Poll to Poll

As the contest to replace Rishi Sunak as Leader of the Conservative Party gets underway, the candidates for the job would do worse than assess the findings of an Ipsos poll this week. Those questioned were asked which were the most important reasons why the Conservatives lost the general election. Top of the list was the 51% who cited poor delivery on the NHS, followed by 50% saying too many scandals involving the Conservative Party, 46% saying the party was not trustworthy and the same proportion saying the party was out of touch with what ordinary people wanted. 44% said they felt the party was “incompetent” with 43% citing poor delivering in helping to tackle the cost-of-living crisis, the same proportion who cited generally the fact that the country was just ready for a change in government. 41% said poor delivery on immigration was one of the most important reasons why the Conservatives lost, with the same proportion again citing Liz Truss’s time as Prime Minister. Ipso...

Opinium has published its first polling for The Observer since the General Election. Of note, the Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, is clearly in his honeymoon period, with a net approval rating of +19%. News about the football and the attempted assassination of Donald Trump seems to have captured the public’s interest more than UK politics. According to the poll, 91% of those questioned had heard about the assassination attempt on the former President, with 90% having heard about England loosing to Spain in the Euro 2024 final and 83% having heard about Gareth Southgate standing down as the England team manager. In contrast, 67% said they had heard about Rishi Sunak standing down as the Leader of the Conservative Party, 65% had heard about the King’s Speech setting out the Government’s legislative plans and 55% had heard about Vaughan Gething standing down as First Minister of Wales. In respect of the King’s Speech, Opinium measured the desirability compared to the achievability ...

Speaking at the start of the year the new Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, spoke of a "decade of national renewal" being the "central, defining purpose" of a future Labour government. Fast forward to today, and for those now in Government the question will be whether the election results can give Labour any confidence at the prospect of a decade in power. Some might conclude that it is absurd to be asking this question, given Labour’s 172 seat majority in the Commons. That is just 7 short of the majority New Labour secured in 1997 which ushered in 13 years of Labour rule. However, dig deeper, and the reality is that Labour’s victory is thin. According to the election results Labour won on Thursday having secured around 9.7 million votes, equivalent to 33.7% of the votes cast. To set that into context, according to House of Commons Library data , that compares to the 13.5 million votes (43.2% vote share) Labour got in 1997. What is more, the total number of ...

In the midst of an election campaign, it can be difficult to avoid feeling overwhelmed by the sheer volume of polling data that gets published. So, cutting through the noise, barring some sort of miracle, Keir Starmer and the Labour Party will form the next government. The only question is how big the party’s majority will be. On that we have two mega MRP polls out today which help us to put the state of public opinion into some sort of historical context. More in Common’s poll for The News Agents Podcast puts Labour on 43% of the vote, winning 382 seats (up from 180 compared to 2019) in the House of Commons. Thie would be the most seats the party would have won since the 412 it secured at the 2001 election according to the House of Commons Library .   The Conservatives meanwhile would win 28% of the vote, giving it 180 seats, down 185 compared to 2019, and the fewest seats it would have won since the 166 it bagged at the 2001 election. Overall, More in Common point to a...

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 , ...

New polling out this week by YouGov has put Scottish Labour ahead of the SNP in Scotland for the first time since the independence referendum a decade ago. According to the data, when it comes to voting intentions for the UK general election, 33% of those questioned in Scotland plan to vote Labour, two points ahead of the SNP on 31%. It finds that among those who voted SNP at the 2019 election, 20% have now decided to vote Labour. The Conservatives meanwhile are on 14% of the vote, holding on to just over a half (54%) of those who voted for them in Scotland in 2019. The Scottish Conservatives have lost 19% of their 2019 voters to Labour, and 22% to Reform UK. In contrast to the changes in Westminster voting intentions, YouGov notes: “The story is static when it comes to Scottish independence. Currently 53% of Scots say they would vote No in a repeat of the 2014 referendum, compared to 47% who would vote Yes – this is the same split as it was the last time we asked in September...