United Kingdom General Election: July 4, 2024

[oldtimer]

Earlier I made a point about 'too many to things to go wrong at once' about the Tory losses - and Survation has all but one seat in Staffordshire going Labour, Tories losing all their seats in Norfolk (!) and Cornwall, all but two in Devon. Plus the anecdotal talk locally doesn't match up as being so bad for the Tories as what's been forecasted here. I'd be delighted to be proven wrong though.

From what I gather from across the spectrum of the internet and the media, canvassing records are a bit mixed for the Conservatives in the South (some say not bad some say really bad) and apocalyptic the more North you go.

The only common theme among canvassers is that the movement from the beginning of the campaign is in line with the direction of the polls during the same period:

Tactical voting appearing, fewer Conservatives, more Reform picked up.

[beesley]

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.

Just look at the pattern of Labour vote increases on 2019. Or, rather, the curious lack of a pattern. For me, I'm not even a fan of the YouGov ones: we remember those occasions when they've suggested surprising seats to fall that really did, but tend to memory hole those occasions when equally striking projections were wrong. Though if we think of them as an updated alternative to simple UNS estimates, perhaps we might all be more charitable.

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?

[Florida Man for Crime]

There are downloadable crosstabs here, so if there is a particular demographic that may be off and driving some of those trends, it may be detectable in that data.

https://www.bestforbritain.org/june_2024_mrp

https://assets.nationbuilder.com/b4b/pages/5841/attachments/original/1718474927/B4B_VI_MRP_20240614_%281%29.xlsx?1718474927

And from those crosstabs, here are demographics where Reform was doing better than their 12.24% overall average:

Male (14.38%)

65+ (15.89%)
45-54 (14.39%)
55-64 (13.28%)

East Midlands (15.43%)
North East (14.94%)
East of England (14.76%)
Yorkshire and the Humber (14.67%)
West Midlands (14.09%)
South West (13.47%)

No Qualifications / Level 1 (15.20%)
Level 2/Apprenticeship/Other (14.68%)

£20,000 - £39,999 HH Income (13.32%)

White (13.27%)

Retired (14.94%)
Self-Employed (13.51%)

Own Outright housing (14.66%)

Con 2019 voter (20.78%)
Brexit Party 2019 Voter (64.57%)

Leave 2016 Voter (23.37%)



Perhaps the most interesting though is this:

Would vote for Conservatives (30.57%)
Would NOT vote for Labour (26.94%)
Would NOT vote for Lib Dems (18.70%)
Would NOT vote for Greens (17.51%)
Would vote for Labour (15.62%)

What is interesting here is that they are overperforming their overall average among both people who would not consider voting for labour but also among people who would. So it there is a little bit of horseshoe theory in their appeal, most likely with the people who would consider voting Labour but will vote for Reform being WWC traditionally Labour leave voters.

[JimJamUK]

I am not sure that is quite so implausible. Grimsby is very much the sort of traditionally WWC Labour areas which are analagous to places like Youngstown Ohio or West Virginia in the USA. And those were the epicenter of Trumpist gains in the US (despite being traditionally Democratic). I think we should perhaps expect some similarities between the sorts of demographic areas where Trump gained in the USA and the sort of areas where Reform will do well.

Great Grimsby was also 71.5% leave (with perhaps slightly different boundaries, which was the 10th highest leave percentage in the UK in 2016.

No, just no. If you have to make an American comparison to Grimsby, then it would be some working class coastal town in like Maine or Washington, which coincidentally is the sort of place Biden generally bounced back a bit in after the 2016 apocalypse.

[oldtimer]

There are downloadable crosstabs here, so if there is a particular demographic that may be off and driving some of those trends, it may be detectable in that data.

https://www.bestforbritain.org/june_2024_mrp

https://assets.nationbuilder.com/b4b/pages/5841/attachments/original/1718474927/B4B_VI_MRP_20240614_%281%29.xlsx?1718474927

And from those crosstabs, here are demographics where Reform was doing better than their 12.24% overall average:

Male (14.38%)

65+ (15.89%)
45-54 (14.39%)
55-64 (13.28%)

East Midlands (15.43%)
North East (14.94%)
East of England (14.76%)
Yorkshire and the Humber (14.67%)
West Midlands (14.09%)
South West (13.47%)

No Qualifications / Level 1 (15.20%)
Level 2/Apprenticeship/Other (14.68%)

£20,000 - £39,999 HH Income (13.32%)

White (13.27%)

Retired (14.94%)
Self-Employed (13.51%)

Own Outright housing (14.66%)

Con 2019 voter (20.78%)
Brexit Party 2019 Voter (64.57%)

Leave 2016 Voter (23.37%)



Perhaps the most interesting though is this:

Would vote for Conservatives (30.57%)
Would NOT vote for Labour (26.94%)
Would NOT vote for Lib Dems (18.70%)
Would NOT vote for Greens (17.51%)
Would vote for Labour (15.62%)

What is interesting here is that they are overperforming their overall average among both people who would not consider voting for labour but also among people who would. So it there is a little bit of horseshoe theory in their appeal, most likely with the people who would consider voting Labour but will vote for Reform being WWC traditionally Labour leave voters.

The Reform vote isn't as complicated like the UKIP 2015 one was.

No Labour-LD 2019 voter would vote Reform, only 2019 Conservative Leave voters do.

The Conservative disaster is also not complicated, their 2019 Conservative Remainers are going Labour-LD and a chunk of their 2019 Conservative Leavers back to Labour from which they came.

[Florida Man for Crime]

No, just no. If you have to make an American comparison to Grimsby, then it would be some working class coastal town in like Maine or Washington, which coincidentally is the sort of place Biden generally bounced back a bit in after the 2016 apocalypse.

If it is analogous to Maine, I would say more so Maine's 2nd Congressional district rather than the 1st (which is more progressive). But Trump got a higher vote share in 2020 than 2016 there, so that doesn't really fit your argument at all. ME-02 is precisely a place where Democrats traditionally won and where Trump improved with WWC voters.

Washington (assuming you mean Washington State) is not really a WWC area, it is socially progressive Pacific coast, and Clinton did fine there in 2016.

It is true that in both Washington and Maine there were relatively high 3rd party vote shares in 2016, but those 3rd party voters are more analagous to UK Green and UK Lib Dem voters than to the sorts of disaffected voters who would be pro-Brexit or pro-Reform in the UK or pro-Trump in the USA.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

No, just no. If you have to make an American comparison to Grimsby, then it would be some working class coastal town in like Maine or Washington, which coincidentally is the sort of place Biden generally bounced back a bit in after the 2016 apocalypse.

If it is analogous to Maine, I would say more so Maine's 2nd Congressional district rather than the 1st (which is more progressive). But Trump got a higher vote share in 2020 than 2016 there, so that doesn't really fit your argument at all. ME-02 is precisely a place where Democrats traditionally won and where Trump improved with WWC voters.

Washington (assuming you mean Washington State) is not really a WWC area, it is socially progressive Pacific coast, and Clinton did fine there in 2016.

I assume he means the smaller old towns associated with the lumber industry like Cowlitz and Grays Harbor. Trump actually swung several counties in western Washington despite losing the state overall.

[Blair]

I don't think we need to make comparisons with Amerika.

[oldtimer]

I am not sure that is quite so implausible. Grimsby is very much the sort of traditionally WWC Labour areas which are analagous to places like Youngstown Ohio or West Virginia in the USA. And those were the epicenter of Trumpist gains in the US (despite being traditionally Democratic). I think we should perhaps expect some similarities between the sorts of demographic areas where Trump gained in the USA and the sort of areas where Reform will do well.

Great Grimsby was also 71.5% leave (with perhaps slightly different boundaries, which was the 10th highest leave percentage in the UK in 2016.

No, just no. If you have to make an American comparison to Grimsby, then it would be some working class coastal town in like Maine or Washington, which coincidentally is the sort of place Biden generally bounced back a bit in after the 2016 apocalypse.

Odd thing, Sacha Barron Cohen made a film in Grimsby that was so bad it ended his career:

[CumbrianLefty]

Nobody has yet mentioned Survation giving the SNP 37 seats.

Is this simply because they are too busy laughing at it?

[Florida Man for Crime]

No Labour-LD 2019 voter would vote Reform, only 2019 Conservative Leave voters do.

This isn't true (at least as far as the poll results are concerned). You can look at the crosstabs yourself to see that Reform is in fact getting some of them. And in addition, Reform gets a lot of other similar sorts of voters who may be traditionally Labour but voted for the Brexit Party in 2019 but who may have been traditionally Labour voters.

What is true, is that obviously the percentages are a lot lower. But that's not the same as none. It also stands to reason that the ones they ARE getting would be pretty likely to be disproportionately concentrated in heavily leave and deprived traditionally Labour constituencies (of which Grimsby fits those demographics).

Regardless, the 2019 results were 54.9% Conservative and 7.2% Brexit, so I don't see at all what is so implausible about the possibility that it could currently be 29% Conservative and 23% Reform. That seems entirely consistent with a substantial swing away from the Conservatives, with some of them going to Labour and others to Reform, which is very much in line with the national trends.

[Blair]

Nobody has yet mentioned Survation giving the SNP 37 seats.

Is this simply because they are too busy laughing at it?

I have given up looking at UK wide MRPs for Scotland!

Some of the results are strange; they have the Tories holding Chelsea & Fulham while losing Romford and a host of other seats they've held for 30+ years in Essex & Kent.

[Florida Man for Crime]

I assume he means the smaller old towns associated with the lumber industry like Cowlitz and Grays Harbor. Trump actually swung several counties in western Washington despite losing the state overall.

Yeah, but in Grays Harbor for example you have the same thing as in Maine's 2nd Congressional District - Trump gaining vote share in 2020 above what he got in 2016.

So insofar as those are also analogous to places like Great Grimsby (and I agree they are also WWC and analogous), I think they actually support the plausibility of Reform doing well in similar sorts of places in the UK rather than contradict it.

[Tintrlvr]

Nobody has yet mentioned Survation giving the SNP 37 seats.

Is this simply because they are too busy laughing at it?

I have given up looking at UK wide MRPs for Scotland!

Some of the results are strange; they have the Tories holding Chelsea & Fulham while losing Romford and a host of other seats they've held for 30+ years in Essex & Kent.

Idk the Reform vote should be very low in Chelsea and Fulham so I would expect the Tories to hold up much better there than in most seats and not as much space for Labour to win on a mid-30s vote, plus some of the Nicola Horlick Remain vote from 2019 probably going back to the Tories. I have it possibly the last Tory seat in London.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Nobody has yet mentioned Survation giving the SNP 37 seats.

Is this simply because they are too busy laughing at it?

Very random seats at that: every glasgow seat is yellow while Labour gains Livingston and Falkirk.

[oldtimer]

No Labour-LD 2019 voter would vote Reform, only 2019 Conservative Leave voters do.

This isn't true (at least as far as the poll results are concerned). You can look at the crosstabs yourself to see that Reform is in fact getting some of them. And in addition, Reform gets a lot of other similar sorts of voters who may be traditionally Labour but voted for the Brexit Party in 2019 but who may have been traditionally Labour voters.

What is true, is that obviously the percentages are a lot lower. But that's not the same as none. It also stands to reason that the ones they ARE getting would be pretty likely to be disproportionately concentrated in heavily leave and deprived traditionally Labour constituencies (of which Grimsby fits those demographics).

Regardless, the 2019 results were 54.9% Conservative and 7.2% Brexit, so I don't see at all what is so implausible about the possibility that it could currently be 29% Conservative and 23% Reform. That seems entirely consistent with a substantial swing away from the Conservatives, with some of them going to Labour and others to Reform, which is very much in line with the national trends.

I agree that every seat that Leave got more than 2/3rds of the vote should be theoretically on Reform's list of possible seats.

However the theme in this election is Vote X to get rid of your Tory MP, and I don't think Reform is going to get tactical votes from the Lab-Lib block.

[oldtimer]

Nobody has yet mentioned Survation giving the SNP 37 seats.

Is this simply because they are too busy laughing at it?

I have given up looking at UK wide MRPs for Scotland!

Some of the results are strange; they have the Tories holding Chelsea & Fulham while losing Romford and a host of other seats they've held for 30+ years in Essex & Kent.

Idk the Reform vote should be very low in Chelsea and Fulham so I would expect the Tories to hold up much better there than in most seats and not as much space for Labour to win on a mid-30s vote, plus some of the Nicola Horlick Remain vote from 2019 probably going back to the Tories. I have it possibly the last Tory seat in London.

Oh that seat is going LD alright.

Very Affluent, very Remainy, LD 2nd in the last election, Lab-Lib block equal to Tory block in the last election.

If the LD aren't winning seats like Chelsea and Guildford for example, where are they going to gain ?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

If the Tories are reduced to just one seat in London it would logically be Orpington.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

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.

[Progressive Pessimist]

This was frustrating to watch in some ways, but it's seriously mitigated by those charming accents. I would watch right wing Brits say stupid things over American righties any day.

[Pouring Rain and Blairing Music]

Nobody has yet mentioned Survation giving the SNP 37 seats.

Is this simply because they are too busy laughing at it?

It’s because I’m laughing at the name “Great Grimsby,” it sounds so close to Great Gatsby.

[Benjamin Frank 2.0]

Can anybody see some Labour supporters switching to the Conservatives to try to block Reform? Especially Labour supporters who had previously voted Conservative?

[Don Vito Corleone]

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

[RBH]

Putting the YouGov numbers into principalfish last night highlighted that one problem with trying to do constituency by constituency predictions is the lack of a baseline for RefUK in the places where they didn't run in 2019

PrincipalFish's projections for the YouGov totals are 367-170 Labour with LibDems at 58, SNP 26. It has ReformUK at 3 seats, but in places where the Brexit Party did well in 2019. I have doubts that the 3 seats won by RUK will be Hartlepool and Barnsley North/South.

[Tintrlvr]

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.