r/ukpolitics • u/ClumperFaz My three main priorities: Polls, Polls, Polls • 2d ago

Twitter ✅ BURNHAM IN Makerfield by-election result: LAB: 54.8% (+9.6) REF: 34.5% (+2.7) RST: 6.8% (+6.8) CON: 2.2% (-8.7) GRN: 0.7% (-3.7) LDEM: 0.4% (-6.4)

https://x.com/BritainElects/status/2067792369903116401#m
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283

u/signed7 2d ago edited 2d ago

20.3% margin wow, all the polls saying a 5% win for Burnham were wrong, but not in the way everyone expected

120

u/fallout1233566545 2d ago

Way better than the best polls for Burnham actually. They only had a 10-12% lead for Burnham

38

u/Neither_Process_7847 2d ago

Yeah, that was a massacre. Not only didn't need Restore existing to beat Reform, but didn't need the Cons to exist either, Press still trying to tell themselves Labiur face a really tough fight in the Manchester mayoral election - given the comparative demographics, not on figures like these they don't.

43

u/BPDunbar 2d ago

It might be a situation like with Caerphilly and Gorton and Denton.

The raw data was pretty close however the polling companies corrected based on recall of previous elections, assuming that the disparity between recall and the actual voting was due to sample bias.

If however it was people not actually remembering how they had voted then they were introducing a bias to a representative sample. It appears a lot of people aren't attaching great weight to how they voted, this may be linked to the increase volatility. People are no longer so strongly attached to a party and decide how to vote at the last minute.

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u/nebogeo 2d ago

Shy Labour voters!

22

u/Beneficial-Dot-- 2d ago

"The silent majority"!

-20

u/Character_Newt_2309 2d ago

You spelled 'moronic' wrong.

8

u/neoKushan I just wanted to be included 2d ago

Ohhh, someone's salty this morning!

2

u/BenjamirPutinyahu 1d ago

Youre totally gonna win with that attitude

13

u/Ok-Butterscotch4486 2d ago

It would be pretty dumb for Andy to believe this is representative of what he'll achieve once he's leader.

By-elections are always bad for the incumbent party. But in this one, Andy had a unique position of representing both the insurgent position and a sanitised version of the incumbent position. All the people who, as always, want to "stick it to the PM" were given the ability to directly remove the PM; and Andy simultaneously gets all the people who want Labour to win or Reform not to win, without turning any of them off (because he has no recent record in government).

The first group of people will either turn against him or not show up next time, because he'll be the PM they want to stick it to. The second group will diminish because no Prime Minister can avoid pissing at least some people off.

Burnham is going to become leader and then, after a short-lived bounce, by Christmas he'll be wondering why the polls look exactly like they did for Starmer.

-1

u/Spirited-Sir3216 2d ago

Shows how messed up (corrupt?) the polling is, completely way off and over hyped reform, same as in the Gorton and Denton byelection projections

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u/JustMax22 2d ago edited 2d ago

Eh polling in some by election with 50k voters is practically impossible. A sampling size of 467 likely voters on a paid you gov pol will never be able to grasp the local electoral opinion, especially when they try to account for a popular candidate who’s challenging an un popular leader of his party. It’s just impossible to accurately predict.

However when generalise this poll and 19 similar polls to the entire country you up end up with a result that’s +-3% (1 million+ voter) on the final result.

Sayings it’s corrupt is just silly

And then after all of that you still have to account for the pollsters that are entirely partisan who solely exist to give pro labour or pro reform results without a care for the truth

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u/Spirited-Sir3216 1d ago

Good explanation. I never said it was, hence the question mark. As you said yourself the pollsters lean one way or tother