Poll to Poll

As the general election campaign gets underway, the first tranche of polls are being published. They continue to show the mountain that the Conservatives have to climb if they stand any chance of making a half decent showing at the polls. Opinium’s new poll for The Observer provides a feast of data to be trawling through. To start with, when it comes to headline voting intentions, Labour is on 41% with the Conservatives on 27%. The Liberal Democrats are on 10%, level with Reform UK, with the Greens on 7%. Asked who they feel would make the best Prime Minister, 35% of those questioned said Keir Starmer, compared to 22% opting for Rishi Sunak. Six weeks out from the election its interesting to establish to what degree the public is tuning into political news at the moment. For Conservatives, they will be concerned at the degree to which the image of Rishi Sunak announcing the election in the rain might have cut through to the public. 48% of those polled said they had heard a l...

According to Sky News’s projected national share of the vote following the local elections, Labour is on course to become the largest party in the House of Commons in a hung Parliament. Writing for the Sky News website, its election analyst, Professor Michael Thrasher, said that if replicated uniformly at a general election, the local council results suggest Labour would be on 35%, followed by the Conservatives on 26%, the Liberal Democrats on 16% and other parties on 22%. Professor Thrasher goes on to note: “Assuming these changes in vote share occur uniformly across each of the newly drawn parliamentary constituencies in place for the next general election, Labour wins 294 seats and would overtake the Conservatives - but falls 32 seats short of gaining an overall majority. “The Conservatives fall from 372 seats on the new boundaries to just 242 seats, a projected loss of 130 seats. The Liberal Democrats rise from eight to 38 seats.” The BBC’s projected national vote share , ...