General Election Polling - completely off

[Rusty101]

Just been looking at the polling for mine and 2 neighbouring seats and I really do think it is way off the mark. I know the demographic pretty well and the prediction of Labour wiping out these conservative seats doesn’t really seem likely. It’s the shy Tory syndrome where people don’t want to admit that they will be voting for them. Anyone else feel the same when looking at the polling in their area?

www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/newseatlookup.html

What also needs to be pointed out here is the labour candidate for CS &NI was booted out and turned to an independent because he voted on himself to lose the election.

a lot of people locally (including my parents) were pissed off that they couldn’t vote for labour at all.

Unfortunately for you though, your prediction that That’s not to say Reform UK will end up with a majority of seats, but I do believe they will get more than anticipated and large percentage of the overall votes. was not true.

@ClaudiaWankleman They are the third largest party in the UK by total votes, above the Lib Dem’s. Some polls were predicting they would get 0 seats. How is what I said inaccurate?

What pissed me off most is that we have the smug git Iain Smith still in parliament. I blame Labour completely for shenanigans with their candidate. It led to a three-way split between the Original Labour Candidate (who stood), the Labour Candidate and Smith. He scraped it by a hair and is all over the telly smugging it up saying he's the champ. Fucksticks.

They failed to get more seats than they were predicted by all good polls and they haven't received a large % of overall votes (I mean, really no one party has). So it was all inaccurate.

@ClaudiaWankleman They are the third largest party in the UK, by total votes. They got more total votes than the Lib Dem’s who are a well-established political party. I would say that’s pretty significant.

Qualitatively significant I'd agree, mostly because of the impact it's had on the Tory votes. Quantitatively not, and that was definitely what was being discussed upthread.

I was never arguing that Reform UK would get a significant number of seats or MPs, I was stating that they would do better than predicted and expected, which they have. Quite a few polls had them at 0 seats, some polls had them behind Lib Dem’s in terms of total support.

In quite a few areas they were second to the Labour candidate.

It’s clear from the results and the dismal voter turnout that we need reform in our voting system. People shouldn't feel that they don’t need to turn up because their vote is meaningless.

Reform did slightly less well than expected IMO. Vote share was 14%, which is lower than they were polling prior to election day. They will be disappointed after the exit poll suggested 13 seats.

Yes you were? The exit polls suggested 13 reform seats, and the final YouGov poll 11 at the lowest boundary (and in front of Lib Dems). They monumentally failed to get anywhere near. They haven't done better than predicted.

Farage seemed pleased with the outcome and they have years to build up for the next GE. I'm not pleased about that - notwithstanding that the 5000 Reform UK voters in my constituency delivered me a Labour MP and got rid of our previous Tory one (he was second by 3000 votes... o dear what a pity never mind, so there is that)

Much as I'll congratulate Labour for the win, you can't take this as a resounding vote for Labour, only a resounding vote against the Tories.

The number of people who actually voted for Labour compared to 1997 was down by about 3 million whereas the population has increased by about 8 million in the same time.

Bloody awful turnout. They really need a "none of the above" box on the ballot to try and get at least some of the non voters into the booths.

Re reform ' building on their success' for 2029, that depends on how well they do in office. Lee Anderson is the former Tory MP, but they will be judged by what they do. George Galloway myst have proven to be spectacularly crap to be booted our almost immediately, and the same could easily apply to Reform, and also the Independent candidate in Leicester, if he only turns up to go on about Gaza.

For Reform to build on the 2024 result, they're going to have to stay coherent as an organisation over a long period of time. Most of the people involved have not historically excelled at that, shall we say.

Think as he has been chosen by the country you should at least give him a chance. Cannot be worse than the last lot

true story. A party full of chiefs, nobody wants to do the work.

I suspect they'll go with Braverman, do some deal with Reform then ( hopefully) lose in 2029 before going more towards the centre.
Bojo is still clinging on, I presume?

He's not an MP any more and didn't stand for election this time. Assume he's still in the party.

To be fair to the OP South West Norfolk is ' stick a blue rosette on a donkey ' territory. She only narrowly lost despite what she has done and what a donkey she us.

I'm not expert but the results of SW Norfolk seem to me to be completely about Liz Truss as a person, rather than party/ ideology (and I don't think that is surprising?)

Conservatives lost 43.4% of their previous voting share. 22.5% of that went to Reform, 14.2% to an independent who I don't know much about - seems like an 'old fashioned' conservative(?), and 8.4% to Labour. Given the wide spread of ideologies that the voting share has gone to I'd suggest it was a bit of an 'anyone but Liz' vote. Would anyone agree or have I misunderstood it?

Awwh, bad luck OP! Those stories must have been really shy! 😆

She really should have taken the hint and stepped down before the election. Not sure it would have resulted in a Tory hold but at least the replacement would have had a punchers chance.

She looks very unwell.

It never changes. FPTP is fine when the Tories win, but not good enough when it puts Labour in power. Whilst I am happy with either system (PR also has its drawbacks - look up Greens in Scottish Government for example) the last thing I would ever advocate is moving to PR to assist the Reform Party. The last, the very last thing this country needs is neo-facists.

"All political lives end in failure"

Saw that quote once and it resonated with me. So many politicians here and across the world have made the fatal error of keeping going when the writing is on the wall.

I look across the pond at Joe Biden and think why? Why aren't his family intervening?