General Election '24

[Trinucleus]

You will not see this; this we will hide.
https://x.com/thisisalexjames/status/17 ... 5226833249

.....OK....... so someone has checked that the visuals don't look brilliant there but thought it was OK to take the PM to the Titanic Museum

[lpm]

Anyone understand what's going on over in LibDem land?

"I agree with Nick Tim Vince Jo Ed*, we need a PM who goes to Alton Towers."






* This is correct, I googled it, their leader is someone called Ed Davey.

[lpm]

I am the only person in this forum, possibly in this country, who knows who the Deputy Leader of the LibDems is.

Such is the miracle of the google age.

I will give you the answer in case it comes up in a trivia question in the next few weeks.

It is someone called Daisy Cooper.

[El Pollo Diablo]

Week 1 of 6 of the General Election campaign is now complete. The polls have shown very little change.

The 14-day average across all polls for each party on the 23rd May was this:

CON 23.4%
LAB 44.5%
LIB 9.7%
GRN 6.3%
REF 10.8%

13 polls later, today those figures look like this:

CON 23.6%
LAB 44.6%
LIB 9.6%
GRN 5.9%
REF 10.9%

So not much difference. Not sure which polls are due out today as the election messes up the schedule, but so far there's nothing really happened in terms of voting intention.

Note that I've re-weighted my polls to lower the impact of the higher frequency ones, so they don't overweigh the average. I've also added a weighting for the different categories of pollsters that Sam Freedman retweeted the other day, so the ones which ask a "squeeze" question on don't knows are fully weighted, whereas those who don't ask that question, or who do complicated modelling of don't knows, have a 20% lower weighting.

[El Pollo Diablo]

I am the only person in this forum, possibly in this country, who knows who the Deputy Leader of the LibDems is.

Such is the miracle of the google age.

I will give you the answer in case it comes up in a trivia question in the next few weeks.

It is someone called Daisy Cooper.

What, the woman who was on Taskmaster and does comedy shows on the BBC?

[lpm]

I am the only person in this forum, possibly in this country, who knows who the Deputy Leader of the LibDems is.

Such is the miracle of the google age.

I will give you the answer in case it comes up in a trivia question in the next few weeks.

It is someone called Daisy Cooper.

What, the woman who was on Taskmaster and does comedy shows on the BBC?

Dunno. I've reached the end of my LibDem knowledge.

[Gfamily]

It is someone called Daisy Cooper.

What, the woman who was on Taskmaster and does comedy shows on the BBC?

That's Daisy May Copper, the LibDem one is Daisy definitely won't Cooper

[IvanV]

English wildflowers identification chart no 94, how to tell the difference between a:
Daisy Cooper, unfamous liberal politician
and a
Daisy May Cooper, famous comedy actress and writer.

The key distinguishing feature is that a Daisy May Cooper always includes her middle name, probably to avoid being mistaken for an unfamous liberal politician.

[Gfamily]

You will not see this; this we will hide.
https://x.com/thisisalexjames/status/17 ... 5226833249

Now meme'd
https://x.com/Lyrical_Whacks/status/1796175035847098837

[FlammableFlower]

Although mainly symbolic, another Tory defects to Labour.

[Brightonian]

20240530_193626.jpg (74.26 KiB) Viewed 33697 times

[dyqik]

Although mainly symbolic, another Tory defects to Labour.

They aren't an MP any more, so it's barely even symbolic.

[Grumble]

Although mainly symbolic, another Tory defects to Labour.

They aren't an MP any more, so it's barely even symbolic.

They were at least the Tory candidate, presumably if the election hadn’t been called last week they would’ve walked across the floor this week.

[Beaker]

Although mainly symbolic, another Tory defects to Labour.

They aren't an MP any more, so it's barely even symbolic.

They were at least the Tory candidate, presumably if the election hadn’t been called last week they would’ve walked across the floor this week.

Was our local. He posted a TikTok where he got some primary school kids to sing ‘big up Bozza’ which is wrong on so many levels.

He will now be able to spend just as much time as he did before with his private landlording business.

[El Pollo Diablo]

A lot of focus in the polls at the moment on the "Don't Knows". Proportionally, there are more people who are older and/or 2019 Conservative voters who are currently saying they don't know how they'll vote than other demographics.

The difference in the polls is decently chunky. If you look at polls which exclude all current DKs since the election announcement (twelve of them), then the current average support for the Tories is 21.8% and 45.9% for Labour. In contrast, if you just take polls (six of them) which try to reassign DKs to parties - which in turn assumes that they'll "come home" to some degree - then the Tories are on 27.0% and Labour on 42.8%.

Now, obviously, neither of those situations are currently especially good for the Tories, but another five weeks is a long time for intentions to shift. Presumably if Sunak starts promising ritual sacrifices of every third 21-year old to heat the homes of the elderly - the kind of policy that pleases his core voter - he might start to see his support tick up a bit.

[Trinucleus]

A lot of focus in the polls at the moment on the "Don't Knows". Proportionally, there are more people who are older and/or 2019 Conservative voters who are currently saying they don't know how they'll vote than other demographics.

The difference in the polls is decently chunky. If you look at polls which exclude all current DKs since the election announcement (twelve of them), then the current average support for the Tories is 21.8% and 45.9% for Labour. In contrast, if you just take polls (six of them) which try to reassign DKs to parties - which in turn assumes that they'll "come home" to some degree - then the Tories are on 27.0% and Labour on 42.8%.

Now, obviously, neither of those situations are currently especially good for the Tories, but another five weeks is a long time for intentions to shift. Presumably if Sunak starts promising ritual sacrifices of every third 21-year old to heat the homes of the elderly - the kind of policy that pleases his core voter - he might start to see his support tick up a bit.

I heard one analyst say that given Starmer is far more popular than Sunak, and Labour is trusted more on the economy than the Tories, when Don't Knows do pick a side, the split it is likely to favour Labour

[Sciolus]

DKs are also likely to favour the party that looks most like winning, partly because of the psychology where people want to be on the winning team, and partly because the papers will suddenly start sucking up to whoever's going to win.

[nekomatic]

Things cannot only get better

[IvanV]

Starmer promises to cut net migration (BBC).

I couldn't believe it, to start with. But look at the graphs in the article. There has been a huge surge in net migration just recently, to around three times the pre-Brexit level. So perhaps this is a vacuous promise, as maybe this spike will fall away of its own accord without anyone doing anything. It maybe just happened as a coincidence of circumstances, like the recent large peak in inflation. It is evident that "stop the boats" has been a distraction for this supposedly "firm on migration" administration to distract from the embarrassing facts. And these Tory voters on their way to collect food from a foodbank (youtube Maximilien Robespierre) are deluding themselves in the reason they give for voting Tory.

[dyqik]

Starmer promises to cut net migration (BBC).

I couldn't believe it, to start with. But look at the graphs in the article. There has been a huge surge in net migration just recently, to around three times the pre-Brexit level. So perhaps this is a vacuous promise, as maybe this spike will fall away of its own accord without anyone doing anything. It maybe just happened as a coincidence of circumstances, like the recent large peak in inflation. It is evident that "stop the boats" has been a distraction for this supposedly "firm on migration" administration to distract from the embarrassing facts. And these Tory voters on their way to collect food from a foodbank (youtube Maximilien Robespierre) are deluding themselves in the reason they give for voting Tory.

A very large amount of that spike is international students - who are not long term immigrants - returning post-CoVID. Remove students from the stats (where they shouldn't be - the Tories added them to make immigration look out of control), and immigration immediately goes down, and hey presto, Starmer has cut immigration.

[Sciolus]

Also, much immigration in the last few years has been people from Hong Kong and Ukraine under special visa programmes. Demand from those countries is unlikely to continue long term, as most of those who want to move here will already have done so.

[El Pollo Diablo]

Trust in Labour on immigration is low, and if they've any mind to be more positive about the topic, the best time for that is after the election. Not saying they will do, but there's little point doing that at the moment.

[jimbob]

Trust in Labour on immigration is low, and if they've any mind to be more positive about the topic, the best time for that is after the election. Not saying they will do, but there's little point doing that at the moment.

Exactly

[nekomatic]

I’ve said it before but people are mistaken if they assume that Labour as the party of general right-on-ness should be naturally sympathetic to immigration. The trade union movement is historically sceptical of foreign workers depressing wages and I think there’s still a strong current of that in the party alongside the more accepting internationalist left position.

[TopBadger]

Who are disillusioned Tory voters going to vote for? LD or Labour?

I'm in the Tory stronghold of Saffron Walden (well, North West Essex is the new seat), and whilst I'd like to vote Labour I think my best tactical vote to oust Kemi Badenoch is to vote LD and hope enough former Tory voters do the same. LD's have found themselves in second place numerous times in the last few elections and are pretty popular locally.