United Kingdom General Election: July 4, 2024

[YL]

I'm still not convinced that anyone other than YouGov has worked out how to do MRPs well. And I'm afraid that I'm particularly unconvinced by Survation's efforts.

[YL]

Survation has the Tories on 0(!) seats in Wales. Is this a live possibility or another example of MRP oddities?

Realistic. I think they will hold Montgomeryshire but a wipeout is very plausible and Montgomeryshire is the only seat they are at decent odds to hold on current polling. Maybe Brecon at a push but Labour seems to have given the LDs a free run there so the LDs should win it with tactical votes.

Even with Montgomeryshire's own LD history?  Or did Lembit Opik stink up the joint *that* much?

Don't forget Montgomeryshire is the seat where the incumbent Tory candidate, Sunak's PPS in the last parliament, placed a bet on the election date being in July and is now under investigation by the gambling commission. Sleaze can bring down any candidate anywhere.

Also, it's Montgomeryshire & Glyndŵr. The component rather absurdly called "Glyndŵr" is a substantial part of the constituency, and is a reasonably Labour area, unlike Montgomeryshire.

(That said, I'm not taking any of the details from the Survation MRP seriously.)

[YL]

I'm definitely not knowledgeable enough about previous MRPs to understand or offer an answer to this, but I wonder if the lack of a Leave/Remain dynamic (and the demographic factors aligned with it) compared to 2017, and 2019 in particular, makes these things quite a bit more unwieldy. Is it at all telling that the rise of MRPs benefitted from being at a time when we had another major and relevant electoral data point?

I think there may be something to this. An issue election - and the previous two both were - will always force binaries onto the electorate on an extent, and that ought to make outcomes easier to model as you have a pretty good reference point to start from. Take that away and things are much more chaotic.

MRPs in general weren't really that great in 2017 and 2019 though, other than the 2017 YouGov one which both got close on the headline figures and was fairly good on the pattern of the swings (including the famous Canterbury prediction). YouGov's 2019 MRP was also quite good on the patterns (though as in 2017 some local effects were missed and some were overcooked, e.g. East Devon) but it wasn't that close to the overall result.

[YL]

On the other subject discussed in this thread recently, it is worth considering an issue that has been subject to remarkably little interest or analysis in the media elsewhere: who exactly are all these people who have been switching their votes to Labour? We know that it is not a continuation of the pro-European vote that was such a feature of the last election, while we have fairly strong indicators from local elections that Labour does not presently have the mysterious extra appeal to Middle England that the Party did under (Sir) Mr Tony. We know that it is not a continuation of the special 'positive' factors under Corbyn: there are very sound reasons to believe that the Party will poll rather worse with BoBo electors, and that not only will the unusual consolidation of Muslim voters not be repeated but that there will be a substantial drop in support there. Casting the net a little wider, the general feeling is that amongst minority voters in general it will be a bit of a wash: great improvements from some, treading water with others, continued or new troubles with others still. So, who does this leave, exactly? Because it certainly isn't the actual hard core of the Conservative Party's electorate that has been moving over: it may truly be crumbling, but if it crumbles at the polling station for real, those votes will not move directly to Labour. So, again, who does this leave, exactly?

It is a complete hunch but I would love to see the vote totals among the new build estates in part of Bedfordshire where you can now easily commute into London- especially if you work only 2-3 days in the city.

These people weren't exactly tribal tories (likely to be couples in their 30s/40s with children) but I'm partly convinced Labour is going to clean up with them; the generation is slightly older than me but I know a few couples who would have been voting Conservative in 2010/2015 if they were at this stage of their life but would now recoil at the idea.

Ipsos figures from May 2024 by tenure (thanks to "hullenedge" of VoteUK for posting this):
https://twitter.com/BenIpsosUK/status/1801547327942930530

People with mortgages: Lab 52 Con 17
(not that much less Labour/more Tory than social or private renters)

[YL]

We have a new player in the MRP game, Ipsos:
https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/uk-opinion-polls/ipsos-election-mrp

Lab 453, Con 115, LD 38, SNP 15, Plaid 4, Green 3, Reform 3

The seats where they show Reform ahead are Clacton, Ashfield (where their model seems to ignore Zadrozny) and NW Leicestershire. The seats where they have the Greens ahead are N Herefordshire, Bristol C and Waveney Valley (where Reform UK are shown as second), and not Brighton Pavilion.

[YL]

Survation have done a constituency poll of Clacton, commissioned by Arron Banks.

Reform 43, Con 27, Lab 24

[YL]

I can't find any zoomable map or way to tell the constituency results for the Telegraph/Savanta poll, has anyone found that?

Such a waste of an MRP if you can't even properly look at the constituency results.

There's one with a hex map (and toss ups grey) on Savanta's site

It seems to have only four seats as even "Lean Conservative": all the others where it has them ahead are in the "Too close to call" category...

[YL]

Some of the detailed figures in the YouGov MRP are honestly quite silly and I can't even work out how they managed to generate them.

Local odd samples, probably.

Most of the seat winner predictions seem reasonably plausible given the headline figures (and the headline figures aren't that implausible given the voting intention figures) but there are some oddities. I can't see how you get Reform running Labour close in Barnsley North while Labour are streets ahead in Barnsley South. (They're demographically quite similar, but if anything it's South which looks slightly more Reform-friendly.) I don't particularly think Gorgeous George is going to hold Rochdale but I find it hard to believe he's on only 7%. And I wouldn't have thought the Tories would be losing Stone, Great Whirligig & Penkridge or quoting the alleged last words of George V if they're still in three figures, but maybe I'll be surprised there.

[YL]

If they have thrown the towel on seats with a 20k majority what's left ?

https://twitter.com/christiancalgie/status/1803798644862095815

My guess is that this refers to North Shropshire.

[YL]

This compares the various MRPs and prediction sites:
https://inglesp.github.io/apogee/

There are some seats which have three different parties predicted as winners: Aylesbury, Basildon & Billiericay, Brecon Radnor & Cwm Tawe, Chelmsford, Chichester, Clacton, Didcot & Wantage, Dumfries & Galloway, ...

[YL]

The Greens have released internal constituency polls of both Waveney Valley and North Herefordshire, carried out by We Think (Omnisis). They show them ahead in both, though as usual for constituency polls sample sizes are small, and there are a lot of "don't knows". At least they should be good for bar charts.

Waveney Valley:  Green 23, Con 15, Lab 11, Reform 10, Lib Dem 4, won't vote 2, don't know 34
North Herefordshire: Green 21, Con 16, Lab 8, Reform 7, Lib Dem 2, won't vote 1, don't know 44

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jun/21/polling-for-greens-suggests-party-could-take-two-rural-seats-from-tories

Edit: ElectionMapsUK has what looks like better versions of these, with won't vote and don't know removed and presumably some extra weighting

Waveney Valley: Green 37, Con 24, Lab 17, Reform 16, Lib Dem 7
North Herefordshire: Green 39, Con 28, Lab 15, Reform 13, Lib Dem 4, SDP 1

[YL]

JLP constituency poll of Clacton: Reform 48%, Con 21%, Lab 17%, Lib Dem 6%, Green 6%

Fieldwork 10-19 June, sample size 502

[YL]

It’s basically a leftover constituency covering the most rural areas of Mid Suffolk along with a bit of rural South Norfolk and East Suffolk. Im half surprised they didn’t call it ‘Mid East Anglia’ or something.

Yes Diss is the most populous settlement in the Waveney Valley constituency.

Funnily enough I was wondering which seats had the 'least populous' largest settlement. For the UK as a whole it should be Na h-Eileanan an Iar, with Stornoway's sub-5k figure. For England, Thirsk and Malton's largest settlement is Norton-on-Derwent with just under 8k. But should you consider Malton and Norton functionally one built up area, then the next smallest I found is Tenterden in the new very rural Weald of Kent seat, just over 8k. In Wales and Northern Ireland, the seats appear to be Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe (Ystradgynlais) and South Down (Downpatrick) respectively.

Open to corrections of all kinds!

Central Devon (Crediton I think) and Mid Bucks (Princes Risborough) are close rivals to Weald of Kent here. The question of where the Labour vote in the former comes from arises again.

[YL]

Who would Sevenoaks even vote for? Tunbridge Wells being lost to the Lib Dems is obvious to anyone who is paying attention, but the LDs should not be able to win Sevenoaks. Maybe Reform?

Lib Dems are giving it a go apparently. If the right-wing vote is split fairly evenly between the Tories and Reform then they could get it on quite a low vote share. (Or it could go Reform.)

[YL]

If Mercer does hang on then it will likely be in vain as he will then presumably be unseated by an Election Court. Utterly bizarre stuff.

I consider myself fairly well-read on British politics, more than anything other than maybe football, but I don't actually know what an election court is or what it does. Imagine how much more our Americans must be suffering...

See what happened in Oldham East & Saddleworth in 2010.

[YL]

Opinium poll

Lab 40 (nc)
Con 20 (-3)
Reform 16 (+2)
Lib Dem 12 (nc)
Green 9 (+2)
SNP 3 (+1)
Plaid 1

20% even with Opinium's methodology...

[YL]

Damn even Copium is failing the Tories? They're boned.

In terms of consequence of a high Green vote, we obviously have the two core seats of Bristol C and Brighton P, as well as the two constituency polls from herefordshire and Waveney Valley, but do they have any stretch goals? E.g. their prominent Isle of Wight activist Vix Lowthion is running in IoW E, and it's not like Labour have a huge machine; you also have a few heavy student areas like Sheffield C if they really take off in bobo demographics.

They messed up Sheffield Central with their candidate selection problems.

[YL]

Damn even Copium is failing the Tories? They're boned.

In terms of consequence of a high Green vote, we obviously have the two core seats of Bristol C and Brighton P, as well as the two constituency polls from herefordshire and Waveney Valley, but do they have any stretch goals? E.g. their prominent Isle of Wight activist Vix Lowthion is running in IoW E, and it's not like Labour have a huge machine; you also have a few heavy student areas like Sheffield C if they really take off in bobo demographics.

They messed up Sheffield Central with their candidate selection problems.

True, and I understand Teal is running an independent campaign, but I do wonder how much that matters to the average Green/Lab swinger?

I think the problem is that the fact that they were without a candidate for so long meant that they couldn't get a campaign going, and that the fuss about Teal has cost them some activists. My impression from walking through the constituency (mostly Broomhill & Sharrow Vale ward) is that there are a lot of Labour posters and really rather few Green ones. They might be getting going now but I think it's too late.

[YL]

Damn even Copium is failing the Tories? They're boned.

In terms of consequence of a high Green vote, we obviously have the two core seats of Bristol C and Brighton P, as well as the two constituency polls from herefordshire and Waveney Valley, but do they have any stretch goals? E.g. their prominent Isle of Wight activist Vix Lowthion is running in IoW E, and it's not like Labour have a huge machine; you also have a few heavy student areas like Sheffield C if they really take off in bobo demographics.

I really don't know if the constituency polls are any good, but I expect the Green vote to be higher than usual in high income white socialist areas, not in the middle of fields.

In contrast the LD have won fields when there's a high enough concentration of Manor houses on them.

My impression of the Greens' campaigns in places like Waveney Valley and North Herefordshire is that they are virtually identical to Lib Dem campaigns except that their bar charts are better drawn. (Here's a North Herefordshire leaflet.)

(Though I think the idea that they are NIMBYs about green energy projects is exaggerated.)

[YL]

How big are the chances in your opinion for Rees Mogg to lose his seat??

It's been made a bit safer by the boundary changes but that shouldn't be enough to save him if current polling is remotely accurate.

[YL]

There's also a poll of Holborn & St Pancras

Lab 54%
Green 14%
Lib Dem 9%
Con 8%
Ind Feinstein 6%
Reform UK 4%

[YL]

The Tories have withdrawn support from their candidates in Montgomeryshire & Glyndŵr (a seat they might have hoped to hold) and Bristol North West (a former bellwether which they lost in 2017 and weren’t going to win back now) over the betting scandal.

[YL]

In other news, it is not massively surprising that a Reform UK candidate made pro-Putin remarks at a hustings. That the constituency in question is Salisbury raises some eyebrows, though.

[YL]

And now Labour have suspended a candidate, Kevin Craig in Central Suffolk & North Ipswich, apparently for betting that he was going to lose.

[YL]

Betting on your own seat is not against any party's rules I think.

I suspect it's illegal. In principle it's not very different from a sportsperson betting on their own side to lose, which is definitely dodgy.

It's also rather stupid.