Jaworski and Fitzgerald: Temporal play in election predictions 5 Discourse & Communication Copyright © 2008 SAGE Publications. (Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Singapore) www.sagepublications.com Vol 2(1): 5–27 10.1177/1750481307085574 ‘This poll has not happened yet’: temporal play in election predictions ADAM JAWORSKI CARDIFF UNIVERSITY , UK RICHARD FITZGERALD UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND , AUSTRALIA ABSTRACT Although the past plays a large part in election campaigns, predictions and promises are its lifeblood, with the various parties promising great things if elected and predicting doom if not. Indeed the ‘manifestos’ usually published at the beginning of an election campaign are a study in pledges, promises and wishes that parties use to entice the electorate to vote for them. Whilst talk of the future often dominates election discourse, one aspect of the future that is largely passed over without comment is the actual make up of the result, despite the relentless publication of opinion polls results. However, towards the end of the general election campaign in the UK in 2001, the Conservative Party began to warn of the dangers of the Labour Party winning the election by a large majority. The media gave wide prominence to this event, seen as tantamount to conceding defeat to the Labour Party, though the reaction of all the main political parties was to downplay its significance. In this article, we explore the discursive manipulation of temporal relations in the 2001 election campaign, and the politicians’ work in gaining political capital out of the Conservative Party ‘breach’ in the routine election prediction structure. KEY WORDS : broadcast talk, election campaigns, future, media discourse, news, political discourse Introduction During election campaigns, it is unusual to concede the likelihood of one’s party’s defeat even at the end of the election day with reliable indications of the results from the exit polls. For example, during an interview conducted by the BBC journalist Jeremy Paxman with the Secretary of Defence in the outgoing Conservative government, Michael Portillo, on the night of the 1997 British General Election, the Tory politician would maintain trenchant optimism about his party’s victory till the very end. In response to Paxman’s question asked at 10.13 p.m.: ‘Michael Portillo, are you gonna miss the ministerial limo?’, Portillo ARTICLE at University of Macau on February 28, 2015 dcm.sagepub.com Downloaded from