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dylandifford.bsky.social
YouGov data journalist • Elections, polls, voting systems • "I like people, places and things"
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Worth reiterating that Tories now like Reform more than LD and particularly Green voters like Labour. Given that there are typically more Cons than LDs/Grns in the seats likely to be Lab vs Reform, the tactical voting arithmetic has changed massively in the last few months.

submitted 20 hours ago • 9 comments

The key trends here and their implications: - Lab less popular with Lab voters (increases defections from Lab) - Lab less popular with LD/Grn voters (bad for anti-Con/Ref tactical voting) - Ref more popular with Con and Lab voters (increases defections to Ref and good for pro-Ref tactical voting)

submitted 1 day ago • 3 comments

Buried in this thread is the fact that as many 2024 Tories now have a favourable opinion of Farage as have one of Badenoch.

submitted 1 day ago • 1 comment

This is very important. Two of the three most important parts of the British electoral calendar are in less than a year, with Labour currently polling in third and below 20% in both contests. Amazing how many Labour people are happy to write this off as mid-terms that don't matter.

submitted 1 day ago • 6 comments

Dangerous times for the Tories - look at that Badenoch figure!

submitted 1 day ago • 1 comment

One of the interesting things about this objectively terrible set of numbers for Keir Starmer has been some people's need to then make easily disprovable lies that it's worse than anything Johnson/Corbyn/Sunak had, or that it's the fastest fall ever (see e.g. Truss).

submitted 1 day ago • 2 comments

In short, Starmer has taken a massive hit among Labour voters, for no gain elsewhere, while boosting Farage's popularity, including doubling his ceiling among Labour voters. I.e., the political scientists were right, Morgan McSweeney was horrendously wrong.

submitted 1 day ago • 77 comments

Aside from anything else, how can anyone with the Conservatives' best interests at heart look at the current political landscape and go 'let's start a fight on Europe, we're obviously best placed to do that'. One of the keys to Farage's success is the sheer number of open goals opponents give him.

submitted 2 days ago • 7 comments

Make of it what you will, but this morning I would have said that Starmer still being PM after the next election (regardless of government form) was the most credible expectation from the current point in time. I am now significantly less confident in that view.

submitted 2 days ago • 26 comments

I mean, what can you say about a party determined to be wrong and to make strategy based on its own delusions. There is no evidence whatsoever that Reform voters are largely ex-Labour (definitely not in a committed sense), and one thing that unites them is their hatred of Labour!

submitted 2 days ago • 14 comments

Beginning to understand Labour's deeply ingrained fear of coalition government. If you make concessions this easy and this big with a 170-seat majority, that coalition agreement is basically just going to be a reprint of the Lib Dem manifesto.

submitted 5 days ago • 14 comments

Tbh, the closest analogue with British politics in some key respects rn is arguably Austria - from the relative sizes of the parties through to the cycle of the soc dems and conservatives taking on more anti-immigration policies in a failing attempt to stem the rise of right populists.

submitted 5 days ago • 3 comments

Some people say that international sister parties don't really mean anything, so nice of Labour to continue showing their affection for their SPD cousins by doing a tribute to the Scholz coalition. And all without having to even govern with anybody like the FDP, that's true commitment.

submitted 6 days ago • 6 comments

The vibe I'm getting off the government is that not enough of them understand issue salience, whether it's their role in determining it or the risks of raising the salience of issues on which you are 'weak'.

submitted 6 days ago • 6 comments

Tomorrow there's a big White Paper on immigration (www.gov.uk/government/n...). Whatever else it does, it's bound to refuel Labour’s internal debate about net migration -- a debate full of assumptions about public opinion. Strap in for a long thread about a survey testing some of those assumptions.

submitted 6 days ago • 4 comments

More data suggesting that Reform supporters turned out at a higher rate in the locals, helping them make additional gains. Key question is now how universal this differential is - will it be minimised in higher info contests (devolved/general elections) or are Reform voters uniquely motivated?

submitted 6 days ago • 3 comments

Basically, I feel that government supporters doing the *taps sign <1979-83 polls>* is at this point very unearned.

submitted 7 days ago • 1 comment