Much has been made of the news that Reform has overtaken Labour in voting intentions in a recent poll. The poll, produced by market research agency Find Out Now, put the Conservatives on 26%, Reform on 24% and Labour on 23%.
Most recent polls show that Labour is still ahead of Reform, but only by a small margin. So while it is too early to say that Reform is beating Labour, it is nonetheless snapping at the heels of both Labour and the Conservatives. If this pattern of support continues up to the local elections in May next year, Reform is very likely to win a lot more councillors.
The problem is that there's only one poll that matters and that's the one on election day.
ReplyDeletePolls are done with different methods. Most polls in Canada are done by phone and show the Conservatives 20 points ahead of the Liberals. A recent poll using a different methology dropped that lead to 10.
My suggestion is to use an aggregate site like the link I put in a previous comment. There you will see that, despite Reform leading in one poll, overall Labour still has a 2-3 point lead over the Conservatives and Reform.
Plus there's also the electoral system to consider. In first-past-the-post in the UK and Canada, the conservative vote could be 60% and the liberal vote 40% but if there are two conservative parties, the liberal wins 40 -30-30. So Reform's surge is more a threat to the Conservatives than anything else.
In UK the first past the post system applies to MPS who each win a constituency. Predicting which constituency will vote for which party is very difficult but because it's not proportional representation, the actual winner isn't necessarily the party with the most votes.
DeleteIt's the party with the most seats.
Plus there's a lot of protest voting. Also, people are already fed up with labour. They will vote against them which means the right-wing parties have something to gain. They just have to get over their Arrogance and try to make a pact.
People vote for local MP's but often choose their local MP base on party affiliation. The local candidate for the party you don't support may be the best person for the job but people will vote for the second best because they want that party to win.
DeleteAs for protest voting, that's what these polls are for. People who, on election day, will only consider one of the two main parties, love to cast their poll vote for Farage because there's no consequences.