United Kingdom General Election 2024 : (Date to be confirmed)

[TheTide]

This might be a reasonable argument for a May general election.

Since the October 1964 general election, the only general elections that were held outside of spring and early summer were the two held in 1974 (February and October) and 2019 (December). These were held under exceptional circumstances. Of course devolved elections are held in May.

It would look odd (to put it euphemistically) to many if there wasn't a general election in or around May when the Parliament is four and a half years old. Hence Labour's strategy of, it seems, basically going around telling everyone that it's going to be in May. This has already been picked up by parts of the media, including parts that aren't particularly friendly to Labour. If the speculation is really rampant in March (when the budget is being set out) then what exactly can the Tories do in response? Keeping quiet, which many will take as confirmation that the election is imminent, or saying "we aren't planning to hold it in the next two months, but in the meantime here are a load of local elections (which are being held on a day in which a general election might be expected to take place)"?

Major (for example) in 1992-1997 didn't have this problem as the 'normal' month of May happened to coincide with the maximum length of the Parliament.

[TheTide]

Re my comment yesterday about the 1992 GE - worth bearing in mind that it is now longer ago than Labour's previous big win (1966) was in 1997. And yes it *did* seem like pretty ancient history then - indeed when Major prayed the 1970 contest in aid during the 1992 campaign when claiming that the Tories could still win, the general response was "wasn't that a long time ago now?"

Given that, the collective hold it still has over much of the media and politicians of all parties really is quite remarkable - and its maybe worth some political thinker looking into as to exactly *why* this is the case. Especially since there is a much more recent election where the Tories defied the polls and the pundit consensus, but that doesn't seem to be hopefully invoked anything like as much.

The main players in 1992 were I think more charming than those of 2015. And both major parties have more reasons to not want to dwell on 2015. I'd say the highly inaccurate exit polls also help in terms of making it particularly iconic.

[TheTide]

New MRP poll (sample size: 14,000) published by YouGov, with the following seat projections:

• Labour: 385
• Conservative: 169
• Lib Dem: 48
• SNP: 25
• Plaid Cymru: 3
• Green: 1

_{Via the Telegraph (Note: both 2024 and 2019 maps use the new boundaries).}

The striking thing about this is that, even though the Tory seat number is considerably better than what many standard voting intention polls are currently suggesting, the Lib Dem seat number is higher than what the modelling for many of those said VI polls shows. Also, the strength of the SNP and the weakness of Scottish Labour compared to the 1990s keep it from being almost identical to 1997 in terms of seat numbers.

Red IoW too!

[TheTide]

Worth bearing in mind that the poll was carried out under the auspices of the ‘Conservative Britain Alliance’ (a Lord Frost linked outfit) and is being spun as an warning to the Tories that they need to shift rightwards in order to head off vote splitting with Reform, who apparently would deprive them of ninety-six seats and hand Labour a majority under this model. To put it mildly, I don’t regard this as credible, given the shares the Conservatives (and Labour) are getting in all other published opinion polls and the lack of any hard evidence for a Reform surge in by-elections at the constituency/local government level. To be taken with a gritter’s worth of salt.

This seems to be based on the assumption that voters fit into neat and tidy categories (both in a voting sense and in a general outlook sense) of 'left/progressive/etc' and 'right/conservative etc'. The Progressive Alliance lot on social media make pretty much the same assumption. It is known, however, from various preferential and ranked-choice voting systems (both here and elsewhere) that many voters don't fit into such categories.

This point needs to be made to those who have a moan about the lines of "OMG if left-wing party B had stood down then left-wing party A would have won" when there is a result under FPTP of something like:

Right-wing party - 49%
Left-wing party A - 28%
Left-wing party B - 23%

The result under a preferential system would probably be something like 54-46% in favour of the right-wing party.

Obviously Reform could cost the Tories some seats, but 100-odd is absurd even if they do poll 10% or more (and that's very doubtful).   

[TheTide]

These are the kinds of poll numbers which led to Truss's removal. If this is indeed the direction the polls are headed towards, would MPs revolt against Rishi that close before the election? Is there even a plan B C D?

who could they go with that would reverse the tide? Starmer isn't the best leader either but if numbers like this held even Sunak could lose his seat.

I can't be reversed. 

[TheTide]

YouGov have some polling in various demographic groups; see the Twitter thread starting below for details.

https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1752281504728707076
- the usual ridiculous age divide
- something of an education divide, though note that this seems to be mostly among older voters
- weak gender gap
- little effect of "class" (though of course they mean the dubious ABCDE system)

Caveat: I don't know how well weighted these samples are. Caveat 2: as usual I suspect Reform UK are over-polled (but note how like Tories their supporters look).

So assuming I'm reading this correctly (I might not be) the Tories are 4th amongst under 40's? Wow. How on earth do they expect to win elections going forward?

They shouldn't expect anything, but circumstances do change. They weren't that far behind Labour amongst young voters (still under 40 now of course) in 2015. That said, the problem is that parties such as the Lib Dems could potentially take their place as the more market orientated party. The lack of political talent within the Tories is also a pretty obvious issue.

[TheTide]

This is a good thread. Quite a bit that goes against what is usually assumed or remembered.

https://twitter.com/RealLiv04/status/1752363471587491850?s=20

[TheTide]

What changed in the late 1960s which seemed to cause such a dramatic decline in trust in the political class? Or is this just an artifact of the way the data is presented?

Profumo and devaluation are two events of the 60s that seemed to cause an increase in cynicism about politics and politicians.

[TheTide]

Another constituency poll.

https://twitter.com/OprosUK/status/1753040594035679541?s=20

Two points about this.

1. Reform are very unlikely to be on 10% nationally if they can't break 20% in this seat.

2. The swing from the Tories to Labour is 24%, considerably larger than the ~16% swing being indicated in the current national polls. Of course that might be at least somewhat due to Reform, but it does show that the Tories have, to perhaps state the obvious, a steeper hill to descend in seats such as this.

[TheTide]

This is a rather special way of framing your latest poll...

https://twitter.com/techneUK/status/1755916286943477964?s=20

[TheTide]

Who is this even for, at this stage?

I think this is directly to the Conservative electorate. Polling and forecasts, not to mention the image this government gives, are so bad for them that they fear the Tory electorate will just skip this election and not vote. So, they need to send "propaganda" saying "look, it's close", "(please) go vote, we still can win this".

Once the election starts we'll probably see the massage shift to something like "Don't let Labour go unchecked" if the intention is actually to get the base out and save some amount furniture/dignity.

Any given major party admitting that they have lost the election before polling day had come around is almost invariably a recipe for disaster.

[TheTide]

Usual caveats apply, but we have a constituency poll of Godalming & Ash (Jeremy Hunt's new seat) by Survation for 38 Degrees:

Lib Dem 35% (+1)
Con 29% (-24)
Lab 23% (+15)
Reform UK 8% (+8)
Green 3% (+1)
(changes from 2019 notional)

True, but it’s honestly kinda believable?

The Lib Dem vote looks about right (the loss of the Labour votes they squeeze come the GE being balanced out by this being the sort of place where a lot of Tories will actually be moving direct to them), the generic Labour vote being half what they get nationally is fairly realistic, and the Tory collapse, exactly what the national polls would suggest.

It's the kind of seat where there will presumably be some kind of Lib Dem surge (on an almost purely tactical basis) when the campaign proper gets into gear.

[TheTide]

The funny thing is that speculation about a May election is flaring up again. Apparently some Tories are privately saying that things can only get worse (that wouldn't be a popular campaign song) if they go beyond May. Of course it will soon be known for certain whether there will be a May election or not.

[TheTide]

What young people do vote Tory?

Quite a few who show up on the Grindr grid when one is nearby wherever the Tory conference is being held.

[TheTide]

Just seen a May election referred to as an 'early election' (it's f****cking well not, it's four and a half years into the Parliament). But it gets worse. It also referred to the idea that a May election could "catch Labour out". You know, the May election that Labour have been loudly calling for for months.

[TheTide]

Just seen a May election referred to as an 'early election' (it's f****cking well not, it's four and a half years into the Parliament). But it gets worse. It also referred to the idea that a May election could "catch Labour out". You know, the May election that Labour have been loudly calling for for months.

Jonathan Ashworth actually DEMANDED a May election yesterday morning

Go on, name and shame who came out with this epochal drivel - you know you want to.

It was none other than His Lordship Mandelson. Helpfully the comment is right at the start of the video as the teaser (as well as the basis for the title). Tbf he says that that's what the Tories themselves are thinking, but he really ought to know better. In fact he probably does, and it's another example of Machiavellianism on his part. Maybe.

[TheTide]

It's all getting a bit odd.

https://twitter.com/LizzyBuchan/status/1765713719512715746?s=20
It's hard to see him going for it on the current polling, but it seems stupid of him to open the door to accusations of 'bottling it', 'frit' etc. I suppose the most likely explanation is that he's just not a very good politician.

And, again, it wouldn't be a @#£@££@££@ 'snap' election.

[TheTide]

First poll to have the Tories below 20% since Truss I believe, and one of the few in the entire history of polling. Not the most reputable of pollsters but still quite amusing.

https://twitter.com/ElectionMapsUK/status/1765910523952918586?s=20

[TheTide]

With regard to that poll from the Times saying Lab lead by 27%, there are two things

1) Electoral Calculus always overegg their forecasts, remember they are a commerical company therefore are trying to sell their forecasts and nothing sells better than "Government could be wiped out at next election)

2) In 1997, which I think 2024 is turning into, Labour entered the campaign on 55% of the vote, and won the election with 44% of the vote, the Conservatives entered on 31% and lost the election with 31%, with the Liberal Democrats and the Referendum party picking up the losses from Labour. I think it is very likely we will see the same again, this time between the Lib Dems and Reform UK

3) Therefore a more likely election result would be: Lab 40%, Con 21%, Reform 15%, Lib Dem 10%, Green 10%, SNP 3 with using UK-Elect gives a House of Commons of: Lab 407, Con 139, Lib Dem 40, SNP 39, NI Parties 18, Plaid 3, Ind 2, Green 1, Speaker 1

There's simply no chance that the Tories would get over 100 seats on less than half of their 2019 vote share, unless there's some bizarre scenario in which Labour are at or below their 2019 share. Electoral Calculus has many flaws but it is right to estimate that the Tories would be close to a Canada 1993 scenario on circa 20% of the vote. It might well be the case that the Tories won't have an electoral catastrophe of that extent, but they would need to be polling considerably in excess of 20% in order to be certain of that.

Incidentally, I would say that there is genuinely more chance of a Canada 1993 scenario than the Greens reaching a double digit share of the vote.

[TheTide]

It strikes me how little headway the Lib Dems have been making, still polling below the 2019 result. For the Tories to fall sub-100 seats you’d surely need to see the Lib Dems breaking 16%.

The thing is that they will probably do badly nearly everywhere they are not targeting, so the national share may be misleading and what's really important is how they are doing in their target seats. If that Godalming & Ash poll we got is both accurate and typical, then the Tory slump will be enough on its own in places like that, and with Labour clearly third (and who would think Labour could win there anyway?) it shouldn't be too hard to squeeze the Labour vote a bit to seal the deal.

The main effect of their current weakness in national vote share is that in some more optimistic targets (Maidenhead is an example) models are currently showing them behind Labour, and while they will still no doubt draw bar charts based on the last General Election result it may be harder to get the squeeze going. And that may lead to some Tory holds on a low vote share, or if the Tory performance is catastrophic enough to some very weird Labour gains. (Electoral Calculus has Labour winning Chichester!) I think that if the Tories really are as low as 20% then FPTP won't be kind to them.

On the last point, it's worth noting that there are quite a few seats in the big cities where Labour can't achieve the swing that the current national polls show even if the Tories go down to literally 0% and Labour to 100%.

[TheTide]

Various tidbits here about a May election still possibly being on.

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/why-labour-tories-believe-general-election-may_uk_65eaff66e4b026052a535b1c

It cites 20/03 (after PMQs) and 23/03 as the dates when it could be announced.

[TheTide]

I don't know if this has already been said here, but at this point if Sunak does not call a May election I will not be surprised to eventually see a poll with the Tories third (behind Reform UK). That obviously won't happen at the GE but one poll would be humiliating enough.

The thing is Sunak is doomed anyway.

He's probably after a CEO job like Nick Clegg, so PM 2022-25 looks better on his CV than 2022-24.

He was never a party man, so I don't think he cares if the Conservatives survive if he can squeeze another few months on the top job.

It's all very LD 2015, even down to leadership hopefulls thinking they will retain their seats and run  for the leadership afterwards, like Vince Cable.

Sunak won't be PM for a single femtosecond of 2025, even if he expects or desires to be. I reckon he could be toppled at Conference if he hasn't called the election or at least indicated a (pre-Christmas) date for it by then. Talking of which, hasn't it been indicated that the 2023 Conference season was the last before the election anyway?

[TheTide]

I don't know if this has already been said here, but at this point if Sunak does not call a May election I will not be surprised to eventually see a poll with the Tories third (behind Reform UK). That obviously won't happen at the GE but one poll would be humiliating enough.

The thing is Sunak is doomed anyway.

He's probably after a CEO job like Nick Clegg, so PM 2022-25 looks better on his CV than 2022-24.

He was never a party man, so I don't think he cares if the Conservatives survive if he can squeeze another few months on the top job.

It's all very LD 2015, even down to leadership hopefulls thinking they will retain their seats and run  for the leadership afterwards, like Vince Cable.

Sunak won't be PM for a single femtosecond of 2025, even if he expects or desires to be. I reckon he could be toppled at Conference if he hasn't called the election or at least indicated a (pre-Christmas) date for it by then. Talking of which, hasn't it been indicated that the 2023 Conference season was the last before the election anyway?

Would there be enough time to topple him in October and install a new Leader before the inevitable January election ?

I don't think so, the last chance to replace Sunak would be in July.

Instead most likely it's months of leadership hopefulls doing the media rounds before getting the Portillo treatment, and they end up with David Mundell as post-election leader as the only Minister or ex-Minister still an MP.

Sunak himself was installed within a matter of days.

[TheTide]

Sunak has just said that there will not be a General Election on 2 May.

On the ITV West Country News. Probably in the hope that it makes it lower key than if Downing Street had directly told the national media/press.

[TheTide]

A few more letters being sent after this one?
https://twitter.com/lara_spirit/status/1770685592264700387

It's looking very close to Canada 1993 if you combine certain elements of the 2015 election (the major third party being decimated and a separatist party surging) and the shares of the three biggest parties in the above poll. Although Lincolnshire would need to be Reform's Alberta for it to work fully.