Britain Elects 2024 | 38 days to go

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ft. Britain Elects co-founder Ben Walker

Is Labour ready to win again?
https://sotn.newstatesman.com/2024/02/sotn-is-labour-ready-to-win-again

The Britain Predicts model tells all
https://sotn.newstatesman.com/2024/05/britainpredicts

are we live we’re live okay good hello uh time now is 9 minutes past two on the 27th of May uh hello we are 38 days from polling day of the 202 4 general election called by prime minister Rishi sunak for reasons uh Beyond a reasonable person’s comprehension uh 38 days to go and how are things going how are things going Rich sunak called it called the election last Wednesday in the uh midafternoon 5:00 p.m thereabouts after um a fair few days of rumors but I think it’s fair to say it caught a lot of us off guard many of us were expecting a general election in October November that was not to be so how you doing my name is Ben Walker I’m the co-founder of Britain Al I’m a senior data journalist at the new Statesman and uh throughout the campaign I’m going to uh come on here and just talk about the polls talk about the forecast talk about what’s happening what to watch out for is anything changing uh and and other such things and if you have any questions be sure to just put them in the chat I will try and answer some of them but we’re going to try and keep these short I have a habit of doing broadcasts that last as long as uh two hours uh so we’re not going to be doing that today as you know campaigns uh occupy almost you know 99% of your life and um as I learned yesterday on a on a quiet Sunday uh my life was certainly not quiet so there we are right so let’s look at the polling first of all 38 days to go we were 42 when the Prime Minister called the election have things changed no uh you have one pollster having the label lead up two points you have another pollster having the labor lead down two points you have another pollster with the label lead unchanged when you look at the polling trackers um that that take into account all the polls not just your favorite one not just the one you buy mugs of saying I’ll wait for insert pollster um the labor lead which stood at 21 points uh before is still standing at 21 percentage points now of course don’t get me wrong we are only four days in five days four days in um the data we have you know you need it needs to be long longer than that don’t obsess over day-to-day changes in support obsess more so over weekl long shifts in support that’s what you will uh uh discover but then you also need to bear in mind that British polling whilst you know head and shoulders in my view above what the Americans put out still has form for a little bit of noise so you have one pollster on one week uh showing you know labor on 45% and and then the next week they’ll be on 39% the same pollster and the week after that it goes up to 44% the week after that it goes down to 40 and then up again to 44 that is something you do need to keep an eye on because if some some pulses that have formed for excess noise we’re not going to name them I’m not in the business of doing that but they do exist and you need to be be be aware of them so um generally speaking follow people like me I suppose follow Britain Alex uh my my personal Twitter is bnhh walk and the general polling summary is to quote Theresa May nothing has changed nothing has actually changed so there we go let’s have a look at them anyway let’s move away from my face to some charts now whilst the labor lead hasn’t changed over the course of the past week over the course of the past few weeks even um their numbers have and what we’ve noticed is what you’re seeing here first of all is political opinion polling since the uh 2019 general election but what we’ve noticed since uh I don’t know the end of the local elections I suppose um you’ve seen support for reform you’ll notice that in March it was 11.6% now it’s 11.1 sure could just be noise but you do notice that it correlates slightly the most recent shifts in support from the start of May to the end note the Tory share is up by a point or so but note labor share is also up by a point or so what we’ve seen since the start of May is a slight squeeze slight little push down in support for smaller parties to the benefit of the two main parties don’t know how much you can read into that um I think that’s the inevitabilities of maybe uh post post local election coverage focusing labor vori and not much for anyone else although I do remember one opinion poll in the immediate aftermath for the local elections recording an uptick in support for the liberal Democrats that doesn’t appear here to show up on our pole tracker here anyway nevertheless what you can see you just zoom in on that chart I wonder if I can zoom in uh well without breaking thing there we go you can just see that since uh the 8th of May the Tory share has gone up from 22% to 23% labor share has gone up from TW uh 44% to 45% so yeah any change in the labor lead no any change in labor support yes by a point are you going to read much into that some of us will but I recommend you don’t what the best metric is always this one and that’s the one that I’ve Linked In the Tweet to this broadcast and it is Labor Ready to govern party popularity only tells you a half or actually a quarter of the story it is the horse race Dynamic I get that but it’s not everything and yeah Labor’s lead oh actually tell a lie since the calling of the election the labor lead has gone up from what 21 points to 22 points or or rather it really has just stayed stock still a 22o lead for labor right now and that accounts for all the pulsers and by the way it goes without saying the Britain elects pole trackers plural uh is a weighted model not just a simple average so this does account for certain biases certain historic errors but then again it’s not watertight because one pollster in one election cycle gets the election bang on that doesn’t mean they’re going to be the gold standard next time I do recall certain pulses again I won’t name them getting 2010 bang on and then getting 2015 wider Off the Mark than any other pollster but yes Labour’s lead over the conserva right now is 22 percentage points Labour’s lead on the economy has been recording a slightly I would more noticeable uptick it was 10 point 10 points at the start of the year now it’s at 13 Going On to 14 percentage points that by the way represents the largest um lead for the labor party on the metric of economic competence since 2001 2002 okay just bear that in mind so when we talk about Labor landslides there are grounds to think it is possible not just on the party popularity metric which is pretty obvious but also on the economic competence metric too nevertheless K’s own lead over Rishi sunak in terms of likability so this is the share of people who like starma against the share of people who like sunak starma has a 12-point lead over sunak there but st’s own lead I.E is he keeping more does he have more people liking him than disliking him it’s only at one to two percentage points so in one respect starma own approvals are neck and neck up against the people in the fight though Rishi sunak the conservatives they are far out ahead so when you detect I suppose on the doorstep when you go on the doorstep and you see um people not being necessarily enus about the labor leader um that is grounded in the data that does exist in the data but when you compare the level of public feeling for both the Prime Minister and the conservative brand because there was once upon a time when a few people thought uh sunak would you know perform better than the Tor brand uh the level of uh opposition negativity is so profound uh the middling feelings felt towards starma personally don’t matter a jot okay now just to answer a few questions if you just want to get some questions in you can do so either on Twitter or YouTube thanks for joining us Stu ask Ty Ben thanks for keeping us up to date do you think the tor’s national service will lose them more votes um I don’t think it will lose them votes this is this is the thing right okay so in in abstract the idea of national service is something that a lot of Britain are quite um supportive of in isolation in abstract I emphasize once you then ask people that the specifics you will have to do this that and the the other everyone’s like I’m all right jack I don’t want to be involved in this Everyone likes the concept of it Everyone likes the concept of restrictive immigration controls when you tell them the damage when you tell them you know conceivable actual realities in which they have to get involved in support drops nevertheless this is the kind of this this is the red meat so to speak for what is left of the Tory base but I have to say what is left of the Tory Bas is very much not particularly as big as uh it’s not an election-winning coalition what the conservatives I think are doing right now are trying to Stave off Annihilation okay and what better way to do that than to dig in as much as you can with one section of what you’ve got and what do the conservatives have they have more of the what would you call it the socially conservative aging residents who are very much tempted by reform very much tempted by the radical right have been brought into apathy over recent years but they absolutely have the labor party and they need rallying and I suppose this is one way to do it this is a policy that’s not speaking to you this is a policy that’s not speaking to the media Britain this is a policy that speaks the Bas and is trying to Rally the Bas okay uh son of Furs hat are there any pulsers that you don’t include in your polar polls uh I think it would be wrong of me to exclude any pollster that um is a member of the British polling Council because I need I need to start rationalizing myself there there was I did make one I did give um I did think about excluding uh people polling when they weren’t publishing tables but in the end they they got them out rather quickly after that I think um but how does your average deal with opinium who do something special for specific demographics well it deals how does it deal with it well I suppose suppose so it bases it less so on what they do with um undecided voters which by you mean specific demographics it just bases it on how it performed historically and opinion by the way you know performed very well both in the 2019 election and also the 2016 referendum so there isn’t much modification done to their model their model so to speak it’s just that when you compare it to other accurate models which are also showing 20 point labor leads it it does get canceled out so to speak get it gets consumed by the noise um science monkey asked how reliable is reform polling when it comes to first pass the post system hard it’s quite hard and we’re going to get onto that in a minute um we have a little Ling as to where eform support is um by the way it’s not one to one where ukip were now you can make the argument oh well all of ukip’s Voters are dead but it’s the type of people you know they’re still there okay and so what I’m what I’m what I’m learning you know when you look at the local election results where aform perform performed well and where ukit performed well 10 years ago it’s not one to one the same um and I really want to work out why it has I factored bit of that in when when you look at the PCC elections um the correlation is a little stronger so you know ukip had great strength in Boston and skegness or skeg Vegas a lot of the lincol sh Coast a lot of East Anglia a lot of you know places like Grimsby you know the old yorksh Co Fields as well um it still is there for reform it just doesn’t seem you know where ukip had strength elsewhere doesn’t seem as great elsewhere it’s um it doesn’t seem as great Elsewhere for reform it’s it’s interesting that but what is the story in Uni seats like Sheffield ham and Bristol Cent home the students would be at home not on campus uh yeah yeah I I get the impression that we may be overstating it because What proportion of students actually go out and vote What proportion of Campus students actually go out and vote um I don’t actually have the figures hand to be honest with you but I I’ll be honest I think we’re overstating the effects it’s going to have What proportion of the electorate of Sheffield Hallam are campus residents when it comes to council byelections as we know in a Lancaster byelection in the uni one of the University Wars the low University turnout did contribute to the changing in the result but overall Sheffield Hallam while containing a you know sizable student population let’s not forget you know is it so politically different to the rest of the seat that it’s going to change the dynamic between labor and the liberal Democrats is it not sure not sure right I’m going to finish up with the questions we’re going to move on to the model now so just to remind you Labour’s lead right now is at 22 percentage points that is barely different different on where we were a week ago but of course we’re not even one full week in maybe things will change in a few days Labour’s lead on the economy is at 14 points that is strong that is as strong as where labor were were was in 2001 2002 just after they’d won another stoning Landslide at the polls starmer’s own lead over the prime minister in terms of liability is at 12 percentage points and st’s own lead in ter uh you know the proportion of Brits who like him versus the proportion who don’t is at two points although bear in mind between one in five and one in four of us still still do not have a strong or or existent opinion on what could be perhaps the next prime minister already so there’s still I suppose many Minds to make up now let’s move to the forecast what are we seeing here um so first of all just remind you the overall numbers if we just zoom up there no not there this is the four as of the 25th of May how would seat split 417 for labor um that is up 2117 on 2019 many commentators at the time including probably myself talked about the fact labor needed at least a decade to recover but it seems as though they’re going to go from one of their worst defeats in history to one of their best victories in history not their best I think by any stretch in terms of popular vote but in terms of parliamentary seats this is up there I don’t actually know the exact figures but I really think this this might be the best ever the conservatives are going to probably fall from uh 360 370 I can’t remember the actual number they’re going to fall to 124 seats in the House of Commons that is down 248 this by the way would represent the worst defeat for the conservative party for the Tory party in its history reform would pull between 11 and 12% of the vote but would Come Away with zero MPS this is interesting because 11.5% is not far from where ukip were with their 12.6% in 2015 but it doesn’t exactly feel like that does it I would look at that figure and I would just say I don’t think it’s going to end up like that once all the votes have been counted the liberal Democrats will be a big beneficiary of this Tory collapse you’ll see a lot of seats they don’t expect to win fall into their hands I’ve had a lot of libdem organizers get in touch with me saying my model is B because they don’t expect to win their seat um and then we’ve also had some other libdems get in touch with me to say actually you’re the first to have noticed uh that we might win this uh and so yeah nevertheless 64 seats for the libdems in total that would represent one of their best results uh this century is that better than 2005 I think it is actually yeah I think it is they will be up 56 seats on the 2019 election I reiterate some organizers are casting doubt on this in private messaging with me but some others um are not actually and that’s just as interested just as interesting rather the greens are on one MP they’re in trouble it seems in Brighton Pavilion or rather their vote share is not going up in Brighton Pavilion it does however appear to be going up in Bristol Central where they may be in contention for the seat against the uh labor incumbent thangum deire so it’s not unreasonable to think that that though the model doesn’t show it now the greens could lose Brighton Pavilion while gra gaining Bristol Central and there may be something to say about their performance in wavy Valley and other seats the S SMP are expected to fall at least 26 members of parliament down to 22 Scotland is likely to be a very different country to what it was four five years ago let alone 9 years ago as well plied come are expected to just pick up another seat uh uh up up one to three remember this is the notional boundaries so Wales and Scotland lose seats as a consequence they were over represented in the House of Commons because they didn’t have Devolution now they do the government’s decided to cut them down to size and by that I mean a proportionate quite fair I suppose size so let’s have a look at the actual results overall and you just look at the election map let’s start with England and Wales and my God what a different country country this is going to be if the result is borne out you have almost the whole of the so-called red wall returning to labor coming back to labor but I note not all of it you have one seat here which is uh what’s it called Brig and mingham uh look at that there still a tough fight tough ask for labor there uh the conservatives are forecast to fall a significant share by the way to fall 36 points to down to 36 % their vote is virtually going to half from you know Landslide inducing lengths to Battleground but labor are only expected to go up by 10 points and end up on 30% they will miss out there in nearby Grimsby meanwhile you’ll have Labor coming away with 43% to the conservatives 38 Tories are down 18 labor are up up 11 there and I will note if I remember rightly this is a result not quite as safe for labor as it was in 2015 the so-called red wall the so-called Battleground seats that labor lost in the north of England to the conservatives in 2019 are coming back to the labor you can see that that’s pretty clear as day but they’re not coming back to labor by Landslide inducing lengths a lot of these seats will remain Battle Grounds after the election that is to come take for instance the seat of Burnley and Hein bur those majorities aren’t massive they can definitely be failed again at the election to come something to bear in mind that especially in Pendle and clithero these are still and always will be Battleground seats and I suppose for the residents living there that would be to their benefit what else can we look at here uh let’s take a look at North Wales you have rexam Labor on 43% to the conserves for 32 Tores down 14 labor up five note that the increase in support for labor isn’t as great in Wales as it is in England and I just want to Muse out loud there that this might get just that little bit worse for labor labor topped the pole in Wales last time in 2019 and you know where you have already pre-existing strength you know your your rise in Sharing support won’t be as great anyway but um it seems as though the uh issues surrounding vau Gein the issues surrounding the IND Welsh government 20 mil an hour uh may start to hurt Welsh labor at The Ballot Box when it comes to Westminster but where indeed will these perspec Ive labor voters be going we don’t yet know we’re not yet seeing it in the polling but I would just note loudly that Labor’s increasing support in some of these seats isn’t quite as great as it is in England look at that inclued East labor up six points that gives them the seat absolutely but that’s more down to Tory fall than labor rise ditto included North Tory fall labor rise Tory fall exceeding the uh share of the labor rise there bangar abacon we labor up only four points notable ped vote there uh labor on 42% to the conservatives 28 yes that looks very comfortably like a labor gain but again the labor rise in support isn’t that big inmon or angle C for those of us who are devoutly English um looks set to be a bit of a freeway or rather a tight fight it was conservative in 2019 looks like the Tores are going to fall to third place here um labor on 36% applied on 33% I would call this too close to call DWI for Mar onth uh well that is as is that is as Welsh as it comes I think that goes without saying easy safe plied hold kerig kedon preli uh hope I’m pronouncing that correctly uh looks to be assuredly plied and the one they’re expected to gain from the conservatives is this one which is basically kamaran I’m not going to try and pronounce that uh yes Tory for muted limited ped rise as well there just like Labor’s rise in Wales uh what else can we look at well you look at the Southwest it’s getting a bit more colorful this used to be incredibly blue at the last election and you see in Cornwall you see uh a lot of seats going different way St Ives which the libdems continually tell me they will never ever win um well they’re on 44% here to the conservatives 27 where who’s going to win it instead you think Labor’s going to come from third don’t think so looks like this seat will fall comfortably liberal Democrat although we again it’s a forecast you can never say anything with certainty cambour and Red Roof this is one of the seats that labor have been gunning for ditto tro tro and Falmouth um yeah looks like quite comfortable labor gains here look at that labor on 48% forecast in tro uh against the conservatives 29% there and Southeast Cornwall seems to be quite a tight fight conservative 31% of Labor 29 North Cornwell looks to be a liberal Democrat regain from the conservatives the last time they won that seat was in 2010 Plymouth itself looks to be quite um open and shut well actually maybe not Plymouth more view Johnny merca seat labor 42% of the conservatives 35 and Plymouth Sutton and devonport that would be a labor hold labor 57 to conservative 24 the labor Council sorry no let me start that again the conservative Council here has been on a lot of hot water recently and the local election showed that will it reflect in a uh perhaps more dramatic general election result implo me more of you we don’t know um libdems seem pretty confident about taking back south Deen sorry not conf not taking back winning is it for the first time I’ve only got the figures up to 2005 here but yes the liberal Democrats seem to be on course for a win in South Devon also here in in North Devon which is ilum and Barnstaple uh I I went there for a holiday a while ago libd 35 to Tory 31 look at that Tori uh fall in support tor’s down 26 percentage points on 31% that’s a silly fall and that’s not even the worst that’s not even the worst uh this by the way would be the uh I forget his name the former Attorney General with the excellent voice the perfect voice for any politician uh this fell would be in trouble there in his North Devon seat or is that Tor and West out Tor and Tavistock I can’t remember anyway uh this seems to be a bit of a surprise labor gain here in central Devon again I this is a model it’s a forecast not a guarantee how much we can how much truck we can place in this I don’t know but there was a substantial share of support for labor before the eighto rise is under what they were get what they’re going to be getting across the nation so it’s not unreasonable to think that on a split vote labor could come through the middle here and take Central Devon exmouth exmouth and exitor East is looking like a very interesting three-way this is where the local independent uh CLA Wright got a significant share of support before her she’s not standing again and her vote appears to be splintering all over she has endorsed the lib Dems which does indicate an 18o rise in support for the lib Dems here uh on the 2019 election c a small portion of this was in the exitor seat but again the small portion well the exitor seat does play a notable part in this new seat which does mean labor will be rising too who will win it who voters will vote tactically is going to be very interesting indeed there is no I note according to the model there is no tactical voting element in this seat yet I haven’t assigned that so far and then you look across the rest of the Southwest lib Dems picking up a lot of seats here FR and East Somerset glastenbury and Summerton the site of the byelection the Summerton and fr byelection lib Dems appear to be on course to take that quite relatively convincingly in some bits uh from the conservatives but again some of these are not easy fights some of them are tight take for example the South cotwall seat lib Dems 34 conservatives 33 and then of course we have the seats that might get a lot of attention on the night Northeast Somerset and Hanam Jak ree mogs seat here we have a labor gain conservatives down 17 points on 37% labor up 15 points on 41% in local elections in these Villages you do tend to see the Liv Dems do well but in the urban more urban bits on the outskirts of Bristol in Keenum and Cadbury Heath labor have great strength there it seems to be though it seems to be the case that labor being given a free run by the libdems here although of course there will be a libdem candidate date and so they are likely to pick up this seat here’s the one that the greens should get excited by Bristol Central significant labor majority for the incumbent labor candidate thangum deaner in 2019 they are forecast once you factor for the local election results then the fluidity of the vote the uh proportion of the labor vote here isn’t that strong uh you do see the labor vote falling 12 points here and the greens up four points um on 30% to labors 47% this is a model forecast which uses National and Regional polling and tries to wait that against uh local election results that we know that you know break with the mean break with the expected as well as What proportion of the labor base is willing to stick with them has stuck with them and will continue to do so um for anyone who wants to know the methodology can find it at the bottom of the Britain predicts uh uh page just give Google Google AO Britain predicts and you’ll find it on sn. newstatesman.com but Bristol Central is the one in which the greens are gunning for that does appear to show up slightly in the Britain predicts model the greens are up four points here labor are down 12 points here but that’s still would give labor a 17-point lead how much Faith am I going to put in the fact that the local election results have any bearing on the general well we we waiting it some somehow it features a little bit but not entirely and if if it featured in totality if you only use the local election results here then the greens would walk this the greens will probably come away with 50% to labor 40 but we know local elections are not general elections so we can’t really say with certainty what’s going on here all we know is the greens are gunning for it and we’ll just move to the other the other seat of green contention which is bright and Pavilion here you have the green vote only down two points labors up three points this is of course against the national backdrop of the green vote being on almost double on where it was in 2019 these are two unknowns here models can only tell you so much especially in the seat of Islington North this is forecast as a labor hold with 66% labor up two points but I’m minded to say don’t look at this because we know the candidacy of Jeremy Corbin the incumbent as an independent former labor MP former labor leader uh will change things up slightly and added a piece on this uh last week and you know it’s not unreasonable once you look at former MPS you know I want you to go through the history of former MPS standing for Parliament that Corbin could come away with between 14 and 45% of the vote on average he will come away with 30 something will all of that come from labor no because you have a race redefined as a two-horse race between the incumbent labor party and the former labor party and uh so libd green and Tory voters will move accordingly we don’t know we can’t say with certainty what will happen in isington North all I can tell you is this history suggests Corbin Will Come Away with 30 something perc which if that eats directly into the labor vote probably may make it his if he takes up 10 points from the greens he probably got it but we don’t yet know we don’t yet know the indication it seems is that labor are going to go for it but will they put in enough resources are they going to write it off don’t know don’t know cross hartfordshire politics is getting just that little bit more interesting and colorful St Albans is going to be a libdem hold but then again you have stevenage uh the former Battlegrounds of the Blair ear this is looking like a convincing labor gain 46% to conservative 33 well- in Hatfield or well- win Hatfield um what’s his name Grant shaps uh is very much in trouble here this is 43% labor 30 3% conservative uh Milton ke looks to be like a double whammy labor game Milton ke Central uh labor up 10 points there tor’s down 18 Milton Kings North tor’s down 20 labor up 10 and maybe maybe cheeky punt here Bingham and Bletchley this is quite tight this is much tighter here you have Labor on 39 to the Tories 33 I think that appears to be the a lot of the vote here in Bletchley proper and fenny Stratford uh overweighting what’s happening in Buckingham and Winslow which I think has a bit more lib demem strength although I’m not sure I’ve had a lot of people tell me Alsbury is one that labor might be gunning for and that giving it to the Liv Dems is not the right thing to do here but show me the evidence show me the evidence it needs to be it needs to be shown in the data if there’s no data for it then I’m not going to factor for it as simple as that South Cambridge just appears to be turning to the lib Dems here you’ve got uh St Neo and mid Cambridge slight lid gain tor’s down 20 lib dem’s up nine South Cambridge are proper um libdems up seven tor’s down 17 elely and East cambrid libdems up eight tor’s down 21 and in Cambridge uh labor up one point but the lids are up four doesn’t appear though as labor are in trouble here labor don’t appear to be in trouble in Cambridge yet but I can I’m looking at that race now and I’m thinking yeah that that that looks like a live demam Target in 2029 Peter Bru Tores down 18 labor up nine Lincoln labor up 10 Tores down 19 where else can we look at Newark the site of the uh perspective potential leadership uh candidate uh Robert genrich who came in on a byelection in 2014 this is a tight fight 34% to 33% if we expect the polls to narrow this probably won’t be a labor gain but who knows another one a potentially slightly high-profile conservative figure is uh Brandon Lewis in great yarma this is a labor gain 33% labor to the conservatives 32 will it bear out like that in the end we don’t know the polls have yet to change they haven’t change so far but they could they could they absolutely could great deal of uh the Midlands and and the north turning to labor Mansfield significant Tory majority here in the past um it still appears to just be a conservative hold there and another one Boston and skes uh the seat the seat where the reform leader Richard TI will be standing the numbers are right now conservative 35 labor 24 reform 24 that’s going to be interesting isn’t it I wonder let’s see how Richard Ty does there where else can we look at let’s go to Scotland now this is where it’s a bit more I would say higgledy piggledy because so many of the seats here come right down to the wire the thing you need to remember about Scotland is tactical voting doesn’t necessarily work in the same way as in England it’s not a case of progressive versus socially conservative it is more so a case of unionist versus Pro Independence and so in seats like Berkshire roxor dumire and others you are likely to see the labor vote rise not as much as it otherwise would so labor expected to you know see a significant rise here a 12p point rise but when you do not factor for tactical voting that labor rise was expected to be closer to 15 to 20 percentage points what you’re seeing in seats like these are would be labor voters staying with or going to the conservatives to offset the SNP and in other seats like Don ferland you’ll be seeing Scottish Tory voters uh instead of um leaving politics Al together or staying with the Scottish Tories actually moving to Labor uh to beat the S SMP um what that does is you see whole suaves of Glasgow whole sves of the central belt great proportions of Edinburgh Midlothian and uh is this still Berkshire yeah move all the way over to labor coldi the site of uh former prime minister Gordon Brown would also return to labor here this will be labor up 18 points S&P only down four points here something to bear in mind as well there will be tactical voting against the S&P but there will also be tactical voting in favor of them as well but politically polling wise they have been down and out for quite a while now John swinny whilst a relatively popular figure doesn’t appear to be blowing anyone away yet um what I’m saying here in Scotland is a lot of fights could in indeed come down to the wire take this one Paisley and rer shanor uh S&P 42 to labor 42 that is very much just neck and neck isn’t it but then again you also have another one in Clyde and risher West labor 46 SMP 40 uh Central ASA S&P 43 conservative 31 it’s not unreasonable to think that you know if there’s enough tactical voting from labor the um conservatives might come away with picking up one or two extra seats there you know don’t get me wrong it could be overstating the case here but it’s not unreasonable to think in a seat like air Carrick and cumnock um the Tory vote holding up a little bit better than expected so much so that they might Edge the SNP for total number of votes because that labor share of support of 21% is a lot smaller than what we’re forecasting it not unreasonable to think that keep an eye on Scotland there could benefit the conservatives it’s not unreasonable to say that some of the safer seats for the conservatives are not in England but are in Scotland so that pretty much summarizes what you need to know about the elections labor Landslide still on course the polls haven’t changed much Labor’s lead is at 20% 20 points rather 21 22 percentage points nothing much more to say there labor share labor support hasn’t much changed the narrative hasn’t much changed although most Britains when asked do you think labor had a good start to the campaign 50% say yes I think 20% say no but when you ask if the conservatives had a good start to the campaign I think it’s more so 60 or 70% say no and only about 10 to 20% say yes so Britains are aware that a general election is coming although I have to admit some people have gone door knocking and found uh people who didn’t know there was a general election on this weekend um I think people have become very aware a general election is coming I think the first week if you want to call it that even though it’s just Monday now favors labor in terms of PR in terms of who’s uh being seen as having a good campaign definitely favors labor there the polls aren’t shifting that much people’s minds haven’t shifted although there is still a great deal of Tory apathy out there whether that rallies back rallies back to the Tories as history indicates uh that will narrow the labor lead somewhat but if it stays as is if Tory apathy you know shrinks because those apathetics have gone from you know unsure to not voting at all then this labor Landslide looks a little bit more certain than than first for but something also to consider is whether the reform vote can be squeezed now reform voters are not ukip voters they are voters for whom are very alienated with politics I think more so they yit voters they absolutely dislike the current conservative party they don’t like Rishi sunak but they abhor the so-called Ramona cir they abhor for the anti- brexit labor party and so you know I wonder to what extent can messages of squeeze really push any reform voters back to the conservative fold and I do say back because a lot of them did back Boris Johnson’s conservatives in 2019 that will also narrow the polls I know uh Welsh Labor candidates are very worried about messaging like that whether or not that will bear out is yet to be seen But the unknowns are this whether the reform go whether the reform vote can be squeezed to the Tory party’s benefit whether Tory apathetics will stay at home and whether the labor party will mess up the campaign those are the three unknowns reforms vote the Tory apathetics labor keeping it calm that’s pretty much it we are 38 days from the general election results 38 days from polling day Labor’s lead is at 20 percentage points Labor’s lead on the economy is at 13 points labor is currently forecast to get in excess of 400 seats the conservatives in a great great many of the 10 and something seats they’re currently forecast to get aren’t far away from almost being wiped out a lot of the seats they are holding now forecast to hold are with majorities of Five Points or less if you get rid of all of those seats the um if we’ll just go back to the uh chart here if you get rid of the Tory seats that currently forecast to hold now with majorities of less than five points you end up with Tory the t is on 60 seats now 199 fre in Canada is a bit of a dramatic situation bit of a dramatic result there we put it lightly but you know mathematically it’s not not unrealistic it’s not unrealistic it’s it’s it’s improbable if you go by history if you assume the polls narrow if you assume Tory apathetics return to the Tories if you assume reforms vote can be squeezed and then we can probably end up with a result closer to labor on 370 to the Tories on 200 and something but it’s not it’s not unreasonable to think it could go the complete opposite way as well so yeah there’s your there’s your unknowns that concludes the stream for today it’s 1450 I’m going to go W get lunch and go to a meeting that I’m probably going to be late to now can’t wait so here it is we’ll come back to this in a few more days probably when there’s actually some data to talk about probably when the Britain predicts model gets an update but in the meantime you can find us all give Google a go uh Britain predicts you’ll find the model uh twitter.com Britex Twitter youtube.com Britex if you want to watch a repeat of this and you know add your comment press the like button smash that subscribe button and other such things if you want to find my personal socials and give me abuse I am twitter.com bnhh Walker um I think my background is not quite as dirty as it used to be I’ve had people comment on that before um so there’s that uh if you want to read what I write yeah you can absolutely find that just sn. newstatesman.com I’ve written about whether Jeremy Corbin can hold Islington North I reckon he can whether he will I don’t know um independent candidates tend to you know on average they would get 30 something percent he would get 30 something percent rather uh so that’s going to be an interesting fight but yeah there’ll be plenty more writings from me and plenty more broadcasts from me that’s it thank you very much for watching I’m off now I’ll see you in the next one