Go West

Seat previews for Dorset, Wiltshire and Gloucestershire

We’re deep into manifesto week, and I’ll write a bit more about them once they’re all out. But it’s fair to say the ones we’ve had so far have done nothing to alter the direction of the campaign. The Conservative one was very much designed as an attempt to salvage votes rather than present a coherent programme for governing, and based on ludicrous assumptions about future welfare and administrative savings.

Poll-wise we’ve seen both the Conservatives and Labour dip a bit this week. As per Josh’s post on Tuesday this is largely because the Tories are losing votes to Reform and Labour to other smaller parties. “Don’t know” numbers are also starting to fall, which reduces the Labour score a little as “don’t knows” are more evenly split between them and the Conservatives. Labour’s lead, though remains over 20 points, higher than it was at this point in 1997. Moreover, it was dropping then and it isn’t now.

Today we have previews of 22 seats across the rural south west - in Dorset, Wiltshire, and Gloucestershire. All these seats are currently held by the Conservatives and there are three cabinet ministers in this batch.

Below is the Sankey diagram of my predictions up to yesterday (by subscriber Graham Foreman), covering the south east plus Cornwall, Devon and Somerset.

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