How does the public feel about a Tory Wipe-Out
Even if Labour does not win a massive majority on July 5th, that expectation has coloured early coverage of the election period. We’ve stopped asking “who do you expect to win” and instead are asking “how big do you expect them to win”. Perhaps in response to this, recent Conservative Party messaging appears to have pivoted to talking about the risk of handing Starmer a “massive majority”, rather than a majority in general. We explore public attitudes towards a massive Labour majority, and found:
The public is broadly expecting Labour to win the election, although not by a very comfortable margin
The majority of the public is happy with even exceptionally large Labour majorities
There is a substantial appetite for a total Tory wipe-out (meaning the Conservatives winning 0 seats)
In our polling, 65% of the UK expect Labour to win, including 40% of those who say they would vote Conservative themselves. This was in a direct question, but we also asked about expectations with an indirect question requiring participants to write in seat counts (they were given current seat counts and the threshhold for a majority. Naturally, it is quite difficult for people to guess at seat counts, and they will tend to anchor-and-adjust to current seat levels. Nevertheless, the results were interesting. On average, Labour voters are expecting their party to fall just shy of a majority with 320 seats, while Conservatives are now on average expecting fewer seats than Labour but roughly a hung parliament (240 seats Conservative, 262 Labour).
We find that the public is relatively open to the concept of total electoral obliteration for the Conservatives. 46% of the public agreed with the slightly excessive statement that the Conservatives “deserve to lose every seat they have”, including around a quarter of their own 2019 voters (24%), and a whole 64% of those who intend to vote Labour.
Naturally, there is a difference between what people feel the Conservatives “deserve” and the result they would actually like to see. When asked more specifically if they would like to see the Conservatives lose all their seats, or lose the election but hold onto some seats, 36% opt for them losing them all - including a majority (55%) of Labour voters. Looking at the age crossbreaks, among every group except over-65s, a larger proportion wants to see the Conservatives with 0 seats than wants to see them win the election.
We asked in multiple different ways to try and minimise exaggeration, so we asked participants to write-in the number of seats they would like to see the two largest parties win. We have to allow room in these write-ins for outliers, people mis-typing, and all sorts of biases based on being told the 326 seat threshhold for a majority which few people would have front of mind. Nevertheless, when asked to write in the number of seats they would like to see the Conservatives win, 24% write in 0 seats, including 32% of Labour voters. Conservative voters do not tend to return the favour, only 9% say that they want to see Labour winning 0 seats overall.
However, the results from this write-in exercise do reveal some resistance to the scale of electoral success which some projections are expecting for Labour. Nevertheless, we find 49% of Labour voters want to see Conservatives with under 100 seats, and 45% want to see them short of a majority but with over 100 seats. A majority of Labour voters want to see Labour winning a majority with under 400 seats (55%), only 27% want to see the party exceed the 400 mark.
To fully stress-test attitudes to electoral results, we presented participants with randomised election results, varying the number of Conservative and Labour seats won in increments of 10, maintaining a total of 550 seats between the two parties. Each participant would be shown three possible (as in, very hypothetically possible) results, and asked to evaluate how they would feel if this was the result on election day. The chart below shows how participant attitudes varied based on the seat counts ascribed to the main parties.
Our results show that the public’s stated happiness with the result increases sharply as Labour approach a majority, and then remains relatively consistent around the 50% mark for all possible majority results, even up to Labour winning 550 seats and the Conservatives winning none. Stated excitement follows a similar trajectory, although is slightly more muted, typically falling around 4% behind stated happiness.
Worry tends to follow the opposite trajectory, decreasing rapidly towards a Labour majority. However, we do see some increase in worry as the Labour majority grows, with a notable uptick for scenarios in which Conservatives win 0 seats (where 47% express worry). This is perhaps the only indicator that a “large majority” is of concern to the public from this analysis, and even here the main impact is seen when the Conservative party hits literally 0 seats.
A majority express surprise at results which have Labour anywhere below 290 seats, or above 450 seats. The least surprising result was the 370 seat mark, higher than the average estimates provided earlier for Labour seat victories of 320.
These results paint a nuanced picture on the specifics, but I think the key thing they capture is the scale of the anger with the Conservative Party. It’s easy to lose track of just how far we’ve come since 2019. For the governing party to be seeing something like a third of the public genuinely wishing them to face total wipe-out is quite something.
