The new shy Tories?
This is fascinating, the write up in The Times says
Polling for The Times shows that almost a third of all voters either don’t know how they will cast their ballot or say they won’t vote at all. It shows that if an election were to be held tomorrow — and the option were available — “don’t know” would be the UK’s third largest party with 16 per cent of the vote — 2 per cent behind the Tories.
Tory and Labour strategists acknowledge that this group presents both the biggest opportunity to Sunak and the biggest threat to Starmer’s hopes of a healthy Labour majority when the general election comes. On the positive side for the Tories, at the moment this group seems to be leaning towards Sunak.
When the pollsters have missed surprise Tory election victories it was down to a mixture of shy/undecided voters breaking disproportionately for the Tories and their leaders John Major and David Cameron which the supplementaries in the polls had picked up.
As we can see with these findings from YouGov there is the potential for the Tories to do better at the next general election than the current polls indicate. Given the cost of living crisis for the Tories to be preferred on the economy over Labour with undecideds should worry Labour strategists.
I’m not predicting a Tory majority but these findings are something we should continue to monitor between now and election day if Sunak continues to be leader. I get the feeling we would see vastly different polling results to these questions if the Boris Johnson or Liz Truss comebacks happen.
TSE