Welcome to the 126th edition of The Week in Polls (TWIP), written as I’m at Liberal Democrat party conference busy moving the polls.1 So it’s a succinct follow-up to last week’s edition this time, with further indications of Labour’s non-honeymoon.
Then it’s a summary of the latest national voting intention polls and a round-up of party leader ratings, followed by, for paid-for subscribers, 10 insights from the last week’s polling and analysis. (If you’re a free subscriber, sign up for a free trial here to see what you’re missing.)
First, this week’s stern stare of disappointment is directed at Lucy Frazer, former Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (which is the closest thing we have to a minister for polling given the media gig) who wrote that because people over-report their likelihood of voting then we should doubt the accuracy of polls. Well the first part is certainly true, and turnout modelling is not easy for pollsters to grapple with… but it is a problem that has been around for decades and polling has been pretty accurate for decades too. You would have hoped a former Cabinet minister has more understanding of the basics of how polls perform…
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More evidence for the non-existence of the honeymoon
Looking at the early post-election polling, last week I wrote this about how Labour did not appear to be having much of a honeymoon but that might not be a cause of too much concern for them:
I will therefore confess to being a little bit surprised when pulling together this data. I had expected the story to be a worrying one for Labour: no honeymoon bounce on vote share combined with middling and falling ratings for the Prime Minister.
But looking through the data, while that picture is true, it is only fair to add that the big political honeymoon of, say, a Tony Blair and the 1997 Labour Party, is the outlier.
Starmer’s and Labour’s ratings may be honeymoon-free but they are not majorly worse than those of some other successful first term administrations.
Starmer’s rating are middling, his party’s vote share hasn’t bounced up and is at low levels for a new government - but its lead is, thanks to the very low Conservative vote scores, decent. And you only have to beat the opponent in front of you. Plus of course we are barely into his premiership and this Parliament.
So far, things could go either way even though it is not a strong (polling) start for the government.
Since then we have had some further new polling which I think nudges things, tentatively in these early days, a bit more towards the ‘ooh, this could be quite grim’ camp.
First, we have More in Common starting up voting intention polling and, as with BMG before, giving Labour only a four point lead:
As Paula Surridge pointed out these figures are the metaphorical equivalent of looking at who is in the lead not merely early in a race but while some runners are putting their shoes on. (Or should that be still choosing which of several new pairs of shoes to try?)
That said, we do have historical data on what trends to expect from here and that is not looking good for the government:
To steal Matt Chorley’s old catchphrase, this is not normal.
Also not promising for the government is the new Ipsos data:
As the pollster put it, “Keir Starmer's 46% unfavourablity rating matches the joint highest he has recorded with Ipsos just after the Hartlepool by election.”
Likewise it is not a good trend with More in Common:
But there is a ray of light for Labour with Ipsos’s net favourabilty ratings for parties:
The easy hit on Labour is to point out that the new government with a huge majority is only third on net favourability. But the ray of light is that they are still a long way ahead of the Conservatives.
As Boris Johnson showed in 2019, or Donald Trump before that, you only have to beat who you are up against. They were both hugely unpopular, but were blessed by being up against hugely unpopular opponents.2
So far, Starmer’s polling continues to look better than that of his likely Conservative rivals. On that basis, for all Labour’s troubles in the polls, those of the Conservatives - still on well under 30% in the polls and without a leadership candidate polling well - are much worse.
Voting intentions and leadership ratings
Here are the latest post-general election voting intention polls from the pollsters who have got back up and running:
Next, a summary of the the leadership ratings, which vary a lot depending on the wording but the overall patterns are consistent:
For more details, and updates as each new poll comes out, see my regularly updated tables here and follow The Week in Polls on Bluesky.
For the historic figures, including Parliamentary by-election polls, see PollBase.
Last week’s edition
Labour's post-election (non-)honeymoon.
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Do Conservatives understand why they lost?, and other polling news
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