quite some time. Based on the 2011 census, we know that in Christchurch, 50% of homes are owned outright, compared with 7% in Hackney. In Sheffield Central, one in three residents are age between 16 and 24, while one in three who live in Clacton are aged 65 or older. Almost 100% of the residents of West Tyrone are white, compared to 23% in East Ham. In South Northamptonshire, 2% of households with children have no adults in employment. In Birmingham Hodge Hill, that figure rises to 13%.

As our material lives move further and further apart, is it any wonder that our political values do too? Opinion polls struggle to capture that absolutely crucial nuance. Instead, we’re presented with stark averages such as “42% of respondents approve of Theresa May” or “42% approve of Corbyn”.

That’s not to say that these numbers are entirely useless. For a start, in that particular survey, it’s worth noting that 47% said they didn’t approve of May and 44% didn’t approve of Corbyn, showing that many people held their noses while voting in this election. But even more valuable would be to downgrade polling and pay closer attention to the numbers that aren’t based on 1,000 respondents – the numbers that are rigorously and repeatedly collected by government in every constituency across Britain.

You can bet that both May and Corbyn looked at those national statistics. May spent much of her campaign in the Midlands, among the least-educated parts of Britain, according to government numbers. (And according to opinion polling, the lower someone’s educational level, the more likely they are to vote Tory.) Meanwhile, Corbyn spent more of his time in London, where education is high and home ownership is low. Both candidates understood that politics today is based on a local understanding of national problems.

Pundits today will be desperately trying to provide a narrative to explain what happened on Thursday night, imposing some sort of verbal average on the entire country. But there is no one story in Britain any more, except the one where our lives and values are pushed further apart.