Joining the Labour Party (Debate)

Wed 19 Oct 2022, 09:26 (last edited on Wed 19 Oct 2022, 09:30)

The short answer to Nick Millea's point ("it would be good to know where Redfield and Wilton are sourcing their data" about constituency voting) is that the answer's not publicly available, and it's probably a highly untrustworthy algorithm. An algorithm which, if used on this occasion, flatly contradicts polling behaviour here over the past six years.

No-one can afford reliable opinion poll surveys in all 650 constituencies, so most polling companies use a tool called Universal National Swing (UNS) to turn national polls into constituency forecasts: the assumption being that all constituencies will swing one way or another at the same rate.

The problem in West Oxfordshire, though, is that we know that's not happened. Since the Witney constituency was invented in 1983, the LDs have beaten Labour in 6 Westminster elections, and Labour's beaten the LDs in 5. But since the Brexit referendum, all that's changed. In the May WODC local elections this year, the LDs won half the seats up for election (8 out of 16): in 2018 (when the same seats were last contested) they won about a quarter - 4 out of the 17 up that time. They're now the largest party on both the County and the District councils, and provide the Leaders of each. The pronounced local swing to the LDs isn't just about Brexit (less popular among West Oxfordshire Tories than nationally) and Corbyn (less popular among West Oxfordshire everyones than nationally) but about the changes in the area's demographics and the growing energy and expertise in local LD campaigning skills.

Will that be an influence  at the next election? Since we don't know when that will be, what the boundaries will be or what kind of Tory will be leading the Conservatives when it's called, giving Andrew Webster, the original poster, a straight answer is tough right now.  And forecasts based on UNS-derived constituency calculations will almost certainly be less reliable than usual - while their individual reliability under normal circumstances is pretty limited anyway.

But there probably WILL be more local elections, at least in May 2023, before another Westminster election. And I'd rely more on signals from those than on almost any historical data for predicting who stands the likeliest chance of kicking Mr Courts out.

Meanwhile: as long as LDs and Labour supporters invest more energy into reciprocal mud-slinging than into telling the simple truth about Mr Courts and his dependence on Russian fundraising, there remains a real risk Mr Courts will be one of the few Tory survivors at the next Westminster election.