Many people will have seen reports of an opinion poll published by YouGov yesterday, based on interviews with 13,000 people spread over every constituency in the UK. This type of polling is usually believed to be far more accurate than the typical poll based on a sample of around 2,000 people, which is the commonly used basis for most opinion polls published in this country.
The new poll, which forecasts the result in every constituency because of the way in which it is prepared, suggests the following map of Westminster seats, coloured by the affiliation of the constituency MP that would represent them:
The polling forecast, which is the mid-range expectation based upon the interviews that took place, produces the following number of seats per party:
The changes per party are quite dramatic, as shown in the legend to the map.
As is apparent, Labour would be decimated, but so too would be the Tories. The ruling hegemony in the UK from the last century appears to be on its last gasp.
The worrying prospect is that Reform could come close to a parliamentary majority, and with the Tories, could govern the UK.
There is, however, more to this than that. As is apparent, a massive swing would occur in Scotland, where the SNP would become the majority party.
Slightly surprisingly, given other current opinion polls in Wales, this is not replicated there, where the country is effectively reduced to a two-horse race between Reform and Plaid Cymru, with Reform coming out on top, and Labour almost completely disappearing from its heartland, particularly in the South Wales valleys. That said, PC would have their historically best ever result.
The LibDems would also get what would be, for them, a record haul of seats, slightly increasing the number that they have at present, and dominating the southwest.
The Greens would also have a record number of seats, but of somewhat lower amount, based on successes in Bristol and (to my surprise) in Huddersfield, but would be a long way from a breakthrough.
All that being said, no one will be surprised to hear that I find the prospect of this outcome deeply troubling. Everything about Farage and his neo-fascist party disturbs me deeply. But what I can also tell by looking at the projections for a large number of seats is that their margin for winning is, in most cases, very small. In other words, this might look pretty grim, but the situation is actually incredibly volatile. Three ideas flow from that.
Firstly, everything is still up in the air. There is no reason to be completely despondent, and there are a lot of opportunities for Farage to make a complete mess of things between now and 2029, as may Trump, leading to a significant decline in Farage's popularity if it becomes glaringly obvious that the consequence of voting Reform might be the dismantling of democracy, as looks to be the likely outcome in the USA now.
Secondly, the case for proportional representation is very clear.
Thirdly, the case for Scotland being an independent country, because it's so clearly different in political perspective from the rest of the UK, is obvious, with that being slightly less clear in Wales, although none of the political parties that used to dominate the scene there now seem to have any significant presence, quite extraordinarily.
In all of this, then, the most obvious question to ask is why isn't electoral reform once and for all on the agenda of every mainstream political party?
Labour and the Tories used to object based on their own self-interest, but very clearly are now losing out as a consequence of first-past-the-post.
Reform has said it is in favour of electoral reform in the past, although if that commitment remains now is hard to know.
Everybody else wants PR. Surely, in that case, the time has come, and no one can argue otherwise just because that means a substantial haul of seats for Reform, if that is what the people of this country want?
I want to live in a democracy. The last thing of significance Labour might ever do is decide if I have that option in the future, or not. Is that too much to ask of them when it clearly aligns wth their own self-interest now?
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The poll was Great Britain, not UK. N. Ireland ignored again.
Accepted
As SF the majority party don’t take their Seats at Westminster, unfortunately the Irish voice is much reduced.
Agreed
The support for Reform just shows once again that they are fighting their battle on a different field. Their councillors are a disaster, their MPs are useless, their Mayor in Lincolnshire is unhinged. They do nothing but make fools of themselves. This isn’t seen by their supporters seemingly. They are just following vibes based politics on Tiktok and Facebook and other social media sites. There is a narrative being fed that the main parties aren’t challenging, and the Left don’t have the internet eco system to challenge, as the internet is biased towards fear. This is why I like your tactic of amplifying the danger of neo fascist Reform. It’s both true and emotive. They would be incompetent at best, but dangerous at worst.
Thanks
What these polls can’t factor in is the effect of tactical voting. Labour benefited hugely at the last election from people voting to get the Tories out. At the next election there will undoubtedly be a similar effort to stop Reform. I agree that it is likely both major parties will be decimated. The Lib Dems have strong local bases and will likely hold up well, and I think the Greens will do much better than this prediction. A minority Reform government would be a total disaster. I can’t see anyone working with them, and if they shed MPs at the rate they are currently shedding councillors, it will be pretty disastrous and chaotic. We so need PR. And our country desperately needs a decent government.
YouGov acknowledges this issue in its write up.
“And our country desperately needs a decent Government”. Just my opinion Hazel, but, in my opinion, and as a member of the S.N.P you would expect me to say this, my country, Scotland, has a decent Government. Not by any means perfect, but I believe they have the best interests of our people at their heart. We just need to be detached from Westminster.
I’m really hoping their issues with councillors will highlight how bad they are. They are losing them weekly it seems, as their candidate realise it’s a lot of work. The Reform led council in Nottinghamshire banned the local press from press conferences and one candidate quit as he seemed to be a genuinely nice guy who didn’t realise how toxic they were. He wanted to fill the potholes and spent his time raising awareness about defibrillators and was put off by the racism. They are an absolute shambles.
A logical and moral Labour Party would ditch Starmer and bring in Burnham because he appears to be less of an Austerity (balancing the books) politician and bring in PR.
The poll doesn’t account for “Your Party” joining the fray.
If the polling remains like this, then Labour’s choice is of leading a coalition under Proportional Representation that would be more left leaning than the current government, or handing the keys if government to Reform under FPTP. It really is as simple as that.
Agreed
The only thing that there is really on the cards is PR now – a well designed PR that would make the poxy-ticians work with each other and would spoil the fun the millionaires and billionaires are having with politics at the moment.
All Starmer is doing banging on about digital IDs is keeping his promise to The Tinted One and getting a nice juicy contract set up for U.S. based Palantir.
You mention Wales and the Plaid and Reform tussle. The latest Yougov Senedd poll here: https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/52998-reform-and-plaid-now-neck-and-neck-in-senedd-voting-intention – makes interesting reading. The age difference is vast – under 50s majority for Plaid (and 16-24 by a large margin). In the over 50s age cohorts, Reform leads by increasing percentages.
It’s becoming a “what is your national identity?” question: younger cohorts identifying as ‘Welsh only’ and older cohorts identifying as ‘British only’, showing the recent shift (like national identity in Scotland) in people shedding “Welsh and British”. In both Scotland and Wales it is now becoming more marked: Welsh or British? (In other words, being ‘British’ in Scotland or Wales is seen as right wing and reactionary, but this is seen in the opposite way in England – in England British identifiers tend to be more liberal and progressive. Richard Wyn Jones book on Englishness sets this phenomenon out very well.)
Happily, support for Welsh indy is now in the majority amongst 16-35 age cohorts in Wales.
There is hope.
Yes please, some form of PR (not single transferable vote).
People are voting for “not the single transferable party” (or, as I prefer, not the Uniparty). That’s why Lib Dems do well; not because of their policies (do they have any?) but because they’re not perceived as the Uniparty.
All is not lost. Farage may well mess up. But don’t bet on it. It would be a mistake to assume people will realise the folly of many of Reform’s policies (spoiler – they won’t). If people can’t see through the manifest errors in neoliberalism then they’re unlikely to see through Reform’s policies. Relying on people seeing how bad Reform is, is a recipe for disaster, the same recipe that the Democrats used in the USA.
In order to reject Reform we need a party that will put forward a positive vision of the way forward, not one that will merely criticise their opponents. Labour, Conservative, and Libdem don’t do that. Perhaps the Greens will.
Only STV multi member constituency can really deliver
Is this what Scotland has? If it is, it does seem to work and deliver a politics of collaboration and consensus rather than the horrible adversarial politics we have in Westminster. It is the constant mud slinging that switches people off.
I did a quick bit of searching and found that the latest date that the next general election can be held on is 21 August 2029 (it appears this is based on five years from the date parliament first met following last year’s general election plus 25 working days which is the length of the election timetable).
Which means, if that is accurate, it is one month short of 4 years for proper challenging of Ref*** to take place by the so-called mainstream media, Labour to start working for everyone in this country and making everyone’s life better, progressive parties to start working together to challenge and defeat the rise of fascism and Ref*** to continue to demonstrate that they are not even fit to run a bath let alone run an entire country. Oh, and one month short of 4 years, for electoral reform to take place.
Craig
Four years for the disaster of Trump’s presidency to unfold and show the world that the politics they are peddling is toxic for everyone involved.
I wonder what percentage of Scots will not vote in any further English (Westminster) elections. I voted – reluctantly – in last year’s.
No more though. I will not turn out for an English government which ignores my country – and Wales and N. Ireland.
Scotland doesn’t belong in the union. Hopefully, we will be on our way out of it when the next English election is held and Reform can do its worst – in England – if that’s what England votes for.
So vote for a pro-independence party.
I do, and have done for decades, but that will never make a difference in Westminster even if all the constituencies in Scotland voted for independence parties. In the 2015 Westminster election Scotland voted in 56 SNP MPs out of a possible 59. What difference did that make? None at all. Scotland gets what England wants and votes for.
In Holyrood, we have MPs from another country squatting there. Labour, Liberal Democrats and Tories are not Scottish parties, they’re English and unionist – every one of them.
Would Westminster allow French or German registered parties to squat in the English parliament? I think not. As it is, N. Irish, Welsh and Scottish MPs are in Westminster on sufferance.
I think the symbolism is vital, but that’s just my view.
That’s what I did. I now have a Labour MP. I must admit I would like to see pro-independence Scottish MPs being far more disruptive at Westminster.
The grand Unionist coalition would love nothing more than for the independence to refuse to take part in Westminster elections. A clean sweep of Westminster seats, caused by our refusal to participate, would be interpreted by them as independence being dead and as a licence to treat us even more badly than they do now. Whether we play the game or not, they will either change the rules or cheat.
I agree with you
I could not and would not vote for Reform – apart from seemingly having few, if any, viable policies, every time Farage opens his mouth, I see a hippopotamus and ‘Mud, Mud, Glorious Mud’ – Reform has a populist agenda and to quote The Guardian newspaper has a “divisive ‘woke’ ideology”. The party has little consistency, and its main policy seems to be immigration. High Peak constituency (where I live) according to the ‘expectation based upon the interviews that took place’ remains Labour – I have not heard a good word spoken of our extremely right-wing Labour MP, who also leads Labour Friends of Israel which seems, for him, to be of more importance than his constituents. I know that this projection is only based on an opinion poll, all be it a slightly more accurate basis of 13000 opinions rather than the normal 2000 – but England, Scotland and Wales (as per this poll) amount to 631 constituencies, so only (on average) 20 opinions per constituency – I can only hope this opinion poll result will scare people into considering what would really happen if Reform were to gain so many seats – I fear for democracy and agree that we need ‘electoral reform’ and not ‘Reform’.
Agreed
The poll doesn’t allow for the possible impact of a “Your Party” so nothing to get too “excited” about at this stage of the electoral cycle. More important to get Starmer swapped out for someone who understands monetary mechanics and therefore the economic reasons why it’s a moral necessity for the UK government to run a deficit most of the time.
When I saw this poll, what it suggested to me was how fractured democracy in the UK has become, and just how potentially undemocratic the possible outcome under FPTP will be.
The following stood out to me.
1) This poll was taken without reference to what is likely to happen once “Your” Party officially joins the fray. It is inevitable they will take some votes, maybe many, from Labour, not clear they will damage Reform. This could make many of those close Labour/Reform seat battles fall to Farage. It makes the result even more undemocratic.
2) The Tories look dead and buried, but could still be the kingmaker of Farage, in a pact or coalition.
3) Tactical voting might also be used by Tories and Reform next time. I still feel that a pre-election Tory/Reform pact could still happen, especially if the Tories see the writing is on the wall for them.
4) Re tactical voting next time. It is essentially the voting politics of fear. We are not voting for what we want, but to stop what we don’t want. It looks like Starmer, if he is still around, will play this card. The choice being him or Farage. That’s not a choice or democratic, and it could fail big time.
4) If the turnout next time is the same as the last election, just below 60%, then the 27% for Reform is about 18% of the total vote. FPTP – can favour the extremist minority, while the vast majority find their vote doesn’t count.
Between now and the election, Farage needs to be exposed in all those areas, and there are many, where Reform are weak, and out of touch with what people want, like climate change, the NHS, public services, pensions, etc. Don’t play his game on immigration, I doubt that can be won, because with help from the media, he will just get more extreme.
Much to agree with
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/730194
I presume this was before the ID cards became more important, in fact it looks like a done deal already. I think labour will get even fewer seats if this goes ahead.
I’ve also been sent an email from Declassified who have been banned from the labour party conference, and from parliament because of their stance on Gaza, so they were told. It’s probably because they are excellent at getting FOI requests answered, and Starver doesn’t want that now.
That’s shutting down democracy, not saving it.
https://www.declassifieduk.org/labour-bars-journalists-from-party-conference/
https://www.declassifieduk.org/parliament-blocks-declassified-citing-our-gaza-standpoint/
The ID card petition has obvs, been running a while but was only on about 150,000 the other day so quite an uptake.
I have signed it.
What concerns me very deeply
is our governments and the people they get into bed with, selling our data.
In a country with more honest public servants and stronger legal protections the downsides are mitigated. The UK has neither of these.
The government already has all our information scattered over disparate, disconnected systems. Much of that has already been sold to Palantir and others in separate packages. The only really difference would be the vultures can finally get a complete, coherent data set but that provides the skeleton keys to unlock anyone’s entire digital footprint.
That would be a goldmine for crooks. Our only safeguards would be the digital competence or otherwise of both our government and the dodgy, largely US based, tech firms they sell it to. Not very reassuring given our and US fragile data.
Am unsettled that this has just beem dropped on us too, no conversation, no ref – just bang, it is what it is.
The ID card is free of charge? When liberty is at stake, nothing is free.
That petition is rapidly closing in on 2 million signatures (at 7pm).
The next two most popular petitions on the site are “Call an immediate general election” (https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/727309) and “Use Proportional Representation at the next General Election” (https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/728017).
They both have three months to go and the first has enough votes for a Westminster Hall debate. Hopefully the PR one will get there too.
“1) This poll was taken without reference to what is likely to happen once “Your” Party officially joins the fray. It is inevitable they will take some votes, maybe many, from Labour, not clear they will damage Reform. This could make many of those close Labour/Reform seat battles fall to Farage. It makes the result even more undemocratic.”
You forget many people didn’t bother to vote at the last general election. It may well be “Your Party” brings these voters back to the polling booth.
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/general-election-2024-turnout/