UK Campaign Update: The Case of the Vanishing Lead

By our resident expert in international politics, Henry Schlechta

Since the first update on the UK election, much has changed. At the time the election was called, Theresa May’s Conservatives maintained a comfortable lead over Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party. However, a series of missteps by Mrs May has contributed to a dramatic decline in the Conservative lead, the magnitude of which is still however debatable.

The key issue with the Conservative campaign appears to have come as a result of a poorly received manifesto. In UK politics, a ‘manifesto’ is a series of policies a party puts forward at election time to implement if they win government. This year’s Conservative manifesto included a promise to change the end-of-life care system to require the elderly to include the value of their house in the amount of money they contribute to end-of-life care, a policy which opponents leaped upon as a ‘dementia tax’. Mrs May compounded the issue by announcing changes to the policy only two days later.

On the other hand, Mr Corbyn’s campaign has gone well, with voters both taking note of the left-wing policies (which include a commitment to remove fees for higher education and to nationalise the railway companies, paid for in part by increasing taxes on corporations) and approving more of the Labour Party after hearing about them, though Mr Corbyn has kept some Conservative cuts to social services.

Consequently the Conservatives have seen fall in their support in opinion polling, and a concurrent, much steeper rise in support for Labour. On April 26, a week after Mrs May announced the election, the Conservative lead averaged twenty points. A current average of polls from Britain Elects states that the lead is down to ten points.

However, this average obscures the substantial disagreement amongst the polls on exactly how far Mrs May has fallen. As can be seen below, some polling agencies still have the Conservatives leading by low double digits, which would translate into a comfortable majority in the House of Commons, while others, most notably YouGov, think the Conservative lead has fallen to medium single digits.

There is an evident range of polling numbers

YouGov doubled down on their bullish view of Labour’s lead by releasing a constituency projection suggesting the Conservatives would fall short of a majority in the House of Commons, resulting in a hung parliament.

So, who is right? Well, assuming there is no substantial movement in the numbers of either polling company, that is a question we will only know the answer to on the night of the election (the BBC exit poll, which has traditionally proven an accurate estimate of national seat totals, will be released at 5AM on Friday June 6, Melbourne time). Nonetheless, some analysts have cast doubt upon YouGov’s Labour figures, claiming they rely too heavily on new and minor party voters. Still, what was thought to be a foregone conclusion has turned into a potentially tight race, and many Conservatives will be wondering if Mrs May’s promise of ‘strong and stable leadership’ is merely campaign rhetoric.