Report

Climbing the mountain

This report from UK think tank the Fabian Society looks at Labour’s key battlegrounds at the next election.

A new Fabian Society and YouGov survey shows Labour leading the Conservatives by 24 percentage points nationally. Even more concerning for the Tories, a sub-sample shows Labour leading by 34 percentage points in 150 marginal seats identified by the Fabian Society as key to a Labour victory.

This is the first time this analysis has been conducted using updated constituency boundaries. The 125 seats in England and Wales and 25 seats in Scotland selected by the Fabians are the places where Labour would have come closest to winning in 2019 if the election had been fought on the new boundaries.

There were 528 respondents to the survey in these new seats. Since the 2019 election, Fabian analysis of the survey shows a national swing to Labour of 17 percentage points. In the sub-sample of 150 marginal seats the swing is 22 percentage points.

The survey, carried out by YouGov on 17th and 18th January is the first to look in depth at these key marginal seats – and includes questions on preferred election outcomes and who is best to handle the cost of living. The survey also asked respondents to rank their likelihood of voting for Labour or the Conservatives on a scale of 0 (would never) to 10 (will definitely). In the key marginal seats just 21 per cent of voters ranked their likelihood of voting Conservative as likely (between 6-10 out of 10). 43 Per cent of respondents ranked their likelihood of voting Tory at 0 out of 10. These results are less favourable for the Conservatives in these marginals than across Great Britain.