Live Commentary
12:10pm The Europe Elects live results forecast now has the right-wing ECR group moving into third ahead of the liberal Renew group with 81 seats to 80. This is because two liberal parties missed the 4% threshold in Italy, so neither won any seats. Had they formed a joint list, they would have won seats.
9:20am Tuesday The final Italian results have the governing right-wing Brothers of Italy on 28.8% (up 22.3% since 2019), the centre-left Democrats on 24.1% (up 1.4%), the anti-establishment 5 Star Movement on 10.0% (down 7.1%), the conservative Forza Italia on 9.6% (up 1.1%), the far-right League on 9.0% (down 25.3%) and a left-wing party on 6.7% (up 2.6%).
5:58pm In German final EU results, the conservative CDU/CSU won 29 seats (steady), the far-right AfD 15 (up four), the Social Democrats 14 (down two), the Greens 12 (down nine), the economically left but socially right BSW six (new), the liberal FDP five (steady), the Left three (down two) and a pro-Europe party three (up two).
5:01pm In Poland, final results have the liberal to conservative Civic Platform narrowly ahead of the Law and Justice party by 37-36 with 12% for the far-right Kon.
4:56pm Final French results have the far-right National Rally winning 31.4% (up 8.1 since 2019), Macron’s party 14.6% (down 7.8), a centre-left party 13.8% (up 7.6), the far-left 9.9% (up 3.6), the conservatives 7.2% (down 1.3), the Greens 5.5% (down 8.0) and another far-right party 5.5%.
4:44pm The biggest gains vs the current European parliament composition in the Europe Elects forecast are for Non-Inscrits (up 27), the EPP (up 14) and ECR (up 10). The biggest losses are for the Greens (down 21) and the Liberals (down 17).
9:32am The Greens are now down to 51 seats on the Europe Elects live forecast, five below the 56 seats they were expected to win yesterday, and 23 below what they won in 2019.
9:30am In Hungary, with 76% counted, the far-right governing Fidesz has 44%, (down 8.6% since 2019), but the main opposition is a new conservative party, which has 30%. Left-wing parties had little support.
8:26am There’s a big swing to a conservative party and against the Greens in Belgium’s national election today, with the conservatives up ten seats and the Greens down 11 seats.
8:19am Based on partial and near-complete results from some countries, and polls from others, the Europe Elects current forecast is for the conservative EPP group to win 194 of the 720 seats, the centre-left S&D 137, the liberal Renew 83, the Eurosceptic ECR 72, the far-right ID 63, the Greens 55 and the far-left 38. Non-aligned Non-Inscrits (NI) will win the remaining 78 seats; these include far-right parties that were expelled from other groups. These results are better for the EPP and worse for Renew, the ECR and ID than yesterday’s forecast (see below).
7:41am In Spain, the conservative People’s Party has gained nine seats for 22 to be the most popular party ahead of the governing Socialists with 20. Other seats have gone to right and left-wing parties.
7:35am In Germany, the far-right AfD has surged into second place with 16 seats, up five from 2019, with the Greens down nine seats to 12.
7:30am With 77% counted in France, National Rally has 35%, Macron’s party 14.4% and the centre-left 12.9%.
7:08am Monday After a disastrous result for French president Emmanuel Macron’s liberal party, in which they finished a distant second to the far-right National Rally, Macron has called snap parliamentary elections for June 30 (first round) and July 7 (runoffs). Macron’s party does not currently have a parliamentary majority. These elections will be for the French lower house, not for the presidency.
Guest post by Adrian Beaumont, who joins us from time to time to provide commentary on elections internationally. Adrian is a paid election analyst for The Conversation. His work for The Conversation can be found here, and his own website is here.
The European parliament (EU) election is being held from Thursday to today, with vote counting starting once all countries have finished voting. Italy will be the last country to finish voting at 7am AEST Monday, so this is when counting starts. This is the first EU election since Brexit, so the UK won’t be involved.
The 720 seats are elected using proportional representation in each EU country. The countries that have the most seats are Germany (96 seats), France (81), Italy (76), Spain (61) and Poland (53).
European parties are grouped according to their political alignment. The conservative European People’s Party (EPP) includes all conservative parties from the various countries, while the Socialists and Democrats (S&D) group includes all centre-left parties.
In 2019, the EPP won 187 of the 751 seats, the S&D 147, the liberal Renew 98, the Greens 74, the far-right Identity and Democracy (ID) 76, the soft Eurosceptic Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) 62 and the far-left 41. Non-Inscrits (NI), who are not grouped into a European faction, won the remaining 57 seats.
Far-right parties are expected to make gains at this election. The final Europe Elects forecast is for the EPP to win 184 of the 720 seats, the S&D 136, Renew 87, the ECR 74, ID 67, the Greens 56 and the far-left 37. The NI had 79 seats in this forecast, and this included far-right parties such as the Alternative for Germany (AfD) and Hungary’s governing Fidesz that have been expelled by other EU factions.
If far-right parties don’t do as well as expected, turnout could be a factor. People who support far-right parties are likely to have a lower educational attainment than those who oppose the far-right. Higher educational attainment means a higher likelihood of voting in an optional voting system.
The Belgian national parliament election will be held concurrently with the EU election. The 150 seats are elected by PR in 11 multi-member electorates with a 5% threshold per electorate. The Dutch-speaking part of Belgium (Flanders) is very right-wing, while the French-speaking part (Wallonia) is very left-wing.
UK election: Labour remains over 20 points ahead
The UK general election is on July 4. The Guardian’s national poll aggregate has Labour on 44.0% (down 0.7 since last Tuesday), the Conservatives on 23.4% (down 0.4), the far-right Reform on 11.9% (up 0.7), the Liberal Democrats on 9.7% (up 0.6) and the Greens on 5.7% (up 0.1). Reform has gained a little since Nigel Farage announced he would contest Clacton on June 3, but Labour remains way ahead, and would win a massive landslide if the election results replicate these polls.
Nominations for the election closed on Friday. If a candidate does something embarrassing, they can’t be withdrawn from the ballot paper, only publicly disendorsed by their party. UK elections are managed by local governments, so there are no easily accessible national lists of candidates, as there would be with Australia’s electoral commissions. Reform has said it will stand candidates in 630 of the 650 Commons seats and the Greens 575. Presumably, Labour, the Conservatives and the Lib Dems will contest all seats not in Northern Ireland.
US election: Trump still leads
The US general election is on November 5. It’s been over a week since Donald Trump’s May 30 conviction. In FiveThirtyEight’s tracker of national polls, Trump leads Joe Biden by 40.9-39.9 with 9.4% for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Trump led by 1.7 points on May 30. Biden’s best chance to win the Electoral College is to win all of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, states where he currently trails by 1.5 points or less.
Reposting from the main thread on the subject of rumours of serious talks to replace Rishi Sunak as leader before polling day,
It might technically be possible to quickly replace Sunak as leader during an election, just as long as it’s unanimous and has an unopposed replacement (Sunak himself replaced Liz Truss unopposed after only 4 days after her resignation announcement). A contested leadership election would be impossible to run before election day though, and the best they can do is have an “acting leader”, which would probably be worse for them than keeping Sunak as leader.
Kirsdrake – I am not sure how they could do it. Cooperation is not their strong suit at the moment so I doubt they have the organisational ability to do anything.
Exit polls for the Netherlands. With some explanations of how the Dutch Parties mesh into the EU groupings.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7HYOWj6Nlg
Kirsdarke:
Who the hell would even want that job?
Actually, I suppose if you were one of the many cabinet ministers who looks set to lose their seat, you’d probably not have much to lose from taking the poisoned chalice. But still…
It would be unprecedented for sure, I don’t think even a minor party has changed its leadership in the middle of an election campaign (unless in cases where they have to like if the leader dies), but if Sunak has another week like this one and somehow gets polling for the Tories down to single digits, well, you just don’t know.
Since the first stage of electing a Tory leader is given over to Tory MPs to select the final 2 candidates (who must themselves be MPs) to go to an all members ballot there really isn’t a mechanism to do it as there are currently no MPs since Parliament was dissolved a couple of weeks ago.
Sunak was unopposed because the 1922 Committee set the nomination threshold so high – 100 MPs – so there couldn’t be a large field and Penny Mourdant dropped out minutes before the close of nominations (rumoured because she didn’t have 100 nominations).
There is likely something in the Tory party rules about an interim leader this but changing leader this far into the campaign would be far too disruptive and given the state of Tory popularity isn’t guaranteed to work anyway. Plus what happens then after the election should the Tories win? Does the appointed interim leader resign so they can be a proper contest or just keep the job and become PM?
Plus the new Parliament will be very busy once it reassembles on the 9th July to elect a speaker and members get sworn and then the King’s Speech is set for 17th July. You can’t run a leadership contest at the same time as all the constitutional provisions get done.
“with vote counting starting once all countries have finished voting.”
That is incorrect.
Counting can start whenever a country wants once their polls close.
What can’t happen is for results to be released until voting closes in all the EU nations.
This is much like the US where pre counted absentee and early voting results are made available once the polls close in a state as they have been counted earlier.
Re Sunak’s mess-up this week, veterans have, perhaps unsurprisingly, been very upset by Sunak.
But this BBC reporters comments from the seat of Bishop Auckland in N-E England seems to confirm what I thought in my earlier post in here:
“I asked people for their views about his campaign so far.
On the decision to return early from the D-Day commemorations one man said he didn’t care. But most felt it was more likely to have been a failure of government diary planning, than of personal judgement. Mr Sunak hasn’t confirmed why the decision was taken but he has apologised and said it was a “mistake”. “
On another election being held today, it looks like Belgium is going to have a significant shift to the right, at least going by opinion polls.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2024_Belgian_elections#Seat_projections
There is also an election in Bulgaria, but the situation is much less clear there, due to it being caused after the collapse of a minority government. All that can be taken from that is the liberal, pro-European Democratic Bulgaria party vote has gone down significantly, but mostly to minor parties that probably won’t reach the minimum requirement for parliamentary seats.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Bulgarian_parliamentary_election#Opinion_polls
Also of interest internationally is that former President of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has registered as a candidate for the Presidential election on 28 June, and he’s going quite well in opinion polling.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Iranian_presidential_election
However, he was barred from running in the 2017 and 2021 elections by Iran’s Guardian Council, so it remains to be seen if they’ll do so again.
Also there’s 2 US House of Reps Special Elections coming up, both in safe Republican seats. First Ohio’s 6th on 11 June (last election 68-32 Republican), and Colorado’s 4th on 25 June (last election 61-37 Republican). It could be interesting to see how these go.
“Biden’s best chance to win the Electoral College is to win all of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, states where he currently trails by 1.5 points or less.”
Crucially, he also needs to win the 1 Electoral vote from Omaha, Nebraska.
Otherwise, if Biden loses Nevada, Arizona & Georgia, then he will only get 269 electoral votes & the electoral college will be tied. The Congress will then decide the winner in a Contingent Election (with each State delegation voting as a block with 1 vote), and Trump is almost certain to win this election.
@vik at 12:12am
That’s true. Fortunately for Biden’s team, the latest poll in NE-2 has him leading over Trump 42-37. And by a pollster commissioned by the Republicans no less. So that at least seems more comfortable for him to win than Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
This is also supposing that Trump wins Maine’s second CD (as he did in 2020), but if Biden wins all 4 of Maine’s EVs, plus the Rust Belt, then he’ll win 270 EVs and NE-2 won’t matter.
On Euro matters, can anyone more clued into French politics explain the rationale for Macron dissolving parliament in the wake of the big grains for the far Right?
Macron felt that the current parliament had lost its mandate. Due to the run off nature of French elections, the likely result will be win for non-far right candidates in the vast majority of seats. Currently, National Rally only holds 88 out of 577 seats and even with a similar result to todays (31.5%) they are likely to only get around the same.
If there had not been snap elections, the National Rally would have been seen as being the government in waiting.
Live. EU elections results: EPP’s Von der Leyen extends olive branch to Socialists and Liberals.
(country by country results)
https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2024/06/09/european-elections-21-countries-go-to-the-polls-as-vote-enters-final-day#:~:text=Here%27s%20a%20round%2Dup%20to%20get%20you%20up%20to%20date%3A
Hardly an olive branch – The Grand coalition at the European level has been going on for decades.
A question to the experts on both the UK and now French elections, with Macron just calling the latter.
Is the timing wise in terms of holidays and other programmed events e.g. Sports? I ask because both Sunak and Macron have gone to general elections early, in their countries summer holiday seasons.
In Australia elections are almost never held during the December – January holiday period. The conventional wisdom is that voters will resent having their holidays interrupted. Or is the opposite true in Europe i.e. better to avoid the cold winter?
So-crates – I think in Europe they try to avoid winter elections because the cold is worse than the hot. But lots of places work on the solstices as the start of summer too. School holidays in France start on July 6 this year through to September 1 and that generally aligns with the holidays of the people. And Brits don’t start until later in July. So it can probably be said that that logic does not apply in Europe as much as here.
On the European elections overall – The result has not seen a massive shift to the far Right. Perhaps a shift from the centre left to the centre right a bit. But every European election for the past 2 decades the narrative is that the Far Right is on the rise – if it is, it is at a snails pace.
The result in France is perhaps disappointing but not really surprising. The centre parties have been messed up by Macron’s own rise.
Germany is a positive – AfD did poorly. Hungary looks positive – Orban is on the ropes there.
B S Fairman
Thanks re the explanation of European election timing. In that case Macron and Sunak’s decisions make more sense.
Given the French EU vote results were only on the basis of a 50% turnout, it is understandable why Macron wants a restored mandate for his government.
Sunak looks desperate no matter which way you come at it. For him DDay looks more like Dunkirk.
Left wing and centrist parties getting smashed in EU elections.
@ BTSays
“On the decision to return early from the D-Day commemorations one man said he didn’t care. But most felt it was more likely to have been a failure of government diary planning, than of personal judgement. Mr Sunak hasn’t confirmed why the decision was taken but he has apologised and said it was a “mistake”. “
The PM still has control of his diary!
And the reason he left early was to do a pre recorded TV interview – the timing of which was down to Sunak and his advisors.
The interview isn’t going to be fully broadcast until Wednesday so there was no urgency to return. If I was ITV I’d be asking for a do over!
@Socrates as to the UK election most English schools don’t break up until the mid-end of July so he could have gone up to a couple of weeks later. I don’t think sports events were a consideration to be honest.
As to sports events despite all the press attention most of the country isn’t interested in football (the main event being the Euro 2024 competition)
More likely down to limiting the time for him to be deposed after the dire local government elections in early May.
If it wasn’t July it would have been October as a September election would have a chunk of the campaign period in August when many people would still be away.
Still it might have meant not having to find 200 candidates in a two week period and avoid the shenanigans in finding his Party chairman a seat to stand in (which I wrote about in one of Adrian’s previous threads)
Re the US the GOP in Nebraska tried (but failed despite controlling the legislature and Governorship) to change the law so that it became a winner take all state.
But DEM legislators in Maine threatened to do the same if Nebraska had changed which would have cancelled the Nebraska move out.
This is very 1938.
People have had it too good for too long.
RIP democracy.
Thanks Adrian – and posters.
(Fundamentally undemocratic parties keep winning more and more seats. It looks like when asked, plenty of people say they aren’t really keen on democracy…. RIP)
Interesting polling from YouGov on the popularity of certain UK campaign policies.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jun/09/yougov-poll-policies-national-service-tax-sewage-voting-age
@Hugoaugogo at 8:21am
I think most pollsters in the US have it that Trump is more secure in Maine-2 than Biden is in Nebraska-2. It covers the rural part of that state and is quite “Appalachian” so to say.
Kirsdarke,
Yes, that’s probably true. Trump has won ME-2 in both of his previous runs, and so it’s a natural presumption that he’ll do so again. Still, there’s precious little polling (and like here, seat-level polling has a very patchy record), and the election itself is still five months away. FWIW, I still think the undecideds will break towards Biden once November draws near, giving him a comfortable enough win (I think he’ll take PA, MI, WI & AZ, but lose NV), and so the odd DVs of Nebraska and Maine won’t matter in the end.
@Hugoaugogo at 5:52pm
That’s fair. Losing Nevada will be a heavy blow, but probably an inevitability since Harry Reid died in 2021, he was pretty much the soul of the Nevada Democrats and nobody can replace him in that state this quickly.
Personally I think Biden will most likely retain either Arizona or Georgia, or even both, mainly because those states have a large city in them that naturally leans Democratic (Phoenix and Atlanta) and the population is flowing in toward them. And after this summer over there and their heatwaves I doubt they’d be much enthusiastic about Trump being like “Full speed ahead to regular wet bulb temperature events, baby!”
Adrian
Notwithstanding they produce the occasional leader/president who is more centre-left (e.g. François Hollande), the Socialists in France are surely ‘proper left-wing’ and not “centre-left”.
They are very cap in hand with many trade unions and are very left-wing in both economic and social policies nearly all of the time.
I admit that they are a broad enough church to be hard to put in a box completely, I think it’s this funny mix in France of rather liking the pompous aristocracy yet being forever proud of being the country of the ‘Revolution’ and the strongly left-wing ideology this left engrained in the country.
‘France Unbowed’ is of course far left as you state, they are very pro-Russia and anti-Semitic and would basically simply be called ‘communists’ in many other Western countries.
This election is bad news if you value the environment, climate action and social inclusion and equity, as well as the notion of europe as a democratic global bulwark against Russia and China.
Macron’s snap election will be held in THREE WEEKS! Panique!
Holdenhillbilly says:
Tuesday, June 11, 2024 at 7:47 am (main thread)
Redfield & Wilton Strategies @RedfieldWilton Labour leads by 26%.
Tied-lowest ever Conservative %.
Joint-highest ever Reform UK %.
UK (7/6-10/6): Changes +/- 5/6-6/6
Labour 45% (+3)
Conservative 19% (–)
Reform UK 17% (–)
Lib Dem 10% (-2)
Green 5% (-1)
SNP 3% (–)
Other 1% (-1)
_____________________
MABWM:
Farrage is arguing as the leader of the “second” most popular party he should partake in the leader’s debate. They’re not quite there, but they are not far off it.
In SA in 2018 Nick Xenophon partook in the leader’s debate. He didn’t win a single lower house seat as it transpired.
Letting Farrage partake in the debate could expose him for what he is – but it also lends him some credibility. Interesting times in the UK.
My overview of the EU numbers is a shift to the right of about 4%.
Which may not please me, but its not quite the massive shift that some reportage makes it out to be.
Certainly the Greens/EFA have lost their gains from the last EU election. Thats probably all from France and Germany.
Thise things could all change again at the next election.
France – I think you also have to see Macron’s long game he’s playing.
Yes he may have wrong-footed RN a bit by calling a snap election for only 3 weeks’ time, he’d probably been planning it for a few weeks knowing the polling for Euro elections wasn’t moving back to his party.
But also he knows RN may actually win at least a plurality of seats in the election he has called, and can’t be discounted completely for a majority, either way they would surely provide France with its first RN Prime Minister who would then have to work with Macron and run the government. RN have a much higher ceiling of potential voters than they used to in 2nd round run-offs.
I think in the latter scenario Macron is banking on RN being abysmal at actually running the country, blunting their popularity ahead of the next Presidential election where he then has more chance of passing the baton onto another candidate from his own party than polls currently suggest. Thus avoiding what some would see as a ‘doomsday’ scenario in these perilous times, of a RN President who may or may not have some leanings towards Russia amongst other things.
First time for about 30 years that a French President has dissolved the government early instead of waiting for the next scheduled election.
Irish local elections held on the same day as Euro elections:
Looks like quite a bad polling miss as Sinn Fein (hard left, ex-military republicans, been leading the polls in Ireland since the last general election) under-performed polling fairly spectacularly, showing their recent blunders are costing them.
Conversely, the coalition parties were both well ahead of SF with only a modest drop on 5 years ago and it is being seen as a ‘victory’ of sorts, especially Fianna Fail who were well ahead of polling and neck and neck with coalition partners Fine Gael.
Independents continued the trend of doing well and growing their numbers too – they now hold 176 out of 949 council seats in the country.
a view of the recent EU elections from the left (scroll past the links to the start of the article) :-
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/06/the-eu-center-embraces-the-right-kind-of-right.html
interesting to note Meloni campaigned in pret a porter and switched to Armani when she won.
Hunter Biden has just made a second Trump presidency a certainty, assuming Trump is still alive in five months
I’m probably extremely biased 🙂 but I think the Australian Preferential-voting system is probably the best in the world, and the rise of the far-Right in Europe & the US would not have happened if they had also followed the Australian system.
I just don’t think it’s a coincidence that One Nation never got any major success in Australia, and that Australia also uses Preferential voting.
The great thing about Preferential voting is that it reduces the fear of the centre-Right from lost votes to the far-Right. Even if people vote for One Nation, then these votes will eventually flow back to the Liberals & so, they are not in perpetual existential dread about the far-Right & don’t feel a need to go really really extreme to placate One Nation supporters.
This is a map of what BRitain electorates would look like after the election on current opinion polls.
A lot of excitement about the far right but in reality what happened is in France they increased from 23 to 30 and in Germany the AFD went from 11 to 15.
In Italy there was a big shift from Lega Nord to Brothers of Italy but they are both pretty right wing. Brothers of Italy has not been too extreme in government….
The big collapse was in the Greens in Germany and France. In France they fell 13 to 5 and in Germany they fell 21 to 12.
The Left in Germany also got squashed by the BSW who are Left-conservatives (Economically left, Social conservative, pro-Russia.)
Nothing too much to get excited about in the rest of Europe. Positive signs in Hungary.
Oh, and Romania…. The far right got 15% which is 6 seats. Mostly at the expense of the Right bloc.
BT says
Agree it is hard to imagine how the Irish polls could be so wrong. Sinn Féin will be just over 10% when the polling a week ago had them at 22 (in itself a big drop from 35 a year ago). Maybe there supporters didn’t turn out for local elections.
The Civil War parties can not take too much from this – they got about 25% each and there was a big swing to the independents which, in the absence of an established far right party represents a swing to the right.
Many of the independents are conservative rural folk such as Danny Healy-Rae who explains here why he “does not agree with all this story about climate change at all, at all”
https://youtu.be/QU1sqs0bpGU?si=sufct-oFfgfb98-g
In response to Macron’s decision to hold a snap legislative election in France, a poll from Harris-Interactive held on 9-10 June says that things aren’t looking too good for him there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2024_French_legislative_election
Seat Projections:
RN: 235-265 (Marine Le Pen’s far right party)
ENS/DVC: 125-155 (Macron’s Centrist alliance)
NFP: 115-145 (Socialist Left-Green alliance)
UDC/DVD: 40-55 (Centre Right alliance)
DLF: 0-2 (Misc. Far Right/Gaullist)
Independent: 5-20
At the very least, it doesn’t look like RN will get a majority. But they’re coming close to the 289 seats needed for that.
UK: Labour are falling a bit in the most recent polls, but Conservative are also still falling a little. Lib Dems in particular seem to be on the up, whilst Reform’s significant but modest gains seem to be sustained.
Latest YouGov showing Labour on 38% is first poll showing Labour sub-40% for a long time – but with Cons on 18%, Reform on 17% and SNP on 2% (roughly translating to sub-30% in Scotland) that still leaves Labour in huge landslide territory.
Lib Dems on 15% is a big jump and indicates very significant seat gains from Conservative.
Of course, I’m just analysing one specific poll for fun, others are showing quite different numbers. All show leads for Labour in at least the late teens %.
@BTSays at 6:38pm
Could be tactical voting coming into play? If these numbers play out at the election, it could be a significant return for the Lib Dems to their 2010 levels after their Clegg-led collapse in 2015.
Kirsdarke
Lib Dem revival is quite a strong parallel to 1997, where Labour did leapfrog them from 3rd place to win some seats in Southern England but overall they advanced from something like 14 to 40 seats.
Although the dynamics at play now are the same, if the Conservatives do even worse than 1997 as it appears then Lib Dems could match their best ever result of 2005 (62 seats).
If the YouGov poll above were repeated on polling day, then Lib Dems would probably do better than 2005 and might even beat the Conservatives for number of seats.
And Reform would win Clacton and Ashfield, possibly the rural south Lincolnshire seats as well, all from the Conservatives (though they would be denying Labour a win in Ashfield). But Labour should hold them off in Barnsley reasonably comfortably.
Kirsdarke
To answer your question, as in 1997 and 2001 there will be significant anti-Tory tactical voting this election.
It’s also why Greens won’t win seats like Waveney Valley even though the votes are probably there, due to a perception based on past results that only Labour can beat Conservative in that seat.
Some more UK polls released today, samples taken 10-12 June.
PeoplePolling has Labour on 39, Conservatives on 19, Reform on 17, Lib Dems on 10.
More in Common has Labour on 41, Conservatives on 25, Reform on 13, Lib Dems on 10.
Norstat has Labour on 41, Conservatives on 21, Reform on 17, Lib Dems on 11.
It seems like over the past week, essentially Reform has gained about 5 points, taken from both Labour and the Conservatives, but hasn’t quite crossed the line to beat the Tories to 2nd place.
The start of the French legislative elections seem to have been quite ‘eventful’. This twitter thread gives a summary.
https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1801114239572328663
Its quite a remarkable amount of carnage.
The fascinating thing with these most recent polls is that whilst Conservatives haven’t improved (they’ve either stayed the same or dropped very slightly), Labour have dropped fairly sharply in favour of the various smaller parties including Reform and Lib Dem.
It makes you wonder what the polls might have been looking like had the D-Day fiasco not occurred.
Labour’s manifesto launch this morning and the success or otherwise of their opponents’ reactions to it, should define the trajectory of the remaining weeks until the election.
Do Labour suddenly seem to have a plan after all and which is credible? Or is Keir Starmer the self-crowned Emperor of Change who actually has no clothes? – and if the latter, does this benefit just the Tories or does it help Reform/Green/LD/SNP as well?
Giorgia Meloni and Europe’s Future
by Conor Gallagher
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/06/italys-pm-giorgia-meloni-emerges-as-model-for-how-to-use-faux-nationalism-to-sell-eu-neoliberalism-and-project-ukraine.html