“Good morning. Election day has dawned with the outcome of the six-week campaign still in doubt. In the past ten days, the Conservatives have squeezed Reform’s support and narrowed Labour’s lead. The betting markets have shortened the odds of Rishi Sunak pulling off a surprise victory.”
No, that is not a prediction of how things will look on July 4. Rather, it is what Sunak would have hoped for when he called the election. While such a scenario was improbable, it was not completely out of the question. Comparing early polls with the final result, his party had achieved significant recoveries in 1992 and 2015.
That things have gone badly wrong is obvious. We can now count with some precision the price the Tories are paying – and identify the three million voters the party must target if it is to claw back at least some of the ground It has lost.
The key figures emerge from the latest seat-by-seat polling projections. They show that the division of the right-of-centre vote between the Tories and Reform has opened the door to huge numbers of Labour and Liberal Democrat gains.
YouGov’s MRP projection has the largest sample. It shows Labour winning 425 seats. However, in 134 of these, Labour’s support falls short of the combined total for Conservative and Reform.
The Forest of Dean is typical. Mark Harper, the transport secretary, is defending a majority of 15,869. YouGov shows Labour winning his seat with 36 per cent of the vote. But if he could win over Reform’s projected 20 per cent, and add them to the 30 per cent currently supporting him, Harper would have 50 per cent and leave Labour trailing a distant second.
In reality a complete transfer of votes would not happen. A more plausible ambition at the start of the campaign was for the Tories to squeeze Reform’s support, then around 10 per cent nationally, down to 5 per cent. That would copy what happened to Ukip in 2015 and the Brexit Party in 2019. Both saw their support slip in the runup to election day.
Instead, YouGov’s latest seat-by-seat survey shows Reform support climbing to 15 per cent. This has cost the Tories dear. We can see how dear by looking at how a successful squeeze strategy would have worked. If we transfer two-thirds of Reform’s projected support in each seat to Tory candidates (the impact of reducing Reform’s overall support from 15 to 5 per cent), then the Conservatives would more than double the number of MPs who would hold their seats, from the 108 projected by YouGov to 224.
Mark Harper would hold his seat. So would four other cabinet ministers, currently heading for defeat: Penny Mordaunt (leader of the Commons) Gillian Keegan (education secretary), Mel Stride (work and pensions secretary) and Lucy Frazer (culture secretary).
This is how the new House of Commons would look:
Labour 334 (down 91 on YouGov’s projection)
Conservative 224 (up 116)
Liberal Democrat 48 (down 19)
SNP 19 (down 1)
Reform 0 (down 5)
Others 7 (including Speaker, no change)
Northern Ireland 18 (no change)
Labour majority: 18 (down 182)
As with all polls, there is a margin of error. Purely local factors can also make a difference that MRP surveys cannot measure. And in this scenario, dozens of seats would be won and lost by tiny margins. In other words, had the Conservatives managed to squeeze Reform’s support down to 5 per cent, a hung parliament would have been a real possibility.
Nigel Farage’s return as Reform’s leader has almost certainly killed that hope. But the point about narrow local margins remains. If the Tories can claw back even a modest number of undecideds and defectors to Reform, then their defeat will be less catastrophic. They would have a base of nearer 200 than 100 seats to build on.
The key to any recovery lies in a quirk in our first-past-the-post voting system. On present trends, Reform is likely to win one million votes more than the Lib Dems but far fewer MPs.
Here is why – and how it affects Tory tactics between now and July 4. As a rule of thumb, a party needs 30 percent-plus in mid campaign any given constituency to have a chance of winning it. Below 30 per cent and, with rare exceptions, it is out of the running. YouGov reckons that Reform currently passes the 30 per cent mark in only eight seats, but the Lib Dems in 72. If we divide each party’s support into “wasted” votes (in seats where they fall short of the 30 per cent mark) and “effective” votes (where they pass it), this is how the two parties’ votes are distributed:
Reform: Wasted 4.4 million votes; effective 130,000.
Lib Dem: Wasted 2 million; effective 1.5 million.
The projected ten-to-one advantage for the Lib Dems in seats is matched by their advantage in effective votes. Hence far more MPs with fewer votes overall.
Three million of Reform’s 4.4 million “wasted” votes live in seats the Tories are defending. By deserting the Conservatives, they are helping Labour win seats that in any normal election would be well beyond its reach. These are voters the Tories must now target if they are to avoid catastrophe, help ministers such as Mordaunt hold their seats – and prevent Labour winning a record landslide with less than 40 per cent of the national vote.
This analysis was first published by the Sunday Times
Peter Kellner. The Politics Counter 