The electorate removed their majority and gave a hung parliament. The Tories carried on as if buying some DUP votes could solve the whole issue instead of modifying their approach and sorting themselves out first.

 

What was the alternative then - Labour could not have formed a gov't without the DUP either, and they would also have needed *every* other opposition party too, and if you think the Tory coalition was unstable... :rolleyes:

 

And that’s what selling the LDs short in their coalition got them. No one but the DUP would consider the Tories, they killed compromise for themselves dead.

 

The issue is that they continued to treat a hung parliament like they were still a majority government, rather than opening themselves up to cross-party talks, until now, when the deadline has already passed.

What was the alternative then - Labour could not have formed a gov't without the DUP either, and they would also have needed *every* other opposition party too, and if you think the Tory coalition was unstable... :rolleyes:

 

Which is what the electorate voted for - a situation where no-one had total control, where co=operation was called for and getting agreement should have been planned for. Split, just like the country, so everyone has to compromise and accept they can't have exactly what they want.

 

Put the deal to the electorate, that'll soon sort out whether people actually want it, or whether they would rather stay as they are. But of course, those who would rather go for the will of 1.5m dead people rather than 1.5m potential new voters keep moaning about democracy being a bad thing when you get an actual concrete deal rather than an airy fairy bunch of pink elephant lies....

 

It's funny cos it's true. :P

So let's see how the Brexit Party is doing now that they've officially launched and are...oh f***:

 

@1118480874893381632

 

I imagine that this is a temporary boost as the party were likely fresh in people's mind following their high-profile launch, and their numbers may settle down in a few weeks time. Interesting to not that gains have almost exclusively been at the expense of UKIP, which we can take as some relief, in the same way that being kicked in the shins is preferable to being kicked in the bolling-brooks.

 

Poor, poor Change UK...

Brexit are acting as the figurehead for hard Leavers. Which is good for Farage's party, they can continue to propose the same sort of generic catch-all Brexit under a populist banner and gain votes and keep the Brexit conversations alive, no matter how unworkable any of the solutions are. That doesn't matter. They don't officially support any kind of Brexit, they don't have to, though accepting the """truth""" (big fat lie) that everyone has always supported hard Brexit won't hurt them. They're now mainstream.

 

The data shows Remain is still completely split, with the largest proportion still going to a party (Labour) that isn't operating under a Remain policy. Additionally, several Remain voters don't yet know who they'd support. Still a lot of room for the polls to normalise, and for campaigns to make sure that pro-Europeans don't stay home on the voting day.

@1118643463380185088

 

Oh

@1118643463380185088

 

Oh

 

Corbyn must be pissing himself with delight - under a third of voter support and still 10 points clear. Labour could have a Chimp as party leader and still appear a better alternative to the Tories. Mind you, if they want someone who enjoys flinging faeces about they need look no further than bff Assange....

So let's see how the Brexit Party is doing now that they've officially launched and are...oh f***:

 

@1118480874893381632

 

I imagine that this is a temporary boost as the party were likely fresh in people's mind following their high-profile launch, and their numbers may settle down in a few weeks time. Interesting to not that gains have almost exclusively been at the expense of UKIP, which we can take as some relief, in the same way that being kicked in the shins is preferable to being kicked in the bolling-brooks.

 

Poor, poor Change UK...

How's this for confusing? Another poll carried out roughly at the same time as the above gives the following...

 

Lab 33%

Con 18%

Farage 17%

LibD 9%

ChUK 9%

UKIP 5%

Green 5%

 

It is unclear how the two polling organisations have adjusted their figures, particularly for the Chukas and Farage's fanclub.

Two new parties with built-in support appearing at the same time AND this election being incomparable to the last EU election in terms of voter awareness and EU interest in the country must be making it exceptionally hard to weight voting intentions properly.

Two new parties with built-in support appearing at the same time AND this election being incomparable to the last EU election in terms of voter awareness and EU interest in the country must be making it exceptionally hard to weight voting intentions properly.

I wonder if a newspaper will decide to pay for an old-fashioned poll, i.e. one that asks a representative sample. That would reduce the amount of adjustment required.

It is unclear how the two polling organisations have adjusted their figures, particularly for the Chukas and Farage's fanclub.

Ohhh.... it’s interesting that Change UK can be shortened to ChUK....a Umunna. It’s probably been noticed thousands I’ve times already but that’s the first I clicked :mellow:

Meanwhile for the actual Remain-Leave voting intention, ComRes has this:

 

@1118869993259786240

 

That's... a pretty sizeable advantage. God polls are interesting right now.

 

Poll of Polls over the last 2 years.. some significant shifts taking place at the moment. That being the crumbling of Conservative support (at last!)

Re: poll volatility of new, but prominent, parties. TIG/ChangeUK* have fluctuated between 18% and 1% of the vote I believe. Most polls have been in the reasonably consistent 5-8% zone, but that's intriguing indeed.

 

*god I cringe just typing that name out

Meanwhile my hometown's Tory party, Derbyshire Conservatives (representing 1 million people), have refused to campaign for the EU elections. Many local associations will be tacitly on strike, but Derbyshire are wanting to make a song and a dance of it.

 

Being deep into Brexitland, Derbyshire is one of the few places that recorded a swing from Labour to the Tories in 2017's election. It's an interesting area politically, with an equal split currently between the two main parties, but was overwhelmingly Labour during the Blair years. Just one Westminster seat is a safe (Tory) seat, although the ex-coal mining areas have been Labour for a century, albeit with increasingly small majorities.

 

They of course won't really care if 23 May is a disaster for their own party. But they surely plan to continue campaigning hard for the local elections 3 weeks before, and I can't help but feel that the EU elections will cast a shadow over these. Frustratingly we don't really get any polls for local elections, but here's hoping!

 

Here's their announcement, alongside a picture of their councillors who are beaming at potentially endangering their seats in a couple of weeks. Quite telling that this rather gammony bunch are 75-80% men and all but 3 are over the age of 50.

It's horribly insensitive and crass but I'd also be interested in any article that studies the correlation between a boomer's political leanings and their BMI.

:unsure: :unsure: :unsure:

Edited April 20, 20196 yr by Harve

Not strictly related to Opinion Polls but the research that Onward (right leaning thinktank) did recently shows how big the problem is for the Conservatives in terms of the polarising of the electorate generationally:

 

 

Looking at just Labour and Conservative voters you can see that demographically the votes are evenly spread for Labour but are hugely skewed towards the 'Baby Boomer' generation for the Conservatives (e.g. those born after 1945 and before 1960) - this tends to be the generation that benefitted from free higher education, relatively inexpensive housing etc. - as we start to see them die off in the next 20 to 30 years it will be the millennial generation (born 1981-2000) that sways more influence and as you can see at the moment, they ain't voting Conservative.

 

Full report here: https://www.ukonward.com/wp-content/uploads...-online-PDF.pdf

N

 

Looking at just Labour and Conservative voters you can see that demographically the votes are evenly spread for Labour but are hugely skewed towards the 'Baby Boomer' generation for the Conservatives (e.g. those born after 1945 and before 1960) - this tends to be the generation that benefitted from free higher education, relatively inexpensive housing etc. - as we start to see them die off in the next 20 to 30 years it will be the millennial generation (born 1981-2000) that sways more influence and as you can see at the moment, they ain't voting Conservative.

 

To paraphrase a common call I've heard in recent years, you can't expect the youth to get excited about capitalism when they've got no capital to begin with. People writing the obituary of the current Conservative Party will undoubtedly say that their biggest failure (even more so than Brexit and other possible symptoms) will be their failure to build more houses to allow more young people onto the property ladder. Although I doubt demographic differences will see the Conservatives no longer being a force in politics - there're been stories going well back to the 1960s saying that the demographic changes will mean that the Conservatives will die out within the next few years, and in that time they've been in power longer than Labour.

New Westminster opinion poll showing a party that doesn't even have any policies in 3rd in the rankings. Definitely feels like a honeymoon boost, but even so, rather interesting:

 

@1122177498568122370

And on the other side of the border...

 

@1122117860380352512

 

we be riding this wave all the way to freedom and our EU passports

Good luck to yous!