How big is a 20 point opinion poll lead and what word should we use to describe it – insurmountable, commanding, or maybe flaky? Right now, 20 points is the average advantage Keir Starmer and Labour hold over Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives: 46 plays 26.
In Tony Blair’s case, such a lead proved more than sufficient to propel him to his first epic win over the Conservatives. For 20 points was roughly the size of the polling advantage he took into the 1997 election campaign (although he had enjoyed some much bigger leads prior to that). On election day itself, Labour only beat the Tories on vote share by 13 points, which was still sufficient to secure a landslide majority. Theresa May held 20 point leads over Jeremy Corbyn going into the 2017 election, yet only beat him by two points in the end and lost the Tory parliamentary majority.
And as the invaluable historic polling data base compiled by the Lib Dem activist Mark
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