Labor leader Keir Starmer poses for a photo during a visit to the Vale Inn in Macclesfield, England, June 27, 2024. In the final week of the election campaign, Labor outlined plans to expand opportunities for young people.
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LONDON — Ever since Britain’s Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak called a general election in May, one dominant narrative has been that the opposition Labor Party would win the vote in a landslide.
While voter polls may vary in size and methodology, the results all point in one direction, showing centre-left Labor leading the Conservatives by around 20 percentage points. According to Sky News polling tracker, Labor is expected to win about 40% of the vote, while the Conservatives are expected to receive about 20% support.
The Reform Party, led by Brexiteer leader Nigel Farage, is expected to get 16% of the vote after eroding support from the Conservatives, while the Lib Dems are expected to get around 11% and the Greens Received 6% of the vote. The Scottish National Party is expected to win 2.9% of the vote.
Labor candidate and leader Keir Starmer has been keen to play down the level of support the party enjoys, fearing a sense of complacency and the impression that “their pockets are deep” among voters – a stance that could trigger apathy and support from voters A decrease in voter turnout.
“Labour wants to be able to convince voters that it’s absolutely central that they turn out to vote because otherwise the Conservatives will win, and the Conservatives desperately want people to think they still have a chance and therefore deserve to show up,” said John Curtis, the UK’s top pollster (John Curtice) told CNBC.
The accuracy of UK voter polls has raised questions in the past, with previous forecasts over- or underestimating support for various political parties. These errors are often due to inadequate sampling or factors that are difficult to control, such as voters being “shy” when it comes to voting for the party they intend to support.
Labor leader Sir Keir Starmer speaks ahead of the UK general election on July 4, 2024.
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This year, however, experts tend to believe that the polls are showing Labor leaning so strongly that even if the scale of support is wrong, the overall result will be the same: a convincing victory for the opposition.
“My attitude is [that] “It should be polled, not inhaled,” Curtis said wryly.
“As it happens, because in this election one party is clearly in the lead, [it was] In 1997, the polls could be wildly off but no one would notice,” he said, referring to the year Labor defeated the Conservatives in a landslide, ending the latter’s 18-year rule.
Labor “spin”?
Labor itself is understandably keen to downplay the polls, with a spokesperson telling CNBC the party does not comment on forecasts “as they will vary and fluctuate”.
“Instead, we are working hard to get our message of change to voters ahead of the only poll that matters on July 4,” the spokesman said.
Keir Starmer said on Monday that no vote should be taken for granted and asked his supporters to continue campaigning until polls close on Thursday.
“The fight for change is for you, but change will only happen if you vote for it. This is the message we have to deliver to every doorstep over the past hours and days until 10pm on Thursday night .
“Nothing is taken for granted, every vote has to be won. Polls cannot predict the future and we have to get out there,” he told Hitchin’s campaign supporters.
Labor leader Sir Keir Starmer visits Hitchin, Hertfordshire, during the general election campaign. Image date: Monday, July 1, 2024.
Stefan Rousseau – PA Pictures | PA Images | Getty Images
Alastair Campbell, Labour’s former campaign and communications director and one of the chief strategists who rebranded the party as “New Labour” in the 1990s before its huge electoral victory in 1997, told CNBC , who expressed doubts about current voter polls.
“I’m really worried about the way these election debates are unfolding right now, where almost everything in them is about polling,” he told CNBC two weeks ago.
“Other than a few mail-in ballots, no one has voted. I don’t believe for one second that the Conservative Party is going to be wiped out, I just don’t believe it,” he said.
“I just think something is going very, very wrong with these polls, and I could be completely wrong, Labor does keep leading. But I just hope that during our election we can talk less about the polls and more about the polls.” About what the parties said.
Pollster Matt Beach, director of the Center for British Politics at the University of Hull, said Campbell’s stance was aimed at persuading Labour-leaning voters to vote.
“They want to make sure they get as big a majority as possible. They know very well [the lead-up to the election in] There was the “shy Tory” phenomenon in 1992 when polls suggested Labor would win but they didn’t… [But] They don’t actually really worry about that. They hope for a landslide tsunami like the one in 1997.
He added, “So if you keep beating the drum [that the polls are not correct], you would say to Labor-leaning voters, “Please go out and vote.” But it’s not like, “We’re actually afraid we’re not going to win, we’re going to win easily.” But we hope to get a majority that will enable us to push our agenda, and we hope this victory means we will be elected for two terms.“
