Yeh agreed, then a new Tory leader who will likely be the next PM in the mid 2030s, rinse and repeat with British politics.

https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/54117-what-is-the-tactical-voting-landscape-in-february-2026

Really nice article about the current state of tactical voting, confirming that like many other countries and despite big claims about Reform replacing Labour or such like, we are going into a straight left vs right 50-50 fight from now on.

(this image is overall numbers, there's some really interesting ones in the article including ones that show that while most parties have a good even chance of making a tactical decision to stick to their vote, Reform voters really are diehards and really won't countenance voting anyone else except.... maybe the Conservatives)

Without having read the article yet, that YouGov survey reinforces my view that almost anything could happen. if Deform top the poll with around 30% of the vote, they could win a majority or they could end up as the third, or even fourth, party in the Commons.

1 minute ago, Suedehead2 said:

Without having read the article yet, that YouGov survey reinforces my view that almost anything could happen. if Deform top the poll with around 30% of the vote, they could win a majority or they could end up as the third, or even fourth, party in the Commons.

Be interesting to see if that Rupert Lowe (Restore Britain) has any affect on Reform's polling.

The latest Poll I saw, Reform were down 4/5 points anyway (something like that).

The article does say that tactical voters range from about 40% of voters to 60% of voters, I think that's well outside the range of how many actually will tactically vote, I think estimates in 2024 was for about 17% of the electorate. Though surely more will be considering now, I'd be very surprised if it were as high as the people saying they're considering it on a survey in any real election.

Reform have fallen back in a few polls, though YouGov has them lower than everyone else.

Waiting on Gorton & Denton/the locals I suppose - which means the polling is open to change.

Idk about Lowe, I think that's the natural extremists peeling off Reform and won't do anything in the real world. Unfortunately gives Reform a bogeyman to their right to point to (like say Le Pen with Zenmour - though he managed to get 2 million votes, Lowe isn't getting anywhere near the kind of oxygen needed for that).

One hurdle is the electorate wanting to tactically vote (and whether that could ever include a Labour party who have given the UK one of the least popular prime ministers ever), and then another is the electorate knowing how to tactically vote in their constituency. Really not easy.

5 hours ago, ElectroBoy said:

Be interesting to see if that Rupert Lowe (Restore Britain) has any affect on Reform's polling.

The latest Poll I saw, Reform were down 4/5 points anyway (something like that).

They are essentially the social media version of the BNP.

In Farage's effort to become electable, they've basically taken all the worst Tories and kind of backed themselves in to a corner now where they have Tory baggage and are trying to be sensible with their foscal policies and make the whole election debate about immigration & wokeness, whilst also saying we will make you richer.. without actually saying it. I'm not surprised they are dropping in the polls. They'll still do really well in the May elections but they are essentially just the Tories under Boris.