General Election - 4th July 2024

The question is whether the greater electorate follows Labour activists, and I'm not sure that they will. I'm not intimately familiar with Islington North as a constituency, but I lived for years in Islington South & Finsbury, so I'm familiar with Islington politics. I think JC will keep the seat, but I think it's going to be closer than a lot of his fans think it will be. I'm absolutely not a fan of the Labour candidate in Islington North, but then I'm not a JC fan either... thankfully I'm now in Monmouthshire and am campaigning hard to take a Cabinet scalp in David TC Davies.

"formerly Labour activists"

Not sure there are too many anti-Starmerists standing. Party has done a ‘great’ job weeding them out. Party is just bland centre rightness now

The crucial point to remember in a lot of these traditionally safe Tory seats that have had large majorities is that it's not enough for opposition voters to coalesce around either Labour or the LibDems (or Greens). As an absolute minimum it needs lots of people who voted Tory last time to not vote for them, but when there was a very large majority that may not be enough, and what is really required is for a good chunk of those who voted Tory last time to vote for the main opposition challenger. Whether it's easier to persuade people to go from Tory=>Labour or Tory=>LibDem will depend on a number of factors, including views on Brexit, levels of education, and local factors including council results and the individuals involved. 

The seat prediction models have limitations, and John Curtice was being interviewed saying they are fine for general trends in particular areas, or for particular demographics, but have limitations for what will happen in a particular constituency. Looking at what happened in local elections across the whole constituency is a good predictor, but also how many leaflets are you getting? If you are not getting a lot from Labour then it means they either know they'll win it easily, or they aren't trying to wing it. There is a list somewhere of "non-battleground" seats. The other clue is when was the candidate selected? Where possible parties select candidates for winnable seats early. 

We're getting what feels like endless leaflets from the Lib Dems. Given they try to position themselves as a party who cares about the environment, they could start by not wasting so many trees!

www.waterlooeast.co.uk/rishi-sunaks-doing-a-musical#:~:text=WATERLOO%20EAST%20THEATRE&text=Rishi%20Sunak%20stunned%20the%20nation,to%20his%20many%20excellent%20qualities.

Yes. There are some constituencies where even the most keen 'get the Tories out' voter should just vote for what they want and/or the individual candidate they think will make a good constituency MP.

Trying to second guess how everyone else will vote is a waste of energy, and while I don't blame parties for insisting they are the ones who can win - a lot of 'anti-Tory' energy was wasted on non-Tories in 2019 with activists getting angry at each other in seats where there wasn't an obvious challenger. The consequence being bad blood between activists getting in the way of tactical voting in seats where there was an obvious challenger.

For clarification, being selected for the first time at this election isn't meaningful. More if you know they were selected by the local party several months ago then you know the local party is serious about campaigning hard, and in many cases will have been preparing their campaign before the election was officially called. This election is interesting, because seats that would have been considered hopeless are beginning to come into play. There may be some candidates who wouldn't have passed vetting if they were expected to win. 

Runnymeade and Weybridge will be yellow, I bet £10 on it.

No opinion has shown R&W going yellow yet, but everything else around is seeming to and surprisingly Maidenhead is predicted too, that has no Reform candidate running and is a former Prime Ministers seat which both makes it even more surprising,. The Libs only need to campaign hard in 30-40 seats, where Rishi needs to campaign in 300 seats, which is not possible. You just know Ed Davey is going to do a big publicity stunt before the election too.

There are factors which will stop people voting Tory, a few I can think of is;

Brexit
Reform Party
Party Shelf Life (Party Stale)
Health
Crime.
Tactical voting
High Taxes
High Immigration
Sleeve
ECONOMY

I just think people see Labour/Libs as a viable alternative, which option wasn’t available in 2019.

tbf, you got a begging letter/email, as did a couple of hundred thousand others.

Yes I am sure she has been badly affected by the current cost of living crisis

And is suffering badly

Doing a job which is obviously massively important and which without society would surely collapse

What a joke

She would be better off campaigning to sell tickets for her latest show sharpish

Rather than airing her political views

Regarding la Staunton's letter is Biggins, Gary Barlow and Jim Davidson doing something similar for Rishi ?