Is Labour slipping in London?

Today we should be getting the final YouGov poll for Queen Mary University for the London local elections a week today. I'm not sure whether Owen Jones has reliable informants at either institution, but he tweeted earlier this week that a "bad" poll for Labour was coming.
What would "bad" mean? So far there have been two YouGov/QMUL London polls, both putting Labour about 25 points ahead on council voting intention. That would equate to a swing to Labour of about 6 per cent from 2014. The national polls have shifted slightly since these polls were done, so that might imply that the swing has fallen to 4-5 per cent.
That would be smaller than the London swing between the 2015 and 2017 general elections, which was 6.3 per cent. But crucially (as far as the narrative is concerned) it would mean – if the swing were even across the capital – that Labour would fall short in all but one of its target boroughs.
Of course, I don't think the swing will be even, or anything close. But you can see how, just eyeballing the swingometer, some Labour supporters might be disappointed with a poll showing a lead "only" in the low-20s. Anything closer than that would be noteworthy.
The poll is expected at around 11am. Also worth watching out for will be Polling Matters with Colin Rallings of the Plymouth Election Centre, which will be linked from tomorrow's briefing for those of you not on Twitter…

Get it before it’s on the website – sign up for this briefing: <style type="text/css"
#mc_embed_signup{background:#eeeeee; clear:left; font:14px Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; }
/* Add your own MailChimp form style overrides in your site stylesheet or in this style block.
We recommend moving this block and the preceding CSS link to the HEAD of your HTML file. */

Please send me (select as required):

Email Format





About The Author

Related Posts