This is an object lesson for the Tories, not that it makes any difference now. If you try to pander to the right then a) the right hates you; and b) it will fail.
In 18 generations time and a similar situation reoccurs then hopefully they will remember 2024.
Do bugger off. There have been zero actual right think policies since 'the grown ups' came back into the room.
@TOPPING seems to believe extremely high tax, high spend, high debt economic policies, allied with the greatest wave of immigration in all of British history, is “right wing”
I fear for these people when an actual government with right wing policies comes along, because it will. Probably not now, but in time, it always does
Seats where the Tories hold on by 1.0% or less include: 10 where Labour are within 1.0% 6 where the Lib Dems are within 1.0% (including Didcot and Wantage, the headline being a 33-33 tie between the Tories and Lib Dems with Labour behind on 24, but to 1 decimal place has 33.4-32.6 to the Tories) 2 with the SNP within 1.0% And two that are three-way ultra-marginals (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine with the SNP 0.1% ahead of the Tories and the Lib Dems a further 1.6% behind, and Woking, with the Tories holding on and Labour and the Lib Dems within three percent of them)
Not sure I buy some of the constituency predictions elsewhere in the dataset (or in the ones mentioned, sometimes: West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine, for example - I mean, I'd love it if the Lib Dems were that close, but I can't convince myself it's true)
I despair of these MRP polls. There is no way that Lab and LDs are tied 3% behind the Tories in Woking. This is a Tory/LD fight. Until a few weeks ago I would have said Tories holding on just, now I think the LDs will win it, but really Lab should be absolutely nowhere.
The council is 24 LD, 0 Con, 1 Lab, 5 Ind. Labour were defending 1 seat in May and lost it.
The last GE was 26K Con, 17K LD, 9K Lab
And the LDs are targeting it. In what world are Lab challengers here?
The penalty Sunak will pay for his bogus Rwanda gimmick will be hearing Farage lambasting the Tory record on legal immigration at every opportunity between now and polling day.
If Sunak had had the courage to make Rwanda work, he would have at least had that success to point to. As it is, he has nothing.
It might have worked if he's given it time. Seen it through the courts and waited until a flight actually took off. As it is, he decided to go in July for some reason.
Apparently he orders chicken and chips from Nandos , ok good so far then he says broccoli with it ! Who in their right mind orders broccoli with Nandos .
This is an object lesson for the Tories, not that it makes any difference now. If you try to pander to the right then a) the right hates you; and b) it will fail.
In 18 generations time and a similar situation reoccurs then hopefully they will remember 2024.
Do bugger off. There have been zero actual right think policies since 'the grown ups' came back into the room.
@TOPPING seems to believe extremely high tax, high spend, high debt economic policies, allied with the greatest wave of immigration in all of British history, is “right wing”
I fear for these people when an actual government with right wing policies comes along, because it will. Probably not now, but in time, it always does
You meanwhile are unable either to define what right wing means, or understand the relative position of the parties so I'll stick with the I know it when I see it with this version of the Conservative Party.
Or you can use toxic motherfuckers if you prefer another description.
I can't think of anything that comes close to Linda Lewis's 1972 offering "Lark"
I love the description of her in a Rolling Stone article from 73:
"Linda Lewis has this very strange voice. It's like a little girl's: high, with a breathy sort of purity, full of recklessness and wit. But it also has an unexpectedly rough texture which cuts into the little-girl quality so that, while she sounds like no one else, there are moments when she feels like early Stevie Wonder crossed with Michael Jackson — an extraordinary combination"
🚨🚨 Our first @Moreincommon_@TheNewsAgents MRP of the campaign projects a Labour majority of 114 🔴 Labour 382 (+180) 🔵 Conservative 180 (-185) 🟠 Lib Dem 30 (+19) 🟡 SNP 35 (-13) 🟢Plaid 3 (-1) 🟩 Green 1 (-) Changes on 2019 actual seat totals
The tories would probably take that today if offered.
For the country's sake I'd take that. We don't need a Labour majority of 300+, its not good for politics. This would also take the SNP down a peg or two and start them thinking 'why?'. More lib dems to add to their voice (which has been pretty absent since 2019).
You bet they would take that. I'd take that. Most of us would, but we ain't gonna get that.
July 4th was an insane choice, and it is becoming increasingly obvious why.
Farage made more interesting and/or compelling points in that 20 minutes than any other party leader has done in the entire election to date, combined
The only vaguely interesting thing is the confirmation that the ocean going sociopath thinks the election should be all about him not the future of the country. He’s a grifter who’s gone into hypergrift mode.
Still a far better speaker than the other two grifters though.
"How does the model account for those who don't know how they will vote? When we ask people their voting intention some people say they don’t know. We push them to say who they would vote for if they were forced to choose, and we use this response as their expected vote. Some people, when asked to imagine that they were forced to choose, still don’t know who they would vote for. Normally, when estimating vote share on a national level, we exclude these responses - effectively estimating that if this group of ‘double don’t knows’ ultimately votes, they would do so in proportion with those who have expressed a choice. That means even if someone lives in a rural area, is over 75, and voted Conservative in 2019 - if they respond they don’t know who they’ll vote for - the assumption is that they are the average voter i.e. more likely to vote Labour than Conservative. Using our MRP model, we’re able to make a better guess. When training the model to predict people’s voting intention based on their demographics, voting behaviour and information about their constituency, we excluded the responses of people who didn’t know who they would vote for (after the squeeze) from the training data. When we apply the model to all the voters in the constituency, it effectively means we estimate the votes of people who don’t know, according to how people like them (in terms of demographics and past voting behaviour) but who do know, intend to vote. So if someone lives in a rural area, is over 75 and voted Conservative in 2019, the model uses the fact that most over 75s in rural areas who voted Conservative in 2019 and do know who they’ll vote for say they will vote Conservative, to guess that if they do vote it will likely be for the Conservatives."
The trouble is that such an approach depends a great deal on getting the turnout part of the model right. Are More in Common's results consistent with a realistic turnout of perhaps 65%, or a wholly unrealistic turnout of perhaps 85% after imputing responses from all those who still can't decide even after a squeeze question, yet say that they will eventually decide and vote. I suspect that many of them won't be able to make up their mind and will just not bother in the end.
Seats where the Tories hold on by 1.0% or less include: 10 where Labour are within 1.0% 6 where the Lib Dems are within 1.0% (including Didcot and Wantage, the headline being a 33-33 tie between the Tories and Lib Dems with Labour behind on 24, but to 1 decimal place has 33.4-32.6 to the Tories) 2 with the SNP within 1.0% And two that are three-way ultra-marginals (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine with the SNP 0.1% ahead of the Tories and the Lib Dems a further 1.6% behind, and Woking, with the Tories holding on and Labour and the Lib Dems within three percent of them)
Not sure I buy some of the constituency predictions elsewhere in the dataset (or in the ones mentioned, sometimes: West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine, for example - I mean, I'd love it if the Lib Dems were that close, but I can't convince myself it's true)
I despair of these MRP polls. There is no way that Lab and LDs are tied 3% behind the Tories in Woking. This is a Tory/LD fight. Until a few weeks ago I would have said Tories holding on just, now I think the LDs will win it, but really Lab should be absolutely nowhere.
The council is 24 LD, 0 Con, 1 Lab, 5 Ind. Labour were defending 1 seat in May and lost it.
The last GE was 26K Con, 17K LD, 9K Lab
And the LDs are targeting it. In what world are Lab challengers here?
MRPs are a big problem for the LDs in seats where otherwise the best datapoints would be council elections and the 2019 results. They middy the waters nicely for the Tories.
The penalty Sunak will pay for his bogus Rwanda gimmick will be hearing Farage lambasting the Tory record on legal immigration at every opportunity between now and polling day.
If Sunak had had the courage to make Rwanda work, he would have at least had that success to point to. As it is, he has nothing.
It might have worked if he's given it time. Seen it through the courts and waited until a flight actually took off. As it is, he decided to go in July for some reason.
Agree. I err slightly on the side of it probably not being robust enough to prevent a load of legal challenges, but it was worth finding out - only Sunak doesn’t seem to have thought so.
Shaking up the election like this after the Tories have already tried and failed to attract Reform voters could turn out to be a brilliant strategy. Farage has ensured he gets more attention than he otherwise would have done.
It's lame. Farage's failure to campaign actively since the Truss Debacle shows that he's not interested enough to put the work in to get anywhere. His decision a week ago not to stand was lame. His decision now to change his mind because he's seen how poor the competition is and he wants some attention is pathetically transparent.
The media will be delighted. They will be all over it. They'll give him an enormous boost because they're desperate for something interesting to happen, and so far they've only had Ed Davey falling off a paddle board to work with.
Has it not occurred to you that he’s lying?
That all this is just theatre? Because this is how you get maximum media attention. Say you’re not gonna stand, then call an “emergency press conference” and dramatically change your mind “because the British people are asking me”, and so guarantee the entire election now focuses on Farage
i know, I know. Shocking. A politician lying and playing to the gallery. Surely not! Labour or Tories would NEVER stoop so low
Thing is, if Farage had been campaigning since Truss was given the heave he could have had a lot of attention, and a lot of focus on him already.
But he couldn't be arsed.
So, no, I don't think this is part of a Machiavellian plan. It's very cult-like thinking to interpret the irrational actions of the cult leader as part of some elaborate plan that's been years in the making. It's not.
Farage thought he was a bigger fish with no need to paddle in the pool of British politics, and after seeing the election campaign swing into gear he's had a big dose of FOMO. It's lame.
I sense you are upset. I shall merely offer a passing “lol” then move on
How fascinating that in the end, Brexit utterly destroyed the Conservative party
So in 2019 there was a lot of chat about the end of Labour. Five short years (tumultuous years to be sure) and we are on the brink of a huge Labour majority.
I don't think that the centuries old Conservative and Unionist party will die quite so easily. They will do what they always do - eventually they will find a route back to power. It may take five years, it may take 15, but it will happen. If Labour get a huge majority and end up with two or three terms they will lose the plot too. The discipline that gets you into power goes when you have been in government too long. We see it it today in team Blue. It will come for team Red just the same (potentially around 2036...)
🚨🚨 Our first @Moreincommon_@TheNewsAgents MRP of the campaign projects a Labour majority of 114 🔴 Labour 382 (+180) 🔵 Conservative 180 (-185) 🟠 Lib Dem 30 (+19) 🟡 SNP 35 (-13) 🟢Plaid 3 (-1) 🟩 Green 1 (-) Changes on 2019 actual seat totals
However that was before Farage's announcement which could make things interesting again
It was before an awful lot of things
9th April to 29th May. Hmmm.
What exactly do you think has changed in the period that the 1/3 of the 15,000 sample taken since the GE was called specifically to ameliorate wouldn't cover?
They say they weight by recency which should reduce the risk of any bias - and as you say the polls haven't moved much over the period, with the only noticeable shift being a 2-3% increase in the average Labour share.
I don't think there's necessarily any issue with the MiC poll, it's just that it can't be compared directly with the other polls we've been talking about. It's certainly a good starting point for further research, especially into those 117 'too close to call' seats.
Did I just hear a career politician lambast career politicians and a self-appointed leader of a political party lambast Sunak for not being elected by MPs?! Couldn't make it up!
Well quite. Plus this election is about the future of the country not the future of Farage’s ego. Someone in the Tory party should do a clip along the lines of “This election is about you, your hopes, your dreams, whether you get a decent job etc etc don’t let Nigel Farage make this all about him.”
Well maybe your party shouldn’t have allowed in 2 million migrants in 3 years? Without asking anyone, and against the expressed wishes of every poll on this issue since the year zero? Just a thought
Reform will end up with no seats, they will have cut the legs off the Tories who will lose more seats to Labour than they were already going to and end up with the prize of a party with a giant majority who are even less keen on smashing immigration and more likely to strengthen UK /EU ties.
It takes a specially skilled politician to take the country even further from where they and their core voters want it to be. But Nigel will be front and centre and that’s what counts.
I don’t care. I want the Tories destroyed. It may take two elections but this is the necessary beginning, every journey single step etc etc
The destruction of the Tories is a fait accompli now that Nigel has flicked his mighty fingers. The question now is where does Sir Keir go from here? Voters who were repelled by his wokery now have a home. We may see them abandon Labour in droves. This is a perilous moment for Sir Keir. Labour might even go for the nuclear option and replace him with a more Blue Labour type. The political universe has been upended. There are no longer any certainties.
At least it's better than Find Out Now. Why do Yougov's MRP polls generally imply a lower Labour lead than standard voting intention polls (I guess this must be something like a 16% lead).
The Microsoft report unmasked “prolific Russian influence actors” who last summer began trashing this summer’s Games in the French capital and Emmanuel Macron, the president, including by posting a bogus documentary featuring the Top Gun: Maverick star.
To accompany the fake Netflix documentary, which is narrated by an AI-generated Tom Cruise, Russia mocked up reviews of the programme from David Beckham, Jared Leto, Miley Cyrus and Mike Tyson.
“These ongoing Russian influence operations have two central objectives: to denigrate the reputation of the [International Olympic Committee] on the world stage, and to create the expectation of violence breaking out in Paris during the 2024 Summer Olympic Games,” the report said.
Do any banks still offer the voice recognition to authorise you when you phone up? If they do, and you have it, disable it now.
Yes, it’s effing scary if someone wants to target you. It’s gone very quickly from fakes of Obama and Rogan, to pretty much anyone who’s spoken in to a microphone for a few minutes. Anyone with any record of public speaking should be worried at this point, and the rest of us are not far behind.
Lab - 422 Con - 140 Lib Dem - 48 SNP - 17 Green - 2
That is a devastating poll for the SNP.
That was one of my ? about the MiC one. 35 seats for SNP looks unlikely and just isn’t in tune with the current Scottish trajectory, where bad news seems to be tumbling out for the Nats on an almost daily basis.
I think it will be a bit closer in the end, say LAB 375 CON 175, LAB 400 certainly possible, it has happened quite recently 1997 2001
Essentially we're at the point where the swing is so large that even a MoE swign will result in massive changes - one the MRP earlier today a MoE polling error, a 3% Tory -> RFM swing, or more efficient tactical voting and half of the remaining 150 odd seats would fall as they had Con majorities of 5% or less.
This is an object lesson for the Tories, not that it makes any difference now. If you try to pander to the right then a) the right hates you; and b) it will fail.
In 18 generations time and a similar situation reoccurs then hopefully they will remember 2024.
Do bugger off. There have been zero actual right think policies since 'the grown ups' came back into the room.
@TOPPING seems to believe extremely high tax, high spend, high debt economic policies, allied with the greatest wave of immigration in all of British history, is “right wing”
I fear for these people when an actual government with right wing policies comes along, because it will. Probably not now, but in time, it always does
You meanwhile are unable either to define what right wing means, or understand the relative position of the parties so I'll stick with the I know it when I see it with this version of the Conservative Party.
Or you can use toxic motherfuckers if you prefer another description.
Right wing = low tax, low spend, low debt, low immigration, but plenty on defence. Also roll back anything remotely Woke, leave the ECHR, get rid of any lefty lawyers who have any influence anywhere, and make the BBC play Land of Hope and Glory every thirty minutes and make everyone in Islington STAND while this happens
....It also projects that the Scottish National Party would lose more than half their seats, with Labour returning as the largest party north of the border.
Seats where the Tories hold on by 1.0% or less include: 10 where Labour are within 1.0% 6 where the Lib Dems are within 1.0% (including Didcot and Wantage, the headline being a 33-33 tie between the Tories and Lib Dems with Labour behind on 24, but to 1 decimal place has 33.4-32.6 to the Tories) 2 with the SNP within 1.0% And two that are three-way ultra-marginals (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine with the SNP 0.1% ahead of the Tories and the Lib Dems a further 1.6% behind, and Woking, with the Tories holding on and Labour and the Lib Dems within three percent of them)
Not sure I buy some of the constituency predictions elsewhere in the dataset (or in the ones mentioned, sometimes: West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine, for example - I mean, I'd love it if the Lib Dems were that close, but I can't convince myself it's true)
I despair of these MRP polls. There is no way that Lab and LDs are tied 3% behind the Tories in Woking. This is a Tory/LD fight. Until a few weeks ago I would have said Tories holding on just, now I think the LDs will win it, but really Lab should be absolutely nowhere.
The council is 24 LD, 0 Con, 1 Lab, 5 Ind. Labour were defending 1 seat in May and lost it.
The last GE was 26K Con, 17K LD, 9K Lab
And the LDs are targeting it. In what world are Lab challengers here?
Don't the MRPs come with the caveat that they can't always predicting individual seats accurately?
There will always be local quirks, odd events happening, unusually popular MPs, where they'll be wildly out - but they hope to get the majority of the seats right, and for the quirky ones to even themselves out across the whole sample.
@YouGov Our MRP has 131 seats as tossups (i.e. winning party lead of <5%) including one 3-way marginal - Frome and East Somerset, with the Tories, Labour and Lib Dems all on 25-30%.
Here are the 30 most marginal seats according to the MRP:
This is an object lesson for the Tories, not that it makes any difference now. If you try to pander to the right then a) the right hates you; and b) it will fail.
In 18 generations time and a similar situation reoccurs then hopefully they will remember 2024.
Do bugger off. There have been zero actual right think policies since 'the grown ups' came back into the room.
@TOPPING seems to believe extremely high tax, high spend, high debt economic policies, allied with the greatest wave of immigration in all of British history, is “right wing”
I fear for these people when an actual government with right wing policies comes along, because it will. Probably not now, but in time, it always does
You meanwhile are unable either to define what right wing means, or understand the relative position of the parties so I'll stick with the I know it when I see it with this version of the Conservative Party.
Or you can use toxic motherfuckers if you prefer another description.
Right wing = low tax, low spend, low debt, low immigration, but plenty on defence. Also roll back anything remotely Woke, leave the ECHR, get rid of any lefty lawyers who have any influence anywhere, and make the BBC play Land of Hope and Glory every thirty minutes and make everyone in Islington STAND while this happens
There, sorted
For the current iteration of the Conservative Party it's a case of talking Right, but not acting Right.
Proper PR is coming. If Labour get a massive majority they will have to vote for PR to keep the Conservatives/Reform out next time when things are still not working.
I don't agree. FTTP is surely worse news for Con/Ref than PR.
The juiciest target for Reform must be 2019 Boris voters who are currently planning to switch (back) to Labour. If he can peel them away whilst the Tories implode, anything is possible.
The Tory party is dead - the Labour party is the new centre right party in British politics.
I actually agree with this. Labour are the Tories, but what is missing is an electoral equivalent of Old Labour. The Tory Party blew its chance to move into that position under Johnson.
As I was saying the other day - if Lab end up at the top end of the expectations, and Cons sub 100, there is a huge opportunity for ~100 people on the left of Labour to become the new official opposition in a single bound.
They won't, the only alternative to main opposition in the UK to the Tories now is Farage and if he does and a Starmer government mucks up the economy we could even have UK PM Farage in 5-10 years or so
- Reform overtake the Tories triggering a meltdown of the party - A big chunk of the remaining Tory vote then switches sides and Reform approach 30% in the polls - Reform start breaking through in the Red Well leaving Keir Starmer's well planned strategy in disarray - Election ends in a hung parliament with the Tories wiped out
Reform "breaking through" would involve a whole load of Jared O'Mara replays over the next two years.
"Why no, we had no idea that our carefully vetted candidate for Penistone & Stocksbridge, A. Dolph Hilter, had such extreme views. How could we ever have foreseen that?"
If we’re getting two or three hundred new MPs, there’s almost certainly an O’Mara in there somewhere.
It still astonishes me that political parties can’t effectively vet MP candidates. If they can afford £500 for their deposit, they can afford £500 more to have someone read the last decade of their Twitter account.
Farage overall favourability was -37 in the most recent yougov survey. Slightly better than Sunak, Hunt or Gove, but not a great baseline for progress.
Seats where the Tories hold on by 1.0% or less include: 10 where Labour are within 1.0% 6 where the Lib Dems are within 1.0% (including Didcot and Wantage, the headline being a 33-33 tie between the Tories and Lib Dems with Labour behind on 24, but to 1 decimal place has 33.4-32.6 to the Tories) 2 with the SNP within 1.0% And two that are three-way ultra-marginals (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine with the SNP 0.1% ahead of the Tories and the Lib Dems a further 1.6% behind, and Woking, with the Tories holding on and Labour and the Lib Dems within three percent of them)
Not sure I buy some of the constituency predictions elsewhere in the dataset (or in the ones mentioned, sometimes: West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine, for example - I mean, I'd love it if the Lib Dems were that close, but I can't convince myself it's true)
I despair of these MRP polls. There is no way that Lab and LDs are tied 3% behind the Tories in Woking. This is a Tory/LD fight. Until a few weeks ago I would have said Tories holding on just, now I think the LDs will win it, but really Lab should be absolutely nowhere.
The council is 24 LD, 0 Con, 1 Lab, 5 Ind. Labour were defending 1 seat in May and lost it.
The last GE was 26K Con, 17K LD, 9K Lab
And the LDs are targeting it. In what world are Lab challengers here?
Don't forget what happened in Hastings in 1997. Everyone thought the Tories would lose it to the LDs, but Labour came from third place. Same thing happened in Shrewsbury IIRC.
The Conservative candidate in Clacton is Giles Watling. He's 71 and the brother of Deborah Watling, who played Victoria along side the second Doctor in Doctor Who. He has also acted and appears in a Doctor Who audio play: https://www.bigfinish.com/releases/v/doctor-who-the-secret-history-872
So the alternative to Farage is someone who likes to go back in time?
There are two important things to note when comparing Scottish data from this MRP to our previous, non-election campaign, models. Firstly, this is the largest Scottish sample that YouGov have used for an MRP since the 2019 general election. This gives us much more detail in terms of what is happening seat to seat. As well, we have been able to update some of the MRP target data with newly released 2022 Scottish census data.
...Reform "breaking through" would involve a whole load of Jared O'Mara replays over the next two years.
"Why no, we had no idea that our carefully vetted candidate for Penistone & Stocksbridge, A. Dolph Hilter, had such extreme views. How could we ever have foreseen that?"
Indeed. It's worth looking past the bios on the ReFuk website and googling the relevant local newspaper archives to get a flavour of what might come
THIS IS THE WORST POSSIBLE NIGHTMARE FOR THE CONSERVATIVES. The party should have dumped Sunak.
And if that didn’t work do they dump them. No way that approach would have made things anything but worse. Also the idea voters are flocking to the centre left because the Tories weren’t right wing enough, which is the underlying inference, is so monumentally stupid it defies belief anyone can suggest it.
Did I just hear a career politician lambast career politicians and a self-appointed leader of a political party lambast Sunak for not being elected by MPs?! Couldn't make it up!
Well quite. Plus this election is about the future of the country not the future of Farage’s ego. Someone in the Tory party should do a clip along the lines of “This election is about you, your hopes, your dreams, whether you get a decent job etc etc don’t let Nigel Farage make this all about him.”
Well maybe your party shouldn’t have allowed in 2 million migrants in 3 years? Without asking anyone, and against the expressed wishes of every poll on this issue since the year zero? Just a thought
Reform will end up with no seats, they will have cut the legs off the Tories who will lose more seats to Labour than they were already going to and end up with the prize of a party with a giant majority who are even less keen on smashing immigration and more likely to strengthen UK /EU ties.
It takes a specially skilled politician to take the country even further from where they and their core voters want it to be. But Nigel will be front and centre and that’s what counts.
I don’t care. I want the Tories destroyed. It may take two elections but this is the necessary beginning, every journey single step etc etc
The destruction of the Tories is a fait accompli now that Nigel has flicked his mighty fingers. The question now is where does Sir Keir go from here? Voters who were repelled by his wokery now have a home. We may see them abandon Labour in droves. This is a perilous moment for Sir Keir. Labour might even go for the nuclear option and replace him with a more Blue Labour type. The political universe has been upended. There are no longer any certainties.
Maybe that's why Starmer was talking today about his willingness to use nuclear weapons. He was expecting the Farage announcement.
How fascinating that in the end, Brexit utterly destroyed the Conservative party
Why do you say Brexit? It's failing to control migration, unless you think those are one and the same thing.
Brexit is part of the Conservative difficulty if not quite top of the list, because no perceived gain, all apparent problem. Those who do the dirty work tend to get the jail time.
The biggest issue though is that people are just tired of them and the internal bullshit merry go-round of the party, thats what will make the defeat as big as its likely to be. 140 mentioned below, too low though, I'd reckon c170
Lab - 422 Con - 140 Lib Dem - 48 SNP - 17 Green - 2
That is a devastating poll for the SNP.
That was one of my ? about the MiC one. 35 seats for SNP looks unlikely and just isn’t in tune with the current Scottish trajectory, where bad news seems to be tumbling out for the Nats on an almost daily basis.
The total lack of money is now a serious problem for the SNP
Is it possible that Nigel could even end up as PM? Surely every single Tory voter will now vote for him (why would they stick with Rishi? What's the point?). Meanwhile, the lower classes now have an anti-Tory party to support that isn't led by tedious, woke, uninspiring Keith Whatsizname, whom they presumably never actually liked. This could be seismic.
No, that won't happen. Not enough support. But it makes a Lab/LD coalition more likely, which is my preferred option.
Seats where the Tories hold on by 1.0% or less include: 10 where Labour are within 1.0% 6 where the Lib Dems are within 1.0% (including Didcot and Wantage, the headline being a 33-33 tie between the Tories and Lib Dems with Labour behind on 24, but to 1 decimal place has 33.4-32.6 to the Tories) 2 with the SNP within 1.0% And two that are three-way ultra-marginals (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine with the SNP 0.1% ahead of the Tories and the Lib Dems a further 1.6% behind, and Woking, with the Tories holding on and Labour and the Lib Dems within three percent of them)
Not sure I buy some of the constituency predictions elsewhere in the dataset (or in the ones mentioned, sometimes: West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine, for example - I mean, I'd love it if the Lib Dems were that close, but I can't convince myself it's true)
I despair of these MRP polls. There is no way that Lab and LDs are tied 3% behind the Tories in Woking. This is a Tory/LD fight. Until a few weeks ago I would have said Tories holding on just, now I think the LDs will win it, but really Lab should be absolutely nowhere.
The council is 24 LD, 0 Con, 1 Lab, 5 Ind. Labour were defending 1 seat in May and lost it.
The last GE was 26K Con, 17K LD, 9K Lab
And the LDs are targeting it. In what world are Lab challengers here?
Don't forget what happened in Hastings in 1997. Everyone thought the Tories would lose it to the LDs, but Labour came from third place. Same thing happened in Shrewsbury IIRC.
The Microsoft report unmasked “prolific Russian influence actors” who last summer began trashing this summer’s Games in the French capital and Emmanuel Macron, the president, including by posting a bogus documentary featuring the Top Gun: Maverick star.
To accompany the fake Netflix documentary, which is narrated by an AI-generated Tom Cruise, Russia mocked up reviews of the programme from David Beckham, Jared Leto, Miley Cyrus and Mike Tyson.
“These ongoing Russian influence operations have two central objectives: to denigrate the reputation of the [International Olympic Committee] on the world stage, and to create the expectation of violence breaking out in Paris during the 2024 Summer Olympic Games,” the report said.
Do any banks still offer the voice recognition to authorise you when you phone up? If they do, and you have it, disable it now.
Yes, it’s effing scary if someone wants to target you. It’s gone very quickly from fakes of Obama and Rogan, to pretty much anyone who’s spoken in to a microphone for a few minutes. Anyone with any record of public speaking should be worried at this point, and the rest of us are not far behind.
They can call you and get you to talk for a bit and that might be enough.
Comments
I fear for these people when an actual government with right wing policies comes along, because it will. Probably not now, but in time, it always does
The council is 24 LD, 0 Con, 1 Lab, 5 Ind. Labour were defending 1 seat in May and lost it.
The last GE was 26K Con, 17K LD, 9K Lab
And the LDs are targeting it. In what world are Lab challengers here?
"Nigel Farage has better favourables among the Conservative base than Rishi Suank. How important is this?"
Among all voters:
Sunak: -41
Farage: -24
Tory voters:
Sunk: -2
Farage: +26
Real real risk for Sunak here that a bit more noise and it could become a stampede towards reform.
Or you can use toxic motherfuckers if you prefer another description.
I can't think of anything that comes close to Linda Lewis's 1972 offering "Lark"
I love the description of her in a Rolling Stone article from 73:
"Linda Lewis has this very strange voice. It's like a little girl's: high, with a breathy sort of purity, full of recklessness and wit. But it also has an unexpectedly rough texture which cuts into the little-girl quality so that, while she sounds like no one else, there are moments when she feels like early Stevie Wonder crossed with Michael Jackson — an extraordinary combination"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lark_(album)
This is the opening track, Spring Song
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6WBcNuvkPI
I urge you all to enjoy the full album; it's excellent from start to finish
Essex girl Linda died last Spring. She should be fondly remembered
July 4th was an insane choice, and it is becoming increasingly obvious why.
https://www.moreincommon.org.uk/general-election-2024/mrp/
"How does the model account for those who don't know how they will vote?
When we ask people their voting intention some people say they don’t know. We push them to say who they would vote for if they were forced to choose, and we use this response as their expected vote. Some people, when asked to imagine that they were forced to choose, still don’t know who they would vote for. Normally, when estimating vote share on a national level, we exclude these responses - effectively estimating that if this group of ‘double don’t knows’ ultimately votes, they would do so in proportion with those who have expressed a choice. That means even if someone lives in a rural area, is over 75, and voted Conservative in 2019 - if they respond they don’t know who they’ll vote for - the assumption is that they are the average voter i.e. more likely to vote Labour than Conservative.
Using our MRP model, we’re able to make a better guess. When training the model to predict people’s voting intention based on their demographics, voting behaviour and information about their constituency, we excluded the responses of people who didn’t know who they would vote for (after the squeeze) from the training data. When we apply the model to all the voters in the constituency, it effectively means we estimate the votes of people who don’t know, according to how people like them (in terms of demographics and past voting behaviour) but who do know, intend to vote. So if someone lives in a rural area, is over 75 and voted Conservative in 2019, the model uses the fact that most over 75s in rural areas who voted Conservative in 2019 and do know who they’ll vote for say they will vote Conservative, to guess that if they do vote it will likely be for the Conservatives."
The trouble is that such an approach depends a great deal on getting the turnout part of the model right. Are More in Common's results consistent with a realistic turnout of perhaps 65%, or a wholly unrealistic turnout of perhaps 85% after imputing responses from all those who still can't decide even after a squeeze question, yet say that they will eventually decide and vote. I suspect that many of them won't be able to make up their mind and will just not bother in the end.
You would have to have a heart of stone etc…
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2s
NEW: First YouGov MRP of the campaign and it's BRUTAL for the Conservatives.
Projects a 194 seat Labour majority. Biggest in 100 years.
Tories collapse to just 140 seats - lowest since 1906.
12 Cabinet ministers projected to lose their seats inc Hunt, Mordaunt and Shapps.
I don't think that the centuries old Conservative and Unionist party will die quite so easily. They will do what they always do - eventually they will find a route back to power. It may take five years, it may take 15, but it will happen. If Labour get a huge majority and end up with two or three terms they will lose the plot too. The discipline that gets you into power goes when you have been in government too long. We see it it today in team Blue. It will come for team Red just the same (potentially around 2036...)
194 seat majority for Labour.
Lab - 422
Con - 140
Lib Dem - 48
SNP - 17
Green - 2
Seems a bit toppy.
https://x.com/yougov/status/1797659498427154538?s=61
CON 140
LD 48
SNP 17
I don't think there's necessarily any issue with the MiC poll, it's just that it can't be compared directly with the other polls we've been talking about. It's certainly a good starting point for further research, especially into those 117 'too close to call' seats.
“Every revolution devours its children”
Fuck me, that traitor has some brass neck on him
Redfield & Wilton have the Conservatives on just 20% - this suggests low 20s which is well in line with most polls.
I’ve just broken the 1 image rule. Please @TSE don’t banish me to the outer darkness. It was, after all, to post up the MRP poll finding
There, sorted
@montie
THIS IS THE WORST POSSIBLE NIGHTMARE FOR THE CONSERVATIVES.
The party should have dumped Sunak.
....It also projects that the Scottish National Party would lose more than half their seats, with Labour returning as the largest party north of the border.
https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/49606-first-yougov-mrp-of-2024-general-election-shows-labour-on-track-to-beat-1997-landslide
Con - 38%
Lab - 28%
Reform - 22%
So Farage in with a chance but also Lab
WHOEVER IS DOING THIS, STOP. I LIKE POSTING MY DAILY PHOTO
Ah, it’s @Heathener
There will always be local quirks, odd events happening, unusually popular MPs, where they'll be wildly out - but they hope to get the majority of the seats right, and for the quirky ones to even themselves out across the whole sample.
@YouGov
Our MRP has 131 seats as tossups (i.e. winning party lead of <5%) including one 3-way marginal - Frome and East Somerset, with the Tories, Labour and Lib Dems all on 25-30%.
Here are the 30 most marginal seats according to the MRP:
https://x.com/YouGov/status/1797661262618444189
However, the Conservative campaign is abysmal and now Farage has set the cat amongst the (right wing) pigeons.
So who knows from here?
Map above - useless hex map showing rough estimates below: https://yougov.co.uk/elections/uk/2024
NEW THREAD
Mea culpa
xx
It still astonishes me that political parties can’t effectively vet MP candidates. If they can afford £500 for their deposit, they can afford £500 more to have someone read the last decade of their Twitter account.
https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/49179-political-tracker-roundup-april-2024
There are two important things to note when comparing Scottish data from this MRP to our previous, non-election campaign, models. Firstly, this is the largest Scottish sample that YouGov have used for an MRP since the 2019 general election. This gives us much more detail in terms of what is happening seat to seat. As well, we have been able to update some of the MRP target data with newly released 2022 Scottish census data.
https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/49606-first-yougov-mrp-of-2024-general-election-shows-labour-on-track-to-beat-1997-landslide
Wokingham - LD 34, Con 34, Lab 17
Maidenhead - LD 34, Con 31, Lab 19
Earley and Woodley - Lab 34, Con 30, LD 19
Windsor - Con 33, Lab 26, LD 22
So a glimmer of hop for Con, if they can get a modest swingback BUT it can also get worse with improved tactical voting.
I was initially surprised at the Maidenhead forecast but I know Theresa May was very popular so her going may have made the difference.
The biggest issue though is that people are just tired of them and the internal bullshit merry go-round of the party, thats what will make the defeat as big as its likely to be. 140 mentioned below, too low though, I'd reckon c170