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

[EastAnglianLefty]

It's also the earliest possible polling date that lets Sunak have two years as Prime Minister, without having the election day fall on Halloween or the week of the US election.

[EastAnglianLefty]

I think also that the demographics of most of the East seat and the more urbanised bits of the West seat are fairly working-class, it's just that there isn't a Labour tradition there in the way that there is in most demographically similar areas of England.

[EastAnglianLefty]

YouGov's statement is worth a read: https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/48371-yougov-mrp-shows-labour-would-win-1997-style-landslide-if-election-were-held-today

Effectively it accuses the Telegraph of deliberately misreporting the poll.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Poll shows almost total wipeout for the Conservatives in Wales

Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe is vulnerable to tactical voting (especially as those Labour voters have been moved from Neath, a rock solid Labour seat, into a Con seat therefore they will vote for the party best placed to beat the Conservatives and that will be the Lib Dems) but Montgomeryshire and Glyndwr, that will only be a Con loss if there is a single opposition candidate

It's at least as likely that the addition of the Swansea Valley means that Labour supporters in Ystradgynlais and Brecon start voting for their preferred party and the reverse happens.

In Montgomeryshire and Glyndwr, about 50k electors come from Montgomery and 25k from Clwyd South. Getting a Labour lead twice as large out of Rhosllanerchrugog and environs as the Tory lead from Montgomeryshire is conceivable, but not exactly easy when Labour also has to make sure it gains much lower-hanging fruit elsewhere in North Wales.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Then there is also the morbid theory that people who worked in the mines, factories, and other strenuous jobs from that time are going to die earlier. Not exactly young, but health complications are going to be more prevalent than commuting for a 9-5 from one's London suburb. Not sure how much weight one should assign to this over other explanations though.

Glasgow aside, I don't think you'll see that effect in crosstabs where the oldest group is 70+. What may be more relevant is years of good health - if you're 85 and in good health, you're more likely to still be voting than somebody who is effectively housebound and a decade younger.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Polling of Reform supporters has found that fewer than 4 in 10 would even consider voting Tory. Usual caveats apply, only more so, but it's not a group that looks like it's that susceptible to tactical squeeze.

[EastAnglianLefty]

If you're young and you vote Tory you do if for cultural reasons, or because you're insanely online.

'Cultural reasons' in the class sense yes, otherwise (and the 'insanely online') no. Young, ideological right-wingers in England have as little love for the Conservative Party as anyone else, if not less. Just pure hatred.

There are a decent number of young Tories who hate the current incarnation of the Tory party, they just vote that way because they can't contemplate doing otherwise.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Profiles of insurgent independent candidates have a chequered track record. Sometimes they do accurately report something that is happening on the ground, sometimes they get wildly carried away by candidates who actually struggle to hold their deposit. From the outside, it's more or less impossible to say.

[EastAnglianLefty]

If you look at local election results, there's a fair amount of crossover between the non-urban wards we won in Norfolk in 1973 and in 1995. So a certain amount of continuity was probably there, even if by that time a lot of it will be the kids of agricultural workers rather than agricultural workers themselves.

That said, even in 1973 the Labour vote was already much stronger in small towns and villages which acted as service centres than in the truly rural areas.

[EastAnglianLefty]

The marks on the chart are both blatant editorialising and fail to make any sense on that basis.

[EastAnglianLefty]

I wonder how long they maintain the delusion of the '20' part. Perhaps it quietly transforms into 'list of seats lost at by-elections in this Parliament', plus Leicester East (sigh).

Levido apparently told Tory HQ just this week that "it is going to be a hung parliament at least".

I get that there are downsides to openly conceding defeat is likely, but he's pushing it far enough that if the expected outcome transpires, his reputation is going to be trashed because he won't be able to say that he did the best he could with the tools at hand.