Poll of polls: Tories hit lowest level since last election, new floor since Truss

15 comments

1. Cons have fallen to the lowest level of support since the 2019 election — dropping below levels of unpopularity seen during the Truss administration, according to analyst Will Jennings by reference to [a poll of polls](https://news.sky.com/story/election-latest-d-day-blunder-hasnt-lost-election-minister-insists-tories-vow-to-scrap-ulez-expansion-12593360?postid=7797026#liveblog-body):

   *Almost every day between now and then, there will be new opinion polls by a clutch of different pollsters – each using different methodologies and all asking who voters will support on polling day.*

   *How does one pollster, with its (usually) consistent methodology, move over weeks and months? Is there a discernible pattern from several different pollsters over a matter of days?*

   *This sort of analysis is only available through a “poll of polls”, which takes data from every single pollster that is asking voting intention questions and signed up to the industry standards body, the British Polling Council.*

   *It is drawn up by Sky election analyst Will Jennings and Sky data and elections editor Isla Glaister – and supported by a team of Sky data scientists and designers.*

   *The poll of polls seeks to give an answer to the most important question of all – the direction of travel of public opinion over time.*

   *There are limits. Crude attempts to turn the polling averages for the main parties into a number of seats for each party will always be just that: rough and ready and probably ultimately unhelpful (not that people will stop trying).*

   *This is a GB poll so the level of support for the SNP necessarily reflects how they fare comparatively across Great Britain, not just in Scotland. Likewise, there is nothing here about Northern Ireland.*

2. OK but Reform is now comfortably third place. This is way scarier than anyone is imagining.

   Everyone’s on a high about the Tories being wiped out but all that’s happening in my view is their voters are reforming into an analogue of the US Republican party and being screwed by FPTP on their way.

   Give it 10 years and we’ll have an ultra right wing government, and give it 20 before it’s full blown fascism.

   I feel like I’m shouting at the wind here…

3. Getting everything they deserve, lunging further and further right to pander to Reform type voters in the hope of clinging onto power.

   If they had the bravery to be honest and say Brexit was going to be and has been an economic disaster the country would be in a far better state.

4. The risk is they may ditch Sunak before the election and get a bounce from it (no I’m not sure who could do better). Is there even time to make Boris into a lord?

5. None of this matters if people don’t bother turning out to vote. We’ve seen election shocks before where people were so certain their party of choice would win that they didn’t bother voting.

6. They are really falling off a cliff. But there’s still every possibility they’ll be the official opposition and primed for a comeback in 2029

7. I love the way every conservative MP is saying that it was clearly wrong that Rishi left the D day remorial but yet if it was so obviously wrong how did not a single one of his advisors or even Rishi himself not see it?

   Even selfishly they should have thought you can’t get better PR during an election than to be surrounded by world leaders and D day veterans.

8. Britain has never been a far right country. Centre right and occasionally centre left, yes. Reform are shit stirrers, nothing more. They make money out of shit stirring. It’s easy to make money out of an unhappy population: create an enemy, blame them for everything and say you can sort it out easily. Divide and rule – the oldest trick in the book. They want easy answers to complicated situations? Reform are their party.

9. The BBC tracker makes for some sobering reading for the Tories. After the Truss fiasco Sunak managed to improve their poll ratings, peaking in April of last year. Since then its just been a slow and painful decline, almost directly to the benefit of Reform.

   Sunak can certainly blame the situation he inherited for the poor position at the start, but he’s just been so fucking unlikable during his time as PM. His only saving grace is that he wasn’t as bad as the two that came before him.

10. Not nearly low enough and I’m not ruling any kind of shy Tory rubbish occuring.

    That said majorly disappointed with starmers empty suit “I’m not him” style of doing things

11. Hopefully they’ll scrape through the bottom of the barrel and disappear

12. There are decades where nothing happens

    Then there is a fortnight where the prime minister and his political party take an endless shit with their clothes on

13. I plugged these numbers into Electoral Calculus and the results were interesting to say the least.

    Labour with 498 seats, the Tories with just 70, Reform with 0 (which is sad, because you know FPTP is fucked when a party can win 13.9% of the popular vote and still win zero seats.)

    I do wonder how much of the data came before or after the D Day gaffe. Maybe once the actual interview Sunak ditched the joint commemorations to give is released on Wednesday, we’ll truly see a Tory death knell.

    The best thing that the Tories can honestly hope for is an electoral alliance with Reform UK, and the question is whether they can offer Farage big enough concessions to agree with it.

14. I’ve said it elsewhere, but this is the election to lose.

    Starmer is going to have to be straight with people.

    The Tories have fleeced the country dry.

15. How do the Tories keep going this low? To think that five years ago, they were so high and now… Good god.