Luke Tryl

🏳️‍🌈At the very end of last year we looked again at voting intention by sexual orientation
➡️Reform led 🌹Labour by 11 with straight men
➡️Reform led 🌳Tories by 6 with straight women
➡️Reform led 💚Greens by 6 with gay & bisexual men
💚Greens led 🌹Labour by 16 (!) among gay & bisexual women

None of this means brand is definitely irrecoverable, if Reform stumble OR look like they'll always be blocked by tactical voting voters who want Lab out may return, debate moving onto economy may help, but if as seems likely May is a disaster, strong horse may make it even harder to get a hearing

And what i think the KB bounce but no VI bounce shows is they are not dealing with a leadership problem here, (arguably opposite the party is a drag on her) that means there's no quick fix replacement option - which is why it might be the case that trying to strengthen team around her may help a bit

Should it be unusual for a party that has just lost power after 14 years not to have recovered in voters eyes yet - absolutely not - Tories by 1999 hadn't shifted brand perception at all from 1997, but they didn't have a challenger party to their right, there was time (13 years in fact!)

Simply put their brand hasn't recovered at all since the election, and while they are (just) the party people are most likely to say they trust on the economy, on immigration an issue they used to reliably own Reform is ahead, meaning everytime it has salience Reform benefit.

The only metric the Conservatives as a party have meaningfully improved on is represents a fresh start and they're still under 30%, though, they do outperform other 3 top polling parties on dealing with economic problems and competence, but not much else.

And for a traditional main party to have got to the 'what's the point of voting for them stage' is very bad news indeed, particularly with voters on the right who most want to try and defeat Labour and part of the problem is the (low) parties brand has barely shifted since summer 2024.

But the problem, those same comments offering praise for her are now often followed by 'but what's the point of voting Conservative, they can't win' v. similar to the sort of thing someone might have said about the Lib Dems under Ashdown, Kennedy or pre-coalition Clegg.

We hear same in focus groups, prior to Autumn it was rare for Badenoch to be raised in a focus group and do you know who the Tory leader is was met with silence. Today it's different and you get more occasional unprompted 'I quite like Kemi' 'she seems gutsy' 'she's tougher than the men'

What's more voters are now far more likely than they were in the Autumn to say that Badenoch helps rather than holds back her party and she far out performs Starmer on that metric with a majority thinking he holds Labour back.

First on the Badenoch bounce, it's very clear since budget something has shifted for her personally. The approvals chart above shows she now regularly outperforms Farage, she beats other 4 main leaders in direct head to heads (though not in a 5 way). bsky.app/profile/luke...

🧵Speculation about Tory reshuffle means its worth looking at whether there has been any Badenoch bounce? The data I think unambiguously shows there has, the fact it is not translating into change in party ratings is arguably a worse sign for Tories than if there hadn't been one

There’s a distinction between the say 15% who backed Reform at the last election and even then maybe only 2/3s of them. And the extra 15% they’ve gained since who really are just “life can’t get worse so we’ve got to try something new” make life feel better and they won’t want to roll the dice.

There’s both Tory & Labour versions of addressing insecurity - the former a bit more about making work pay/keeping what you earn. The latter more about tackling low pay/safety net/business excess - but if either party wants to recover their answer to it must be front/centre.

Ed Miliband landed on squeezed middle back as leader and since then we’ve talked about JAMs, ordinary working families, hero voters, but as Chris and others show it’s wrong to think of them as just those hit by deindustrialisation, many economically insecure are graduate/renters in white collar jobs

So this debate about Labour needing to move right or left misses the point as Chris is absolutely right to say you can get most voters with a mainstream pitch on social issues (and polling shows SM migration reforms can do that) but economic insecurity/affordability trumps it all.

To voters inability of govt to either recognise or alleviate effects of the cost of living crisis, inaffordability & drivers of insecurity are pushing people from mainstream, fuelling roll the dice mentality. This from
@owenwntr.bsky.social using our data shows. www.economist.com/britain/2026...

“Not living, just surviving” “Working to live, living to work” “Nothing left over for the fun stuff” “Feels like I’m going backwards” - versions of this in every single focus group. The sense you work hard, do the right thing blue collar or white collar and still can’t get ahead

Worth reading by @chriscurtis94.bsky.social. Abundantly clear to anyone that spends a cursory amount of time on public opinion that economic insecurity, exacerbated 10x by cost of living crisis is driving political force of our time, fuelling Labour’s woes chriscurtismk.substack.com/p/who-actual...

🌼🌹On these shares, Plaid and Lab would be able to form a government, Plaid would most likely be the larger party and provide the FM
➡️ Reform would not necessarily be the largest party, although likely the official opposition to a Plaid admin
🌳 Tories reduced to just 7 seats, only 2 ahead of Greens

Seat projection from the same voting intention. Reform UK and Plaid Cymru are tied on seats, with Labour close behind.
➡️ REF UK 28
🌼 PLAID 28
🌹 LAB 26
🌳 CON 7
🌍 GREEN 5
🔶 LIB DEM 2

New 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿Senedd voting intention. Reform UK down and now neck-and-neck with Plaid, while the Greens jump up to tie the Conservatives.
➡️ REF UK 26% (–5)
🌼 PLAID 26% (+2)
🌹 LAB 20% (nc)
🌳 CON 10% (–3)
🔶 LIB DEM 7% (+1)
🌍 GREEN 10% (+5)
N=851, 15/2-3/3 Change with 10/2

oh that's so depressing

No, the name was recognition wasn't high enough so it including on a tracker wasn't a fair comparison - there's no point in comparing the net score of someone with low recognition to the PM. However, Greens have been on our voting intention since we started.

While the partisan differences are margin of error stuff, the age divides are more stark with the Gruffalo (published 1999) edging out more traditional staples such as Paddington and Winnie-the-Pooh.

Paddington, Winnie-the-Pooh and the Snowman are the clear top choices of the public, personally I was surprised that the Hungry Caterpillar did poor. Among those who specified 'other' their top entries were:
Cinderella, Peter Pan, Bambi, Pinocchio and Dragon Ball (?!)

📕It's world book day! So how does favourite children's book vary by voting intention. Despite having been dragged into the culture wars, Paddington is top choice of Tory and Reform voters, for Labour voters it's the Snowman while Winne-the-Pooh comes out on top with Green voters

And if people think things can never get better than why would they stick with the status quo, they will become more willing to roll the dice on something new entirely and further driving the rise of 'burn it all down' sentiment.

In his speech today Andy Burnham cited our poll finding that record numbers now think the cost of living crisis will never end.
Totally right imo it is 'code red' - it's not just that life is too hard for too many at the moment - but people have also lost hope it will get better

Cost of living way ahead top issue, jobs & unemployment continues to tick up

💷 Cost of Living 65%
🏥NHS 36%
🛃 Levels of immigration* 30%
🛥️ Channel crossings* 29%
👷Jobs and unemployment 20%

*47% selecting at least one (excluding double counters) of immigration or crossings