Owen Smith’s big hope is with members who joined before GE2015
The post-GE2015 entryists are mostly Corbyn’s
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Up to 50,000 'registered supporter' applicants for Labour leader election blocked or in doubt https://t.co/4MFY7eT2js
— Mike Smithson (@MSmithsonPB) August 2, 2016
The overnight HuffPost article linked to in the Tweet above suggests that the £25 sign-ups have been trimmed down by about 50k which means there’ll be about 130k-135k actual participants in the election. Of those it’s estimated that about 65% are for Corbyn which is markedly down on the 84% vote recorded for the winner in this segment last year.
The YouGov polling of mid-July when Smith was almost totally unknown had a split between those who have been members of the party since before GE2015 and those who joined later. Interestingly the older members are much less enamoured with the incumbent than those who’ve joined since. At the time the poll was carried out Eagle was still in the race so I’ve just split off those for Corbyn and those against. As can be seen the leader has a 10% deficit.
Another interesting set of data from the poll is how members responded to the leadership rating question. Again there’s a huge divide between those the pre-GE2015 members and those later but the broad picture is in line with the voting responses.
We clearly need new polling but I guess that will take a while because YouGov will want to factor in the £25 entryists.
We cannot assume that opinion will stay constant. Corbyn will be hurt by his party’s poor polling figures since Theresa May became PM and we could see some erosion. We also cannot assume that the degree of commitment for Corbyn amongst his supporters is the same.
The Smith campaign, which is starting to look as though its getting its act together, is focusing on electability at a general election which to many Corbynistas is simply not an issue.