Latest updates: poll ahead of crucial byelection follows attempts by Labour to attack Tories over lobbying and cronyism
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These are from the Daily Mirror’s Pippa Crerar and the FT’s Sebastian Payne on the Hartlepool poll. Payne is writing a book about Labour’s performance in “red wall” seats.
Yes @SebastianEPayne right on @BBCRadio4 about Labour’s need for “vision think”. What do voters think the party stands for? Lots of reasons to vote *against* Tories but they also need a reason to vote *for* Labour.
Thank you kindly comrade. I think it is Starmer’s biggest problem from the pandemic: he’s done a lot to show the party is under new management, but has yet to give RW voters any positive reason to come back to the party. He hasn’t got long left either.
Too many hot takes on Hartlepool this morning. But here’s one more for the mix. Even if the Tories win Hartlepool by a landslide on Thursday, it doesn’t mean it’s pointless investigating lobbying and donations or that voters don’t care about those things.
Anthony Wells, head of political research at the polling company YouGov and author of the UK Polling Report blog, has posted a thread on Twitter saying there is nothing suspect about the methodology of the Survation poll from Hartlepool and that it would have to be “very wrong” for Labour to win the seat on Thursday. The thread starts here.
A few quick comments on that Hartlepool poll. You may recall that last time the past vote was very odd – despite Brexit party getting 25% in 2019, Survation could barely find any former BP voters.
That is NOT the case this time – the sample looks fine on that front.
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