There’s a very big health warning to be put on this, because two other polls conducted at around the same time have failed to pick up the same trend, but nevertheless Deltapoll are indeed reporting that Labour’s GB-wide lead has been slashed from 23 points to just 10 – which seems to be the smallest Labour advantage in any poll from any firm since mid-September 2022, when Liz Truss was still Prime Minister (just before she blew it completely).
GB-wide voting intentions for next general election (17th-20th March 2023):
Labour 45% (-5)
Conservatives 35% (+8)
Liberal Democrats 7% (-2)
It looks like that would still produce a decent enough Labour overall majority, although it certainly wouldn’t be a three-figure majority, and not too much more of a swing back to the Tories would bring a hung parliament back into play.
Although there isn’t really any supporting evidence of a Tory surge from other polls, it was notable that in the Opinium poll at the weekend, Rishi Sunak had slightly overtaken Keir Starmer to become the public’s preference for Prime Minister. We know that leadership ratings are sometimes more predictive of election results than standard voting intentions, especially a long way out from polling day.
This is beginning to feel a little bit less like the run-up to the 1997 election. In other words, although Labour are justifiably strong favourites to win next year’s general election, it’s possible to see a path back for the Tories in a way that wasn’t really the case in the 1990s. And in a perverse sense that might throw a lifeline to the SNP, who would stand a better chance of maintaining their majority status among Scottish MPs at Westminster if the momentum towards a Labour government starts stalling.
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Over the last few days I’ve published results from TWO new Scot Goes Pop opinion polls – an opportunity to commission a second poll suddenly arose, so I made a snap decision to go ahead. However, as you’ll appreciate, polls are very expensive, so if anyone feels able to make a contribution, here are the options…
The simplest donation method is a direct Paypal payment. My Paypal email address is:
jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk
If you wish, you can add a note saying “for the fundraiser”, although even if you don’t do that, it’ll be fairly obvious what the payment is for.
If you don’t have a Paypal account, last year’s fundraiser is still very much open for donations HERE.
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