@Natasha_Jay What I don't think I've seen yet is much about how this upswell of Reform support might translate into seats in our FPTP system. I suspect it might cause a lot of disgruntled voters come 5th July and add to their social disillusion.
@MintSpies
It means there are a lot more seats the Tories may lose to Labour and the LDs with a Reform squeeze. I can see them reduced to anywhere between 50 and 170 seats, as many are too close to call
@Natasha_Jay When you’ve got a party dominated by finance bros from the City they’ll bet on anything where they think they have an edge ( which is kinda their former jobs anyway). If you really want to depress yourself look into how much hedge funds made betting on a post-Brexit economic collapse and how much those same fund managers donated to Vote Leave.
Our local Labour candidate just dropped off ANOTHER leaflet.
I swear, I'm honestly considering emailing his team and inviting him (plus any Scottish-accented team members) to do my experiment as a way of learning about the valuable research happening at his city's universities, and demonstrating his commitment to supporting higher education.
(And maybe he could encourage his supporters to do it too!)
For UK political types interested in the big scale /modelled MRP constituency level polls (becoming a feature of the 2024 GE) Peter Inglesby is consolidating them, so you can get a snapshot. Both by poll, and by electorate and well worth a look
@Natasha_Jay It's encouraging to see Electoral Calculus have #Corbyn winning Islington. I sincerely hope they're right. It would be sad if the only English left wing MPs were the #Greens.
@jen
I follow Mark McGeoghegan - who noted this on Scotland yesterday
"The Ipsos team have done an excellent job communicating uncertainty & marginality in their MRP outputs - 12 toss-ups in 🏴 & a further 14 seats decided by <10pts (i.e. marginals). Nearly half the Scottish seats could be swung by small shifts in national vote %"
I'm also learning that even the top independent analysts can't follow MRP variation on seat count, as the modelling assumptions and data sets are proprietary so it's a bit of a "black box" (tonnes of chatter on this last night)
Credit where credit is due, most pollsters are being quite open about their MRP assumptions this time; MIC outline theirs at the bottom of the link above, and personally I find them somewhat questionable, albeit obviously well intentioned.
@ukelections
I'm finding the indie analysts' X dialogues on Don't Know methodology interesting - 'squeeze question' vs allocations. Also Dylan Difford's implication that maybe not all pollsters are allowing in assumptions for 2019 voters dying off since then (!) which affects the Tories and Reform particularly...
@jackLondon
I'd say that the Tories would now see 200 seats as a 'victory'. I predict 100-120 as I see the LD % gains as tactical voting, and Reform as hurting the Tories far more than Labour, a two sided squeeze
eg More In Common skews pretty Tory and I think even their MRP only has them at 180
MRPs take time to process due to huge sample sizes so what we hear today could well be worse for the Tories... @ukelections
In lighter news, GB News' pet pollster, #PeoplePolling has come out with a corking outlier of a poll showing Labour on 35% and Reform UK on 24% of the vote (mindblowingly out of step with every other pollster), which would make Nigel Farage the leader of the opposition with over 100 seats in parliament.
I am feeling very vindicated about my decision to not report seriously the findings of this 'pollster'...
Stonehenge is literally just some old stones yet you will sincerely get people who care more about that than the lives of millions of currently existing people.
Just Stop Oil today sprayed a couple of the stones with harmless orange cornflour which will wash off without any damage at the first rain but there are people genuinely apoplectic about it.
We are a totally fucked species. Totally gone. Dead.
@Natasha_Jay A free-market in competing European Unions might be an idea whose time has come.
The BBC World Service could be rebranded 'Radio Euro-Free Europe'.
@Natasha_Jay the more I see and hear Starmer the more I detest him. Can stand his whiny voice and his complete ignorance of economics. Goes without saying I detest Sunak too
The Critic (UK): "The Conservatives deserve to be taught a lesson"
"Bad behaviour has to come with consequences"
"... let me offer a different counterargument: it would be very good for our democracy for the Conservative Party to suffer a crushing defeat. The Conservatives have behaved terribly in government, and politicians, like children, need to know that their actions have consequences"
"I want the Conservative Party from 2015 to 2024 to be a cautionary tale that politics professors whisper to terrify their students. Because if you can govern this badly, behave this badly, without any consequences, that would bode very ill indeed for our democracy"
@Natasha_Jay The problem with that article is that while it's true that in 2019 the country was offered 2 people unfit to run the country, it's also being offered 2 people unfit to run the country this time.
Starmer appears to have no shred of actual political belief beyond "it's buggins turn now", and I don't believe he'll change much (and the few things he will change, such as LGBT+ rights, will be for the worse).
No PR, no EU, no investment in public services. Just more managed decline.