It seems that Tory popularity has plummeted to a new low – at least if you’re to believe a seat-by-seat opinion poll which suggested that the Conservatives were facing a 1997-style landslide defeat.
However, on Tuesday, just one day after the aforementioned poll results were unveiled, analysis of the new constituency boundaries was published, suggesting it would be hard for Labour to win a majority.
With so much contradictory information out there, I’ve been answering readers’ questions on the polls, Conservative popularity amid the Rwanda bill vote and Labour’s position in the run up to the election.
It is worth noting that there was no actual contradiction between the two pieces of research, but you could be forgiven for being confused. The new boundaries research, by Professors Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher, estimated that Labour needs a 12.7 per swing to win a majority – a little more than under old boundaries, which were biased against the Tories.
Rallings and Thrasher’s 12.7 per cent swing equates to a Labour lead in vote share of 13.6 points, compared with an average in current opinion polls of 19 points. But Peter Kellner and Electoral Calculus suggest that, because of Labour gains in Scotland and anti-Tory tactical voting everywhere, Labour may need to be only 5 points ahead to win a majority – even on new boundaries.
Here are eight questions from Independent readers – and my answers from the “Ask Me Anything” event.
Q: We keep hearing about ‘swing’. But we have VERY different parties/leaders compared with the last election. When was the last time that the party offerings were so different from at the previous election?
Matt Houghton
A: One of the reasons swing is such a powerful tool of analysis is that it allows us to make comparisons between political situations that are, as Matt says, very different. Current opinion polls suggest a swing of 15% from Conservative to Labour compared with the 2019 election.
If reflected in actual votes, that would be unprecedented in postwar British politics: the highest swing to date was 10.2% from Con to Lab in 1997.
Q: Do you think a Labour majority or a coalition with the Lib Dems is more likely after the election?
David Grant
A: I now think a Labour majority is more likely than a hung parliament. The opinion polls haven’t moved for a year (see above), and although they might overstate Labour’s advantage when people come to make an actual choice between Starmer and Sunak as PM, the Conservative Party seems to have decided that its best approach to the election is for many of its MPs to take their heads off and run around in circles.
A separate point: if there is a hung parliament, Starmer would be PM of a minority Labour government. The Lib Dems would vote with Labour on key votes, but they would not join a coalition – what happened after the last coalition was too painful.
Q: Will Sunak do the only decent step when he gets defeated with his Rwanda Bill, resign and call an election?
Rasputin007
A: I fear that question assumes that the government will be defeated on the Rwanda bill tonight. I think they will win reasonably comfortably. If they do lose, it would be disaster and Sunak would bring it back tomorrow as a vote of confidence. He would win it then, but the damage to the government’s standing would be so much greater. Even so, he will limp on.
Q: The Independent has run a series of pieces outlining recent dire predictions for the Tories over the last week but this is not really reflected in the Wikipedia graphical summary, Over the year it shows a downtrend in both parties with a slight recent uptick last week following a down trend the week before and the latest Deltapoll poll shows only a 16% lead. A Labour win but no wipe out. This is coupled with poor performance for both Starmer and Sunak as leaders. Where is this recent enthusiasm coming from?
Paddly
