Blue Wall vulnerable to tactical voting as natural Conservatives turn against party

Good morning. As we limp into the final 10 days of the campaign, Rishi Sunak’s efforts to cling on to power are visibly in tatters. Revelations of alleged betting on the election timing by Tory campaign insiders has been dubbed the new Partygate by Michael Gove. It all plays into the wider theme of why the country’s natural Conservatives have lost patience with the party — read on for some exclusive research on this compelling question.

And to hear me and my fellow election enthusiasts unpick the July 4 results and what’s to come, join us for a lunchtime webinar on the day after the vote (subscribers can register free and send in questions here).

“You don’t have to take this crap . . .”

. . . as Paul Weller wrote in the Style Council’s political anthem, “Walls Come Tumbling Down”. And a certain sort of Britain, that has always felt its instincts and needs were best (even only) represented by the Conservative party, seems now to be in open revolt. As George Parker and Anna Gross explore in today’s Big Read, these Tory voters — prosperous, traditional in some things but liberal in others — are fleeing the party.

Trying to understand who they are, what’s motivating their flight to other parties, and (crucially in a first past the post electoral system) whether they have a fixed or tactical view of how to vote this time, has become a speciality of the polling analyst Steve Akehurst. His new venture Persuasion, a research initiative, has done some digging into the so-called Blue Wall: seats held by the Conservatives since at least 2010, usually far longer, and mainly across southern England, and where the successful Tory campaigns of 2017 and 2019 didn’t enjoy much of a swing in their direction.

These constituencies now look very vulnerable — if you want a mental picture, think Esher and Walton, once the redoubt of Dominic Raab, or Guildford. Steve plans to release the full findings this week, but we’ve got a sneak preview here for Inside Politics readers.

Several things are noteworthy. First off, the voters in these previously safe Tory seats perceive their own views as being very different to the current Conservative party’s. As Steve says: “The massive values disconnect between where these voters place their own social views and what they perceive the Conservatives’ to be, again points to how the Cameron ‘detoxification’ strategy has been put into reverse.”

Take a look at where Blue Wall voters place their own views on immigration levels versus where they place the Tory position: they don’t all agree, but most are out of line with the assumed Conservative position.

It’s an even more dramatic story on the UK’s relations with the EU, where they and the Tory party are poles apart.

Second, the Tories are repelling voters into the arms of several opposition parties for a number of reasons. It’s always nice to have a hunch confirmed by data, so I’m particularly keen on the finding that those intending to vote for Labour or the Lib Dems (many of these places are blue vs yellow fights) cite dishonest or dishonourable behaviour by ministers or MPs as second only to concerns about the NHS. For Conservative to Labour switchers in these seats, mishandling the economy is the third most cited reason.

With propriety mattering so much to these voters, the betting stories are not going to help.

Third (there is enough in all this for a PhD-length newsletter, but I’ll refrain), is the extreme willingness of these voters to use their votes tactically. There is a 7 percentage point swing to Labour and a whopping 19 point swing to the Lib Dems in these seats when anti-Tory voters are asked to make a gun-to-the-head choice and vote for the main challenger party in their own constituency (this is what the pollsters mean by a “squeeze question” — see chart below). Says Steve: “Tory losses there could be even worse than the MRPs show since they don’t really account for such tactical voting”.

The only chink of light for the Tories in this research is that these voters see their choices as fluid — Persuasion found a widespread willingness to switch parties again in the future. So Blue Wall voters voting Labour this time are perfectly happy to vote Lib Dem or Green at future elections, for example. As Steve adds: “One way Tories get back in these seats next time is if that ‘anti-Tory’ coalition loses motivation in Lib Dem-Con seats, eg if the Cons don’t pick somebody massively objectionable as leader next time, or if in Con-Lab seats disappointed Lab voters start peeling off to Libs and Greens.”

In conclusion, if you are waiting for British electoral politics to get back to something like stability, you might be waiting a pretty long time.

Now (don’t) try this . . . 

At this point in the six-week marathon election campaign, I’ve eaten so much chocolate and so many samosas (my go-to staple food for political emergency periods) that I’m feeling grim. So over the weekend, I took inspiration from this Camilla Cavendish column lauding NYC mayor Eric Adams and his plant-based diet. I ate a lot of salad and then deliciously dressed lentils at a vegetarian friend’s house. But further investigation of the health-conscious mayor Adams’ diet reveals he eschews olive oil, salt and pretty much anything that makes food edible. Disapproving of this puritanism, I’m back on the samosas and Green & Black’s for the final sprint to the finish line on July 4. Stephen may have different campaign survival tactics, but I’m sticking with my high-calorie energy bursts.

Top stories today

• Switching and ditching | The Conservatives have lost up to a third of voters who planned to back the party just four months ago, according to an Ipsos poll for the Financial Times that points to high levels of volatility ahead of July 4.

• Don’t count on it | Labour’s claims that higher growth will boost government revenues and bolster the public finances have been called into question by economists who warn that the budgetary outlook is already founded on overly optimistic forecasts. 

• Cash injection needed | A new Labour government would need to find at least an extra £6bn to £7bn to fund pay deals due immediately after the election if it wanted to prevent nurses, teachers and other public sector workers falling further behind their counterparts in the private sector.

• Balancing act | Labour would appoint dozens of peers within weeks of an election win in an attempt to push through its policies and improve the representation of women in the House of Lords, the Guardian’s Eleni Courea revealed.

Below is the Financial Times’ live-updating UK poll-of-polls, which combines voting intention surveys published by major British pollsters. Visit the FT poll-tracker page to discover our methodology and explore polling data by demographic including age, gender, region and more.