Apr.05

electoral-vote.com

Dem 51

   

GOP 49

British Politics: How Much of a Beating Will the Tory Bench Take?

Earlier this week, we had an item about the Sunday Times poll that predicts the Conservative Party will not only lose their majority (pretty much a given at this point), but that they will drop from their current 348 seats down to fewer than 100, with Labour jumping from their current 200 up to 468.

Though that would be an almost unprecedented result, we thought it was at least credible, given all the headwinds the Tories are facing right now. However, one of our regular British correspondents, S.T. in Worcestershire, England, UK, wrote in to push back on that:

On Tuesday, (Z) wrote about the prospects of the Conservative Party, partly in response to a Survation poll, details which were released in the U.K. over the Easter weekend. This is traditionally a fallow time for political news, so a poll suggesting the Conservatives would get fewer than 100 seats in a general election was bound to get lots of coverage—and duly did. The poll was commissioned by Best for Britain, which generally campaigns on "post-Brexit problems." I struggled to find a full breakdown, but a summary is available here. Whilst the voting share figures seem in line with other recent polls, eyebrows were raised by use of the in-vogue MRP (multi-level regression and post-stratification) technique to arrive at the number of seats each party would win. Given their ongoing problems north of the border (the loss of a once-popular leader in Nicola Sturgeon, and an ongoing police investigation), is the Scottish National Party really going to hold onto 41 seats? And looking at the projections in England, there seem to be a goodly number of seats where Labour are projected to win from a current very distant third place. Salt is a cheap, user friendly commodity and should be used in this instance.

Perhaps the more interesting aspect of this poll is the impact it will have within the governing party. PM Rishi Sunak's next big electorate hurdle is on May 2, when a significant number of local elections in England take place, together with a parliamentary by-election in Blackpool South (yet another contest resulting from misbehavior by a Conservative MP). The results are expected to be bad for the Conservatives; last time these local seats were contested, the Tories were actually ahead in the polls by circa 10%, so lots of their councillors face an uphill task retaining their seats. Almost unbelievably, the Westminster rumor mill is daring to suggest that a really atrocious result could lead in an attempt to remove Sunak as party leader, giving us the sixth Conservative Prime Minister in 8 years! One way Sunak might avoid this ignominy is threatening or calling a snap election for June or July. The alternative appears to be a contest in October or November. U.S. readers may be amused to note that one argument being made against this is that a Trump victory, projected or actual, would cause even more harm to the Conservatives!

To end with a reality check: Since the 1832 Reform Act, the Conservatives have never polled less than 30% of the vote in a U.K. election. If the current opinion polls hold till Election Day, we will be entering unknown territory.

Thereafter, another of our British correspondents, A.B. in Lichfield, England, UK, wrote in to say that maybe the Conservatives really are headed for a disaster of historic proportions:

I accept the poll has some flaws, but I'm increasingly minded of the 1993 Canadian General Election: An unelected PM is leading a deeply unpopular conservative government that's been in power for over 10 years; the government is being flanked to the right by a populist party called "Reform"; there's a strong pro-independence nationalist movement in one part of the country that will likely do well in its home region... those similarities keep nagging at me. The core difference between Canada in 1993 and the U.K. in 2024 is that the Canadian version of Reform had a strong regional base in the western provinces that allowed them to win seats in their home region, while the U.K. version distributes its vote more evenly across England (it's functionally an English nationalist party with very little traction in Scotland and Wales); this will make it much harder for Reform UK to win seats in our election. All the same, I can't help but think that when the Brexit Party officially rebranded itself as "Reform UK" in early 2021, it was deliberately thinking of the Canadian precedent.

I don't think Sunak is facing the same level of catastrophe as Canadian Prime Minister Kim Campbell did in 1993, when the Progressive Conservatives went from winning 169 seats to just 2 (with Campbell losing her seat), but despite my natural caution, I'm increasingly bracing myself for a Conservative Party disaster that could surpass the party's previous historical low marks of 1906 (collapsing from 402 seats won in 1900 to just 156 in 1906) and 1997 (336 seats in 1992 to just 165).

I think I would be much more comfortable if I had found anywhere which gave the projected voting percentages for each seat, but I got no further than the map showing the winner in each. And the more I looked at it, the less happy I became. For example, how can one explain Labour gaining Sutton and Cheam but next door failing to gain Wimbledon? Surely they either gain both or neither.

I strongly think the Conservatives are cruising for a bruising but still struggle with the depth of their projected defeat. Just to play devil's advocate, here are 10 reasons why:

1. The historical base of 30% I mentioned in my last message
2. Opinion polls tending in the past to overstate Labour's voting strength (see 1992, 1997, 2015)
3. Those entering an election campaign as leaders tending to see their lead reduce during the campaign
4. "Shy Tories" possibly not being picked up in the polls
5. Conservative vote being more effectively spread than for several recent decades
6. The Blue Wall proving, when push comes to shove, to be more resilient than expected
7. Some degree of economic improvement in the coming months (albeit from an abysmal base)
8. Reform looking like they will do better than will actually come to pass
9. Incumbency factor saving some of the big first time winners in 2019 (e.g. Marco Longhi, Dudley North)
10. Boundary changes being worth 10-15 seats for the Conservatives

Of course, given my abysmal record at predicting general election results, this could all be hogwash, swept away by a red tsunami. But, particularly if Labour/Liberal Democrat tactical voting fails to take off (i.e., members of one party voting for the other when their own candidate is hopeless), I could see the Conservatives getting closer to their 200-ish seats in 1945, than their results in 1906 or 1997.

Thanks to both of you for your assessments! If we've said it once, we've said it a hundred times: "As goes Wimbledon, so goes Sutton and Cheam."

Since we published the original piece, there's been another major poll; this one is from YouGov, and it has detailed breakdowns for every seat. YouGov does not predict as poor a result for the Tories as the Sunday Times poll, but they do foresee a shellacking, with 403 seats for Labour, 155 for the Conservatives, 49 for the Lib Dems, 19 for the SNP, 4 for Plaid Cymru and 1 for the Greens. So, at least at the moment, Sunak and his colleagues are definitely looking at a tsunami, it's just not clear how large. Our friends in Britain have offered to report on the upcoming elections, so we will see what May brings. That's the month, not the former PM. (Z)