Week 3: Opinium's GE2024 Campaign Roundup
Follow the UK general election with Opinium, through our weekly update on the state of the polls and what they're telling us about the campaign.
What are the polls telling us now?
“For the first time in five years, we are well and truly seeing the huge speed at which the news cycle spins during a UK general election campaign.
In a period of five days last week, Nigel Farage made a return to frontline politics, the prime minister held his own in a leaders debate, the Conservatives failed to select a candidate in every seat in Great Britain, the prime minister caused controversy by leaving a D-Day event early, and there was a packed seven-way debate held by the BBC. What a week!
While our latest poll was mainly conducted before the D-Day headlines would have had an impact, it still tells us a few important things for the campaign:
Firstly, that Rishi Sunak’s performance in the debate was nowhere near enough to change perceptions of a campaign going badly.
Secondly, that both major parties have to win over the significant number of voters backing smaller parties. This problem is worse for the Conservatives. At this point in the campaign, Rishi Sunak had hoped to have brought Reform defectors back onside with some eye-catching policies, so they could turn their attention to winning back moderate switchers to Labour. Nigel Farage’s return has made this strategy all the more difficult.
This upcoming week our attention shifts to the manifestos, bringing us back to policies and pledges. It remains to be seen if there is anything in those manifestos that will significantly move the dial.”
James Crouch
Head of Policy & Public Affairs Research
Headline voting intention: Labour has an 18-point lead while smaller parties hold onto a significant proportion of the votes
During a short campaign, we usually expect to see the votes for other parties getting squeezed as the public begin to see the election as a choice between the two major parties. This pattern seems to be slower in this election, with the Reform, Lib Dems, and Greens still collectively taking almost 30% of the vote.
Roughly one in four continue to say they will vote Conservative (our latest poll puts them on 24% specifically), leaving them essentially where they have been for most of the year.
Labour’s vote share, on the other hand, seems to be slightly more volatile, depending on how many might break away to vote for smaller parties, with our latest poll giving them 42% of the vote and an 18-point lead over the Conservatives.
How the campaign is going: Conservatives deal with further bad news, while Reform campaign takes off
There was brief excitement from Conservatives that Rishi Sunak’s performance in the head-to-head debate with Keir Starmer might give the campaign a boost. Even before the huge fallout from the prime minister’s D-Day blunder hit the headlines, our poll suggests half (50%) of people thought the Conservatives had still had a bad week, while only 18% thought they had a good week.
By contrast, Labour have managed to move on from the row over Diane Abbott’s candidature, with 38% believing the party has had a good week in the campaign compared to 27% who think they have had a bad week.
The big news is that smaller parties appear to have made some progress in the campaign for the first time. In particular, Nigel Farage’s return has transformed Reform UK’s prospects, with the proportion not really knowing how their campaign had gone dropping from 63% a fortnight ago to 46% last week. 31% now think Reform UK have had a good week in the campaign.
There is also limited improvement for the Lib Dems, with 23% now thinking they have had a good week in the campaign, although their impact remains muted. 65% continue to not know how the Green campaign is doing, although this could change when we run our first poll since the seven-way leaders' debate.