In just two days, voters will head to the polling booth to cast their vote in the 2024 general election. Will there be any surprises in store? So far, there has been little movement when it comes to the gap in vote share between Labour and the Tories. While Labour’s has fallen during the campaign, the Tories have failed to benefit too much from it thanks to the Reform party – which is eating into their vote share.
A poll by Savanta for today’s Telegraph finds that the Tory campaign has steadied things since their mid-campaign D-Day gaffe: the party is now at its highest level since the debacle with 24 points. Meanwhile Nigel Farage’s Reform party appears to have dropped a few points since its June high, following a series of rows over Farage’s comments on Russia and the past comments of Reform candidates.
The Tories say some areas are truly dreadful when it comes to the reception on the door
Yet the big picture remains as it did when the campaign started: Keir Starmer looks set for a sizeable majority and Rishi Sunak for a historic defeat. In the final days of the campaign, both men appear to admit this. Sunak is spending his final days warning of the dangers of a Labour super majority, suggesting if 130,000 voters switch to the Tories the election result could look very different. Meanwhile, Keir Starmer has countered in today’s Times that the larger the majority the better as he needs a ‘strong mandate’ to make the ‘difficult changes’ required to boost the economy. These include on planning reform, which a Labour government would make a priority in its first few weeks.
Yet in every election there tends to be a surprise factor that few saw coming. What could it be in 2024? One obvious factor is turnout – in France there was high turnout over the weekend in the first of Macron’s snap elections. In the UK, there are concerns that many voters will stay at home. ‘Our biggest opponent is the sofa,’ says a Tory aide. Another opponent could be mortality – the number of Tory voters who have passed away since the 2019 election.
Both Labour and Tory activists say that the polls do not reflect the feeling on the ground in a lot of places. Yes, Labour figures are increasingly confident they will win the election. But they still believe it is tight in lots of places and polls suggesting a super-majority do not capture the apathy and frustration they are encountering on the doorstep. In Scotland, while there are high expectations when it comes to a Scottish Labour resurgence, one of the big questions is how sturdy the SNP vote is – the majorities are so small in many of the Labour/SNP marginals that it could go down to the wire.
Meanwhile, the Tories say some areas are truly dreadful when it comes to the reception on the door: Suffolk and Derbyshire come up regularly as such examples. But more generally, it does not feel quite as bad as the polls suggest. The Tory hope is that their attacks on tax and warnings of the dangers of a big Labour win mean that voters will think twice in the polling booth. If so, the result could be a less bad loss than expected. ‘The polls just don’t feel right to me,’ says a Tory candidate. ‘I may be in denial but I don’t see it’.
Another factor that could skew things is the number of independent candidates. In the local elections, independents running on pro-Palestine platforms ate into Labour’s vote share in areas with a high Muslim population. There are seats where this could have an impact in this general election, such as in Birmingham (including that of the shadow justice secretary Shabana Mahmood) and Yorkshire. As the Guardian reports, local community WhatsApp groups means that messages are being shared quickly and spreading fast in a way that could hurt the main parties. Starmer’s suggest in the final BBC election debate that ‘people coming from countries like Bangladesh are not being removed because they’re not being processed’ was quickly shared on WhatsApp around the Bangladeshi community.
When it comes to the Reform party, one less noticed aspect of the party’s appeal is with younger voters, particularly young men. The party believes it is winning over the youth vote as the campaign goes on – partly helped by its social media game. If the party manages to start a mini youthquake of its own it could have a surprise impact on the result in some seats.
This is why there remains plenty of uncertainty across the parties as to what the exit poll will say at 10 p.m. on Thursday night.
Listen to more analysis from Katy Balls on Coffee House Shots:
Comments
Comments will appear under your real name unless you enter a display name in your account area. Further information can be found in our terms of use.