1/ Friday morning polling analysis: A lot of people are getting excited about this poll because they think it means Labour may have a chance of winning under #Starmer. Actually, it's a bad poll for the Tories and #Labour. Here's why...
https://twitter.com/BritainElects/status/1436080285309972487
2/ 35% is on the high end of #Labour's polling range under #Starmer this past year but it does not represent a significant uptick in support from what we've come to expect. The really interesting figure is that the Tories are on 33%...
3/ over the past year, Tory polling has been bottoming out around the high 30s and previously reached as far as the high 40s. But the decline in support is real and more recently, they have been polling at the lower end of this range...
4/ ... and this is possibly the first time they have dropped below the high 30s. Essentially, the Tories have spent the past year chipping away at their own support base through mismanaging #COVID19, corruption and now the NI rise. Yet #Labour has barely benefitted...
5/ In this latest poll, the Tories have lost 5% but Labour has only gained 1% and the virtually invisible #LibDems 2%! Labour hasn't crept into the lead, the Tories have snuck in behind them...
6/ At this point its worth remembering that all polling is relative. When the Tories were up near 50% in May, it wasn't necessarily a sign of their huge popularity but their popularity relative to the available alternatives...
7/ ...So Labour's popularity hasn't grown in any real sense. The Tories' has decreased to the point that they are even LESS popular than #Starmer's Labour. We've long thought that the Tory polling lead was softer than it appeared...
8/ ... and this is because the Tory narrative has never been seriously contested and there has been no functioning opposition. A lot of people have questioned why the Tories could remain so popular despite so many cock ups...
9/ ... The answer is perhaps that they never were that popular. People may have just seen them as, on balance, preferable to #Starmer's godawful leadership. #Starmer has never presented an alternative for people to actively vote for, anyway...
10/ The combined vote share of the two main parties is now 68%. So while #Labour is comparatively more popular relative to the Tories, the main parties are together less popular than they were against all the other available alternatives...
11/ ... Hard to say without full data but would be interested to know if "don't know" and/or "none of the above are making huge gains at the expense of the two main parties.
12/ This isn't good for Labour. Despite a big collapse in Tory support the party has failed to break out of the polling range it has been in for ages now. The lower base of Labour support this year has been 29 - 30%. 35% is a comparative high for them...
13/ Therefore, this poll may not be a breakthrough moment for #Labour but the high watermark for the Party's support this year during a week of bad news for #johnson. Even if the 33% becomes the new lower base of Tory support, #Labour may still struggle to get above it regularly.
14/ It's also just one poll and may be an outlier. However, judging on past performance, #Starmer's team will likely see it as a vindication of their present "strategy," even though it absolutely isn't.
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