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What’s going to be the impact of tactical voting? Perhaps the worst news for the Tories that could come out of today’s Westminster by-elections is Labour losing its deposit in Tiverton and Honiton while the Lib Dems lose there’s in Wakefield. For undoubtedly much of the Tory success at the last general election was down to the anti-Tory vote being split in key constituencies. If voters who are opposed to Johnson get smart and seek to maximise the effectiveness of…

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You have to go back to November 7th 1991 to find a day when the Tories lost two Westminster by-elections on the same day. These were the LAB gain of Langbaurgh and the LD gain of Kincardine and Deeside. These were the last by-elections of the 1987-1992 Parliament. John Major went to the country five months later and won a surprise small majority winning back these two seats in the process. As to the latest contests you can no longer bet on…

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The Smarkets Tweet hits the nail on the head. It is hard to recall Davey’s party not winning when they have been very competitive in a Westminster by-election. They are helped by being able to attract hundreds of activists from all over the country when there is the sniff of victory. That certainly is what has happened ahead of tomorrow’s Tiverton and Honiton by-election. This is why the betting markets made them tight odds-on favourite right from moment the by-election…

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I added the above Savanta poll as an update sometime after the previous post was published and given its findings I thought it was worth a thread in Its own right. For the whole of Ministers’ strategy has been based on the public backing their robust opposition to the rail workers. If Savanta is right then Team Johnson has got this one wrong. Of course, you would expect GE2019 LAB voters to be supportive but not 37% of those who…

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But there’s little backing for ticket office closures Rail strikes tend to get a lot of coverage in the London-based media because it is only really the big cities that rely very much on rail for commuting. The capital is something of an outlier when it comes to the importance of rail. Also this comes after the pandemic when a very large proportion of office workers operated from home without the need to commute. Johnson’s Tory government has latched onto…

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The technique of releasing canvassing data as if it was a proper poll in order to put the squeeze on Labour voters was first used by the Lib Dems in the Richmond Park by-election in 2016. Then it worked very well with the total of LAB votes in the constituency on the night coming out out as fewer than the number of LAB party members in the seat. After claiming last week that they were just 2% behind the Tories…

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Quite simply a majority of 24,239 has never before been surmounted in a Westminster by-election. This is a huge hurdle for the LDs to overturn especially as they start in third place. Even if this is reduced to just one vote on Thursday Johnson and his supporters will be able to claim a huge victory which will embolden them for the future. This would be in spite of the almost certain loss of Wakefield which is also on Thursday. A…

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With the most recent Opinium survey having the CON lead down to just 2% it opens up a chance that a CON lead in June or July might just be worth a punt. As I write Smarkets have 20/1 on a June Tory lead and given that Opinium should be reporting again next Saturday night then who knows? None of the other pollsters have got that close and as can be seen, most of the recent polls have LAB 6-7%…

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