House of Commons July 2024 Election
YouGov have produced their first state of the parties poll since July 2024.
It shows:
Labour 26%
Reform UK Ltd 25%
Tories 22%
The problem is that YouGov polls (along with others) don’t just have a margin of error but an accuracy problem
The YouGov poll on 3rd July 2024 together with the actual Election result on 4th July
Labour 39%- 33.7%
Tories 22%-23.7%
Reform UK Ltd 15%-14.3%
There is plenty of commentary on the exaggerated Labour lead and why this was but it gave the wider impression that there would be a Labour landslide (which there was).
The January 14th 2025 poll is being spun as showing Reform UK Ltd as the main challenger to Labour.
In reality however accurate the polls the striking thing is that in July 2024 the two main parties took 57% of the vote between them. The January 2025 poll shows this at 48%. In the 1959 General Election as a benchmark Labour and the Tories took 93% of the vote between them.
The numbers either not voting or not opting for either Labour or Tory is at historically high levels. Farage is picking up on this and so, to a lesser extent, is the left (mostly outside Labour).
Meanwhile a reminder of why polling-Psephology is really Ephology
It is an exercise not in assessing opinion but rather trying to shape it. E P Thompson as long ago as 1959 called it Ephology
A psephologist is a man employed by the mass media to research into what people think the mass media has told them to think. An ephologist is a man employed by the ‘Observer’ or BBC to interpret the results of psephology and who makes an ephing good thing out of it
New Reasoner, Autumn 1959
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