Southern blues part two

A bumper edition of seat previews - 38 in Hampshire and Kent

This election feels increasingly surreal. It’s gone about as badly for the Tories as it could have done. Their poll rating has fallen since the campaign started, and may fall further. Their plan to squeeze Reform was comprehensively undermined by Farage’s decision to stand (and wasn’t happening anyway before that). Sunak seems to have stopped campaigning all together. With three and half weeks to go increasingly extreme scenarios are becoming more plausible, if not likely.

Yet those scenarios - the Tories below 100 seats, or even the Lib Dems as the opposition - still seem so bizarre that they’re not being discussed much in media coverage. Indeed we’re still getting headlines about “Starmer not sealing the deal”, as if it was a traditional campaign. Even at this point the difficulty of considering the unprecedented holds. Will it still if the position is the same, or even more extreme, in a week’s time?

We have loads more great posts coming this week. Today it’s a bumper load of seat previews - looking at the large number of seats in Hampshire and Kent. The latter, in particular, could see some of the biggest swings, and stories, of the night.

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