(Bloomberg Opinion) -- As an election approaches, talk in the final days very often centers around undecided voters. And while those that haven’t made up their minds could have a big impact on the outcome, there’s an even bigger group that could impact tomorrow’s result: the “decided” voters who are wavering.
Boris Johnson’s problem, much like Theresa May’s, is not the Conservative poll rating – 43% is usually an election-winning vote share. Labour’s vote share has been rising, reaching 33% in our Number Cruncher poll (exclusive to Bloomberg) across the period of Sunday through Tuesday, with some evidence in the data that it rose during that period.
And there’s potential for it to rise further. While almost all likely voters intending to vote Conservative have definitely decided to back Johnson, around one in three supporters of the Liberal Democrats (on 12% in our poll) and minor parties -- overwhelmingly anti-Brexit -- say they may change their minds – with Labour the likely beneficiary.
Yet Labour’s own vote is also much softer than that of the Conservatives. This creates unusual uncertainty over the Labour share, making the situation more fluid. A 10-point Tory lead is already within the margin of error of both a hung parliament and a big majority -- yet even if we knew the current state of the race with absolute certainty, a decisive break one way or the other by the pro-Remain wavers could change the story dramatically.
It was clear when the campaign started, that the success or otherwise of Boris Johnson’s quest for a majority in the House of Commons would depend on his ability to keep supporters of Brexit more united behind his Conservative Party than Jeremy Corbyn’s opposition Labour Party could unite the anti-Brexit vote, as it did in 2017. Our poll shows that the Tories have united the Leave vote (with 67%) better than Labour has the Remain vote (46%).
Since the U.K. voted by a margin of 52% to 48% to leave the European Union in 2016, demographic turnover, coupled with a consistent but glacial shift in opinion, has roughly reversed those proportions in the public’s view on Brexit. While this has not translated into consistent majority support for another referendum, the division nevertheless has a pronounced effect on U.K. politics.
For much of this year the total share of likely voters intending to back either the Conservatives or Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party has hovered in the mid to high 40s. Support for the other parties -- each of which have slightly different positions on Brexit and all of which support a further referendum -- has accounted for the balance.
This has essentially created two voting blocs, described by veteran pollster Peter Kellner as two islands, one pro- and the other anti-Brexit, with most vote-switching taking place within each bloc rather than between them.
This post-Brexit realignment sheds some light on the changes in the U.K. electoral map, as a proportion of voters realign their party preferences with their Brexit view. Tuesday night’s publication of YouGov’s multilevel regression and post-stratification (or MRP) analysis pointed to Conservative advances in the sorts of places where it would once have been unthinkable. By the same token, Labour is challenging the Tories in areas once considered out of bounds for a left of center party, such as the London suburb of Chingford, held by arch Euroskeptic Iain Duncan Smith.
But it would be a mistake to view this realignment solely through the lens of Brexit. Many of these trends had been in evidence for a decade or two before 2016. The Labour Party’s traditional industrial heartlands have been trending disproportionately away from the party since the mid-2000s. London and its commuter towns have been shifting in its favor relative to the country since the 1990s. Surveys suggest that the traditional divide between blue- and white collar workers has not just disappeared, but it has possibly flipped in favor of the Conservatives.
This has corresponded — and not coincidentally — to Labour’s move, like many social democratic parties across the West, in a more socially liberal direction, while the Conservatives’ pursuit of Brexit has made its support much more socially conservative.
Much recent analysis has centered on the so-called “red wall,” a swathe of Labour-held seats in northern and central England and North Wales that corresponds very closely to historic coal mining activity. Many such areas have been very loyal to Jeremy Corbyn’s party since they were deindustrialized in the 1980s by Margaret Thatcher’s governments to the extent that to vote for the Tories became taboo. Polling like YouGov’s is showing the Conservatives are making greater inroads in these areas, in some cases for the first time ever.
But the “Remain” side of the ledger matters just as much. The Conservatives lost many of their younger, more liberal and anti-Brexit votes in 2017, but they seem to have done a better job of holding onto those in the time since. Part of this may be explained by a desire from these voters’ to “get Brexit done,” to quote the party’s slogan. At the same time, many Conservative Remainers are Conservatives first and Remainers second. They may have been content with the status quo in 2016 and happy to go along with David Cameron on the European question, but many will not be particularly passionate about it.
Three months ago, I warned that calling an election would be a high-stakes move for Boris Johnson. As things stand, the odds continue to lean his way. It will be the waverers who decide whether his gamble pays off.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Therese Raphael at traphael4@bloomberg.net
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
Matt Singh runs Number Cruncher Politics, a nonpartisan polling and elections site that predicted the 2015 U.K. election polling failure.
©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
