Southern blues

Seat previews for Surrey, East and West Sussex, plus a breakdown of last week's polls

We had a barrage of five new polls yesterday evening, with a clear trend. There has undoubtedly been a shift to Reform following Nigel Farage’s return to the leadership of the party. Their scores in each poll were:

Redfield and Wilton 17 (+3)

BMG 16 (+5)

Survation 15 (+7)

Techne 15 (+3)

Focaldata 14 (+2)

In each case the highest ever Reform score for that pollster. Looking at the raw data we can see that nearly all these votes are coming from people who voted Conservative in 2019. A big question for the rest of the campaign will be whether this surge fades, sticks, or grows. We will have to wait and see, but there is very little loyalty to the Tories out there at the moment, and Sunak having to apologise for skipping D-Day commemorations won’t have helped.

Two of the polls saw a 4 points drop in the Labour vote as well (Redfield and Survation). The three others saw little movement. This looks to me like noise, there was no clear pattern in the polls with a Labour drop (YouGov had a 4 point drop yesterday too, on their new methodology). But it’s one to keep an eye on.