New polling, released this morning by Techne, puts Labour on 45% to the Conservatives on 30%. This represents a Labour lead over the Conservatives of 15%. It’s the joint lowest margin recorded by the pollster since Sunak became Prime Minister.
Techne aren’t the only pollster reflecting this trend. Last week, Opinium recorded a Labour lead of just 11%, whilst on Monday, Redfield & Wilton reported a 14% margin – both of which are also the smallest since Sunak took over. Going by the polling average in February, a 14% Labour lead represents a drop of 8% in just two months.
As the “noisy” scatter graph from above UK Polling Report shows a narrowing lead for Labour trend has developed this month. Before Tory MPs get too excited, this is what it probably means in terms of seats:
All of this explains why Savanta polling director, Chris Hopkins, told the i that the days of 20 point Labour polling leads are “gone” and “If it gets much smaller I think possibly we start to get into hung parliament territory”. The SNP’s electoral collapse further complicates electoral calculations. Survation recently put the SNP’s lead over Labour at 5% – the smallest since the 2019 election. There’s still a long time to go until Autumn 2024…
Opinium has once again won the crown for most accurate poll during the Tory leadership election. After winning the same accolade at the 2019 election, Opinium were closest to the final result. They add the usual caveats that polling political parties is much trickier than the general public…
All the polls over-stated Liz versus Rishi, Guido reckons the final placing based on their last calls is this:
- Opinium – 7.3 variance
- TechneUK – 13.3 variance
- YouGov – 17.3 variance
- ConHome – 21.3 variance
Liz winning by 14.7 points is decent, though less than the 30-point lead some earlier polls pointed to. Asked whether they reckon the polls were always off, or whether there was a last-minute improvement to Rishi’s numbers, a Team Rishi source said they don’t know, though the fact the first YouGov poll ended up being 15 points off the actual result left them satisfied they ran a decent campaign. Let the spinning commence in earnest…
Opinium’s latest polling puts Liz far ahead of Rishi amongst Tory voters, with 2019 Tories now giving her 26-point lead at 48% to 22%. The previous survey had Rishi ahead on “looking like a Prime Minister in waiting“. That lead has now evaporated: Truss is leading on all measures with the Tories.
Even worse for Rishi is his polling against Starmer. In head-to-head polling, Liz beats Starmer amongst all voters by 1 point at 29% to 28%. Rishi, meanwhile, trails Starmer at 28% to 24%. Rishi and his supporters are still pushing the polls from last month showing him best placed to beat Sir Keir. That’s looking like a pretty weak claim now…
UPDATE: Redfield & Wilton find the same outcomes; Liz beats Keir, Keir beats Rishi.
As the Treasury now raid everyone’s pockets to pay for the enormous pandemic bill, new figures from the TaxPayers’ Alliance reveal a worthy causes propped up by taxpayer generosity: between 2020 and 2021, the British Youth Council – the group which runs the UK Youth Parliament – received £299,941 to keep afloat, all while actively campaigning against the government, lobbying for the enfranchisement of children, and asking for “free” universities. Not to mention calling for the dismantling of the police force on the grounds that it “enable[s] racism and injustice”.
The cash was received in three tranches:
- £183,300 to support the UK Youth Parliament. Which couldn’t even sit during the pandemic, for obvious reasons.
- £100,000 to support the British Youth Council’s role “involving young people in policy development across government“. A role which basically amounts to having children demand idealistic and unrealistic Net Zero targets should be “inclusive”…
- £16,641 to prevent the closure of the British Youth Council. Presumably because they could only survive on a bailout from the government they despise.
“Taxpayers are tired of seeing their money prop up controversial campaigns and causes, particularly during a pandemic. Government ministers are foolish to be funnelling money to organisations that simply do them down. Government needs to stop funding the lobbying merry-go-round and instead focus cash on taxpayers’ priorities.”
£300,000 to turn 11 year-olds into the next generation’s Momentum activists. New data from Opinium’s Youth Democracy Index also shows over 43% of 18-24 year olds think socialism is a good model for society, with just 32% thinking the same of capitalism. Give it a few more years and it’ll be even worse. At least until these kids look at their payslips and realise how much a socialist utopia would cost…
Despite a relentless smear campaign from hysterical EU rejoiners to paint Boris as a Kremlin apparatchik, and Brexit as a Russian conspiracy, the public still trust Boris over Starmer as the best person to stand up to Putin. According to new data from Opinium, Boris has a 13% lead over Starmer at 28% to 15%. Starmer’s approval has actually declined by 4 points over the last two weeks as the UK’s response to the invasion has played out…
The smears have failed. FBPEers insisting Boris dances to the tune of the oligarchs obviously falls flat when the Kremlin themself are singling out the UK’s response for its hostility – not to mention Boris’s own popularity with the Ukrainian government and its people. Better luck next time…
A poll out in The Times this morning sees a dramatic drop in Labour’s poll lead, from nine points to three in just a week. Labour is down four points to 37% and the Tories up two to 34%.
On Saturday Opinium – the most accurate 2019 pollster – also found this same lead with identical 37% and 34% poll ratings respectively. Opinium’s poll also came with a methodology change that claims most polls giving Labour a very large lead is because of Tory voters switching to ‘don’t know’ rather than Labour. The new methodology weights the Tory ‘don’t knows’ differently, giving a more accurate picture of voting intention.
Without the methodology shift, Opinium says their latest poll would have shown a ten-point Labour lead…
