Polling Updates in UK and France
July 4, 2024
Here’s a quick update of the exit polling in the UK and some new polling in France.
United Kingdom
The poll closed in the UK 90 minutes ago and the exit poll results were immediately released. It appears Labour will indeed win a landslide victory with a margin of 170 seats over the Tories. It looks like this will be an election with a lot of history being made. If the results are correct, Labour will fall just short the largest number of seats it has ever won; if the poll is off by a few seats then it could be the largest. The Tories look like they will suffer the lowest number of seats in the party’s nearly 200 year history. The Liberal Democrats look like they will win their largest seat total in its history.
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As expected, it appears Reform will win a lot more votes than Lib Dems, but get far less seats. On television, a number of politicians have said that proportional representation will be an issue for the new Parliament. Another interesting facet of the election is that it looks like Labour will get a smaller share of the vote than it did in 2015 while losing under former leader Jeremy Corbyn.
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The returns are starting to come in, but most will not be in until about 3:30 AM local time (I am not going to stay up for it). What we see from the few returns so far is consistent with the exit poll in this important regard: Reform has cost the Tories wins and losing close races.
Here are the exit poll results (seat allocations only):
Labour: 410
Tory: 131
Lib Dems: 61
Reform: 13
SNP: 10
Greens: 2
Others: 31
France
To my surprise, four polls were released for the second round of voting in France today. I can only sum them up here because I have not seen the individual polls yet.
It’s good news for antifascist as the polling shows neofascist National Rally (RN) falling short - perhaps far short - of a majority in the National Assembly.
Here are the ranges of the polling results (seat allocations only):
RN: 190-250
NPF: 140-200
ENS: 95-162
289 seats are needed for a majority.
I will try to dig into these polls tomorrow.