steveakehurst.bsky.social
Politics, policy, public attitudes. Work in polling and comms. Director, Persuasion UK. ex- Shelter, civil service and various other things. đłď¸âđ
https://persuasionuk.org/about
https://strongmessagehere.substack.com/
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Yes definitely - you tend to get high sympathy, medium salience Iâd say. Only challenge is obviously thereâs sovereignty trade offs there you arenât making clear. But I thought this MRP question wording from July was quite revealing persuasionuk.org/opinion-maps...
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didnt include that one, but can do next time - im guessing it'd need something fairly strong (eg at least customs union) to register though
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sorry, graph now with %s in it (Flourish is playing up today)
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I get why that works with Lab MPs - is there any public polling on it working with voters vs an anti argument?
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Fair point! Perhaps I should have said âargument Iâve heard mostâ. What do you guys think the stronger argument is?
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it's in the first response option - many people receiving benefits are working.
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i mention the working element in the question wording
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Finally, useful graph showing the uphill task for campaigners on ending two-child limit.
I tried to summarise both sides strongest argument and retain the cap wins out pretty handily.
'Just do it anyway' is a legitimate take - possible opponents dont care much - but still.
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Finally, useful graph showing the uphill task for campaigners on ending two-child limit.
I tried to summarise both sides strongest argument and retain the cap wins out pretty handily.
'Just do it anyway' is a legitimate take - possible opponents dont care much - but still.
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Secondly, some new polling via Opinium shows support for greater infrastructure spending is pretty robust to most trade-offs. Net support even (just about) holds in London when London explicitly loses out.
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A few people asked for this by generation. Here you go!
(caution on the Young Gen Z men thing: overall Reform VI is still lowest with Gen Z men, and is as much to do with Gen Z women being most anti Reform)
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In general, female Conservative 2024 voters have less intensely socially conservative views than men. Farage is an obvious asset to Reform but maybe the 'clubhouse' aesthetic puts a cap on their vote a bit too.
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Makes sense to me, except he doesnât seem to rate Amad there. I guess if you recruit to 10 position that might change.
Anyway thanks for the level headed take - hard to find at the moment, the head loss is quite extreme (understandably I guess)
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not 100% sold on him yet but yes anyway I think having one slightly more conservative wing back is fine - but two is just crippling.
Have been watching some old Sporting games back and this, plus physical intensity, seems the biggest difference to me.
Not sure who youâd rate as a recruit there?
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Agree with this entirely but i donât think the wing back situation gets enough attention. At Sporting he often played Quenda, an attacking wing back/winger, on the last line. Persisting with Dalot/Maz/Dorgu when theyâre so limiting would be enough for me to lose faith in him tbh.
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Could you link me to this please? Would be interested to read it!
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A fairer claim the article makes is that âwell, all these grumpy Libs will come back to us anyway when itâs Lab vs Reformâ. That may yet be true - but to get there you prob still need to treat them *like a swing group*, do stuff for them and pick fights with them carefully - rather than for sport.
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As @robfordmancs.bsky.social notes, weâre all just going to have to get our heads around the fact that multi-party politics means multi-party swing groups.
You can argue over which ones matter more, but itâs daft to totally dismiss any entirely - unless you want to totally remake the Lab vote.
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âThe Akehurst brothersâ as the Twitter Stalinists used to call us
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I have done on the other place !
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This article is one of very many examples of a deeply engrained binary thinking leading people astray - a lot of people simply cannot conceive of politics as anything other than "Us vs One Opponent". That isn't how things are any more, and assuming or asserting it is will just bring more mistakes.
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âŚyet this is a part of coalition that some parts either have a blind spot on, or have active contempt for in ways I find quite weird.
I understand the arguments about vote efficiency and where Corbyn/Miliband went wrong, but it seems to go beyond that for a lot of people. 2/2
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Great thread and v much agree. Have been thinking about this a lot recently. ~45% of the Labour vote at GE2024 was university educated, a record high I believe, partly cos of demo change but partly because of huge numbers of Liv Dem to Lab switchers. 1/2
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yes possibly, hard to know with sub-samples that small!
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Worth noting
- Labour losses to Plaid and SNP look small but are obviously concentrated geographically, so hurt a lot. Losses to Plaid is the major thing killing Lab in Wales right now, for instance.
- other pollster numbers vary slightly; YG a shade higher on Lab defectors to LDs and Greens
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merci!
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incredibly generous as ever - took particular pride at the 'star pupil' line, as a #itsjustonepoll devotee !
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Agree with this. Reform switchers from Lab count double where Reform is the main challenger which may be a lot of places. So theyâre an important group. But trick for Lab will be winning them back (or stemming losses) without creating greater losses elsewhere - both sides matter.