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

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https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1744656534208909536

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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).}

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Labour Isle of Wight seems to be a thing in MRP, I’m sure that happened last time a major MRP was published too - I think the results in 2019 (UKIP and the Lib Dems both stood down, skewing the vote totals) messes with the projection?

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New Scotland-specific poll from Norstat (formerly Panelbase) :

Westminster Voting Intention:

• Labour 36% (+3)
• SNP: 33% (-4)
• Conservatives: 16% (-2)
• Lib Dems: 7% (no change)
• Reform: 4%

Net approval ratings for party leaders:

• Anas Sarwar: -17%
• Nicola Sturgeon: -19%
• Keir Starmer: -24%
• Humza Yousaf: -25%
• Douglas Ross: -38%
• Rishi Sunak: -48%

Seat projection from electionmapsuk (Lab 31, SNP 15, Tory 6, Lib 5):

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On the 30th Jan, Government quietly postponed its flagship energy security conference (scheduled for April) until 2025. The Africa Investment Summit, also planned for April, has also been pushed back, as of this morning.

And leaders on the continent are getting tetchy about the refusal to announce dates for the 4th European Political Community Summit, which was scheduled to be held in the UK, in March-April.

I’m not saying we’re going in May - mood music suggests the contrary. I’m just saying that the sort of diary clearing is going on that you’d expect if we *were* going to be busy with other matters this spring.

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These polls have a sample size of like, 240 voters, right? Feels pretty flimsy, although it'll make for a nice bar chart on the candidate leaflet.

What's the Welsh for "only the Lib Dems Plaid can win here"?

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https://twitter.com/OpiniumResearch/status/1756407689570132235
Largest Opinium lead since June last year.

There’s been a lot of spilled ink about how the behaviour of “don’t know” respondents in surveys that weigh like Opinium and the YouGov MRP offer a glimmer of hope to the Tories. If even they have an 18% lead…

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https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1760644651793436907

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Another round of "it's definitely 1992, trust us" in the i. Includes all those iron-clad arguments we've come to know and love:

The internal polls are better:
“Some of us are doubting the methodology they’re using,” one senior Tory source has said in response to Labour poll leads of more than 20 points. “Internal party polling is showing that it is a lot closer with Red Wall seats at 10 points and in some places we’re only 5 points behind.”

Labour's lead is soft:
A former Tory Cabinet minister told i that he believed Labour’s support was “wide but soft” and said: “We expect that [lead] to start to fade to 10 per cent or under and that makes the election a contest rather than a shoo-in for Labour. Being asked for your preference today is very different from how you are going to vote in six months.”

Byelection turnout is low, so there's no enthusiasm for Labour:
“The [by-election] results were not good for Labour,” another Tory MP told i. “In Wellingborough, they got around 100 more than 2019 when they should be way ahead. 2019 was a bad year. In Kingswood, they were 5000 less than 2019.

Who is this even for, at this stage?

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Can only imagine the macrabre conversations the age polarisation issue has triggered in party HQs about the date of the election!

On a related note, I do wonder where key Labour figures are on the election date. Obviously, they have to publicly call for an election "as soon as possible" for rhetorical reasons. But I wonder whether some are hoping the Tories go long:

• Gives the economy more time to recovery.
• Potentially compounds the age polarisation issue.
• Entrenches the narrative about Sunak running scared from the electorate. 
• Gives the government backbenches time to lose their minds and try to coup Sunak, further entrenching opinions about the Tory psychodrama.
• Shortens the time between Labour taking office and the 2026 elections in Cardiff and Edinburgh, making it more likely they take place during the 'honeymoon' period.

Of course, going long also means the Tories also get a little credit for any economic recovery, and we get 10 months of Galloway trying to widen splits over Gaza...

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https://twitter.com/Samfr/status/1764585117249327228

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I was unsure if he stumbled in the interview, but then he 'clarified' the remarks, with a press release that *also* hedged. He just reiterated the "autumn is my working assumption" line, and refused to rule May out. 

Labour have been setting up for the "Sunak bottled it" line for months. Given how heavily they've pushed it in recent days, I half-expect Starmer, Ashworth and Reeves will pitch up at the Diageo bottling plant in Fife on the day after the deadline for the most on-the-nose photo-op in recent memory.

It's particularly dumb to do it in a week when the Lobby was already pulling on that thread. Seen a couple of them chattering about the conferences for April and May which have been cancelled/delayed, and the civil service gossip about it still being on the cards. By itself, it's a bit thin. But once the PM starts being coy, there's enough material for a write-up.

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How does this translate to a seat count? Tories in low double digits?

Sir Edward Jonathan Davey FRSA (born 25 December 1965) is a British politician who has served as Leader of the Liberal Democrats since 2020, and Leader of the Opposition since 2024.

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That required the fixing up of the election for him by Graham Brady, after that fiasco it's obvious they can't do that again.

They will have to do a proper leadership election, so it's July or retirement for the likes of Badenoch, Mordaunt, Gove, Hunt ect.

Wait - you think that, as their desperation deepens, the Tories are going to pay *more* attention to the rules rather than less? If they're in enough trouble that they end up triggering a coup against their third leader in three years, civility is going to be the last thing on their minds.

It's either a repeat of Oct 2022, or four hours in a smoke-filled-room. The chances of them doing a Sunak vs Truss contest, where they spend months navel-gazing and touring the country for hustings are less than zero.

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I suppose he's saying that the party is too fractured to even form a smoke filled room to install Moudaunt or Gove or someone without literally causing a party split and going full Liberal Civil War in the election.

That's fair. I'm working off the assumption that self-preservation will win out over anarchy at the end of the day. But if things get enough to trigger coup #3, who can say?

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Some papers claiming that Sunak has virtually ruled out a May election, with the Sunday Times saying a further "fiscal event" is planned in the autumn.

Seems odd to have the PM publicly vacillate, and then assume that some anonymous briefings that "it's 100% going to be the autumn" will stop the speculation.

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https://twitter.com/DominicPenna/status/1767821280688927010
Was waiting for a few more polls - but we now seem to have a trend. Across pollsters, and several aggregators, the Tories are being pushed down to end-stage Truss numbers. To be fair, it’s been an awful fortnight for them, so the picture may improve - but it’s kinda wild things have gotten *this bad* again.

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If you think that’s bad - wait until you get to the paragraph about how Susan Hall’s victory will save Sunak’s leadership and throw open the general election.

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Bingo. He’s also never held a full cabinet role or run his own department.

Every Tory PM in the past 150 years has either spent a term as opposition leader, or time in one of the Great Offices of State (Chancellor, Foreign or Home Office) before getting the job.

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Bingo. He’s also never held a full cabinet role or run his own department.

Every Tory PM in the past 150 years has either spent a term as opposition leader, or time in one of the Great Offices of State (Chancellor, Foreign or Home Office) before getting the job.

Oddly enough this precedent also excludes Michael Gove, who has been in the cabinet for almost the entire time since 2010. Really would have expected he'd have landed a Great Office of State by now. 

Yeah - as one of the big survivors of this government, you'd have expected him to reach the top by now, it's very Mandelson of him to still be here after 13 years, and still not have one of the GOs. He, Hunt, Mitchell and Cameron are the only ones standing from the original 2010 cabinet, and they all took far longer breaks from the frontbench.

I seem to remember a story about Gove turning down the Home Office to go back to DHLUC, during one of the Sunak reshuffles. All these stories are about seventh hand though, so it might be that his reputation for meddling/backstabbing has prevented anyone from trusting him with immigration or foreign policy.

I think it's also been established that he was promised Chancellor as part of Johnson's 2016 bid for the leadership, but we all know how that particular saga ended!

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

Worth nothing, now we have the crosstabs, just how grim it looks under the hood too:

• Tories on 10% among under 50s, only 2% ahead of the Greens.
• Reform lead the Conservatives in the North of England.
• Reform have a larger share of the male vote than the Tories.
• The Tories only lead Reform by 6% among those over 65.

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I know MRP polls are supposed to be viewed in the macro, rather than the granular, but there’s some *weird* stuff in the Survation projection:



Labour winning the Tory-Lib Dem marginals of Hazel Grove, as well as Woking for one. They’re also winning Frome and East Somerset, the prototypical Lib Dem tactical voting seat.

And Scotland is a mess. SNP vote is high enough to win Edinburgh West from the Lib Dems (doubt), and all Tory seats. And yet they’re losing Ayr *to Labour*, in what’s likely an SNP hold thanks to unionist vote split between Tory and Labour. And thats not touching on Labour doing better in Edinburgh than Glasgow, which just seems intuitively wrong, based on the past five years of local and national results.

I’m not saying the SNP *couldn’t* hold 41 seats in the election (although it’s at the top-end of their likely seat total). I’m just pretty sure they wont hold *that* combination, if they’re doing that well.

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Btw, Laura K and Clive Myrie are being lined up as co-hosts of the BBC coverage.

Ugh, just give it to Myrie. You need someone with a bit of authority and gravitas in the chair, especially in that first hour after polls close, when representatives from both parties are trying desperately to spin the exit poll into something it's clearly not.

I've always been a BBC guy on election night, but if it's an option between "Laura K" nodding sagely in agreement as Ric Holden assures her the Tories can still win, and Beth Rigby verbally skewering whichever poor cabinet sod gets wheeled out on Sky to convince us Rome isn't burning, I know which option I'll be picking.

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More MRP polling, from one of the better names in the game:
https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1775531272594395421

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Because that MRP confirms my priors I will call it the most accurate and ignore the others

Eh - that’s fair criticism. The Lib Dem and SNP numbers feel more intuitively right to me, so I editorialised. Should do better.

I originally had a stupid gag about the glut of MRP polling in there, but you got a smidge of bias rather than a very dumb joke, so count yourself lucky