The story of the polls so far

Plus seat previews for Cambridgeshire and Essex

A double post today.

First up Dylan looks at the story being told by the endless stream of polls we’re getting. By looking under the surface at crossbreaks for age, region, previous voting behaviour, and so on, he sets out, more clearly than I’ve seen anywhere else, exactly what’s changed and why.

Then we have 26 seat previews covering Cambridgeshire and Essex. The latter is home to three of the Tory leadership hopefuls: Kemi Badenoch, Priti Patel, and James Cleverly. It also contains the seat Nigel Farage is trying to win, and plenty of others where Reform would hope to do well. 25 of these 26 seats are currently Tory so it’s a crucial battleground.

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A month of polls

After fairly little change in the first few weeks now, a month after the election was called, the polls are telling a different story. The much foretold narrowing of Labour’s poll leads has not materialised, with the Conservatives’ ratings falling sharply and Labour’s lead steady. The similarly expected squeeze of smaller parties has also failed to appear; support for the Lib Dems and Reform is increasing, while the Greens’ support is holding up better than expected. At the start of this campaign, the polls pointed to a worst-ever result for the Conservatives; today, they imply an even lower seat tally.

This multi-party polling picture is fast-moving and has many stories happening at once. This can create a tendency to infer things from cursory glances at the polls – for instance, Labour’s numbers taking a dip around the time Reform began surging has led to suggestions that Reform are now eating into Labour’s vote too. But is that really happening or is this something of an ecological fallacy? To really understand what is going on and what is moving the polls, we need to dig deep into our weekly polling tracker and beyond.