New poll puts Starmer close to historical track to Labour leadership
Posted in Labour, Labour leadership on January 18th, 2020 by Leo – Comments Off on New poll puts Starmer close to historical track to Labour leadershipI recently looked at how the first poll in the Labour leadership contest compared with polls in past leadership elections. I found that polls in previous contests have been extremely stable, with early front runners always maintaining or extending their lead.
But the only poll for this contest taken at the time was done unusually early, more than three months before the ballot. So maybe it wasn’t representative?
Now we have a second poll, this one taken close to the timeframe that polls in past contest have been taken.
The new YouGov poll puts Starmer on 46% to Long-Bailey’s 32% in the first round, winning 63/37 on the final round. The first round lead is 1pt greater than in last month’s poll.
The new poll was done 79 days before the contest finishes. This is getting close to polls in past contests: the initial poll in the most recent Labour leadership was 66 days out, and the first poll in last year’s Tory election was 68 days before the ballot closed.
So it’s still slightly early than previous polls, and it’s still before hustings and TV debates. But it’s starting to look like this contest is following the stable/boring pattern of all past ones that have been polled.