Makerfield's verdict: what the polls say before Britain's most consequential by-election
Welcome to the 217th edition of The Week in Polls (TWIP), a polling newsletter that always welcomes new readers. So please don’t keep TWIP a secret; please share it with your friends and colleagues:
This time, I have a straightforward piece of reporting for you: what the polls say a few days ahead of polling day in the Makerfield by-election.
This is followed by a summary of the latest national voting intention polls, seat projections from MRPs and the most recent party leader ratings.
Subscribers who pay for the full edition can also read ten insights from the latest polls and analyses, including:
Ipsos polling on the European Union;
A surprising finding about Restore’s supporters; and
How public opinion on defence spending is out of step with media coverage.
If you are not yet a paid subscriber, you can read all ten by starting a free trial now:
For more polling news as it comes in ahead of next week’s edition, you can also follow The Week in Polls on Bluesky.
First, a couple of updates to the JL Partners poll of trade unionists mentioned last time. As I wrote last week, it was of trade union members in general rather than public sector trade unionists. That’s worth stressing because some references to it (including in a couple of early social media posts from JL Partners) referred to the public sector only by mistake. In addition, Simon Fletcher, who has previously worked for both Ken Livingstone and Jeremy Corbyn, has queried the weighting of the poll. JL Partners, however, have told me that even if the poll is reweighted to give greater weight to the answers from members of the National Education Union relative to the GMB, it would still have Labour and Reform neck-and-neck.
Thank you also to reader Ian, who spotted that when I wrote last week of the “Leave/Reform split among Conservative voters” I meant “Leave/Remain”. Apologies for anyone confused by that, and a free one-year subscription to the paid edition of TWIP has gone Ian’s way in line with my corrections policy below.
And with that, on with the show.
The Makerfield by-election polls
A fun political history question to chew over is to try to name a Parliamentary by-election that had a greater impact on British politics than the Makerfield contest is likely to have. The BBC’s list of 11 memorable by-elections, for example, is notable for how frequently the political impact of the by-election faded and how poor a guide to the future course of British politics you get from knowing the winner.
Perhaps Makerfield will join that club, but for the moment there is a strong case that the voters of Makerfield have outsized political power compared with anyone else since the advent of mass democracy.
Which means that the Makerfield by-election polls are clearly the thing to cover this week. No pressure, pollsters.
Here are the published results so far:
Included in this table for completeness, but with caveats, is the “private constituency-wide polling” for Labour seen and reported on by The i. My main reasons for being disdainful of such data are explained in an earlier TWIP: The misleading mystique of “internal polling”. In this case, The i’s report says that the poll was “weighted by age and gender”. If that’s all it was weighted by, that would raise some eyebrows. The sum total of the Labour, Reform and Restore figures is also rather low, suggesting that there are some don’t knows or similar included in the percentage calculations.
Also included in this table is a poll from a new polling outfit, Convergent, which is a member of the British Polling Council and was founded by Fintan Smith and Dylan Spielman. They describe themselves as follows:
We both started by working at leading traditional polling agencies.
We then built the Labour Party’s in-house polling and data science capabilities — and helped deliver the UK’s biggest election victory of the 21st century, with more accurate predictions than any public pollster.
We’ve since run polling for the top of the UK Government and No.10.
Now we’re using what we’ve learnt to build the next generation of polling at Convergent.
Although some may be tempted to be cynical about the poll giving Labour the largest lead also being from a firm founded by two former Labour staffers, it’s worth bearing in mind that how this poll performs will have a significant influence on the new firm’s reputation. For all the pollsters in the UK, there is a strong financial incentive to get their published voting intention polls right as they act as shop windows for their wider business. (The US polling market is a very different, and at times weird, place.)
Similarly, although the Opinium poll was commissioned by two organisations with a clear political viewpoint – Forward Democracy and StopReformUK.Vote – Opinium is a reputable pollster and appears to have followed a standard methodology.
I have not included a column for sample size because all the polls are of an adequate sample size. In other words, the sample size is large enough that any problems with the sample are almost certainly going to be due to its quality rather than its size. Although the lead for Andy Burnham in some of the polls is small enough to be within the poll’s nominal margins of error based on sample size, it’s the quality of samples that should concern us more. But in this case, as all the polls paint a similar picture, and as that also includes a mix of online, phone and face-to-face sampling, it’s likely that the samples are fine.
All in all, “Burnham ahead by a reasonable amount” looks a fairly safe conclusion from the polls.
Of course, the voters themselves may yet change their minds even if the polls are accurate. In that context, it’s worth noting the big media set piece of the campaign, the BBC Question Time special featuring the by-election candidates, was on 4 June.
Opinium adds:
While Labour currently leads in the by-election contest, the constituency’s longer-term political outlook could look more favourable to Reform UK. Asked how they would vote at a future general election, 42% back Reform UK compared with 34% for Labour, suggesting Burnham’s personal appeal may be helping Labour outperform its broader party brand locally.
Survation similarly found that:
On a generic Westminster ballot, with no candidate names attached, Reform UK leads Labour by eleven points in Makerfield. The eleven-point Reform lead in a generic ballot, set against a three-point Labour lead in the named-candidate by-election ballot, is the size of the Burnham effect in this poll.
To put the Restore voting figures in some context:
Finally, for news of focus groups from the Makerfield constituency, read on to the final section of this newsletter. That includes news of a JL Partners focus group exercise, which had sparked a brief online rumour when it was wrongly reported as a poll.
If you are wondering about the two other Parliamentary by-elections, I’ve not seen any polls published or leaked for them.
Party leadership plotting: Yes, Minister’s Party Games episode
The latest episode of Political Fictions with Paperback Rioter is out. It’s about a Christmas special featuring plotting to become Prime Minister. So we’ll let you decide if our scheduling is way off or spot on.
Here are the details:
Mark and Cory talk about the O.G. of British Political Sitcoms: Yes, Minister. They marvel at the genial Machiavellian genius that is Jim Hacker exploiting the British sausage to win a leadership contest, explain why this episode is a good guide for would-be leadership contenders, and lay it on a bit thick with their marmalade discussion.
If you’re in the UK then you can watch this on BBC iPlayer.
Cory’s email newsletter is Paperback Rioter and Mark has a family of email newsletters.
Our theme tune is “Monkeys Spinning Monkeys” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) and licensed under the Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
As well as listening here, you can also listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or in your favourite podcast app.
If you spot a factual error…
Borrowing an idea from Stuart Ritchie and others, if you spot a factual error in an edition of this newsletter, I will give you a free 12-month subscription to the paid-for version (or an extra 12 months on your existing one). Factual errors qualify; grammatical errors or disagreements over interpretation do not and my decision is final. Messages about both of those are always welcome, though.
Voting intention and leadership ratings
Here are the latest voting intention polls from different pollsters. The mini run of polls showing Reform’s support rising has come to an end, so it’s perhaps best to describe its support as static - down from its earlier peak but with the decline having (for the moment?) come to an end.
The table is also online here, along with explanations about what is included. It is updated regularly through the week with new polls.
Next are the seat projections from MRPs, also sorted by fieldwork dates. Because they are published infrequently, most of these are somewhat dated.
Finally, here is a summary of the latest leadership ratings, sorted by pollster name.
The table is also online here with additional details and is updated regularly through the week as new data comes out.
For historical figures on both voting intention and leader approval stretching back to the 1930s, including Parliamentary by-election polls, see PollBase.
Catch up on the previous two editions
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Where did Reform’s party members come from?, and 9 other polling insights you shouldn’t miss
The following 10 findings from the most recent polls and analyses are only for subscribers who pay for the full edition, but you can sign up for a free trial to read them straight away.
New polling by Lord Ashcroft includes this data on the previous political preferences of Reform UK members:
