The above is from Britain Elect’s Ben Walker and is on-line with his analysis at the New Statesman.
Readers of this blog (if there are any) will know that I am sceptical about pollsters (psephologists). I tend to think they too often produce what the late socialist historian E P Thompson called Ephology. That is not reflecting opinion but trying to shape it, often to get headlines and promote their polling business.
Walker is at the more political end, in the sense of trying to understand in detail what polls and results mean for the future.
His headline point from the above is that, obviously, Reform did far better than predicted (and the Tories and Labour did worse). A suggestion is that because Reform got people who don’t normally vote out to vote for them. Reform doesnt have much of a ground operation so this probably means people turning up in person more than postal votes. However in order to vote in person you of course have to be registered to vote and have ID. So these were not people who were totally disengaged.
Post May 1st the most rightly wing-media have been bigging up Reform. However at Walker shows both the LibDems and the Greens out performed predictions. That is important for the centre/left and left vote I suspect
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