It doesn’t mean that necessarily just means it had less salience / power among Lab voters

Final reflection: i think something like Cameron coalition is more available to Kemi than the Boris one but there's bunch of positions she's taken since '24 (ECHR, pro-Iran war, anti-EU etc) that are a shade discordant with it. Interested to see if those change or if Reform gravity reasserts itself.

Lastly, was a more attack focused speech than Burnham’s - no massive sign that the attacks hurt Labour much, but they did damage Reform. (oddly attack on Burnham benefited Reform!) Youth jobs and property taxes a pull for decent number of Labour 2024 voters though.

Best PM numbers most boosted by the anti-Reform attack. Likewise, people who saw the whole BBC News at 6 package increased in VI - modest rises but still decent.

Interesting pattern on changes in her personal ratings in that the lifts are stronger overall - slightly suggests what we see in national polls is her brand can’t lift the Tory one at the moment even if people are responsible to some things she says.

First on voting intention. Property taxes boosted vote intent by +6 points; jobs +5. Less than Burnham’s +10 pt lifts last week but still good. Attack on Reform saw a small bump also. It’s old-fashioned Con fare on taxes/jobs that works best tho. Strong in London & among young.

The ones we chose from her speech were: - 'battle of ideas' opening salvo/dividing lines on tax and spend - attack on Burnham (back to 70s; unfunded pledges etc) - attack on Reform (re: Englishness, racism) - jobs for young people - planning dereg - property taxes incl IHT

Methodology: ~3600 voters split into 8; control group see no video (just get told Tories had a conf). 7 see one clip from speech, another the News at 6 package. We see how exposure changes attitudes. This cannot predict elections (!) but it can test strengths and weaknesses.

Finally, thought this was interesting and encouraging for Burnham - a safe seat yes but a London one and no sign many people here interpret him as anti-London, esp Labour electoral coalition.

Why *did* ppl vote Green and not Lab? Pulls to Greens was core message of pressuring Labour govt from left; housing; wealth inequality. Pushes from Labour: mostly govt delivery (housing again!) plus a little bit of residual toxicity on welfare & Gaza in what is a liberal seat.

Why did people not vote Green? Not wanting to hurt a Lab govt (again impressive mid-term) but also a sense Greens couldn’t win. They never built momentum and probably bad media vibes didn’t help. List was written before ‘Zionism is racism’ furore but no huge sign of salience.

We see a bit of this here in net favourables - Burnham and local candidate had strong favourables; even Green/Polanski voters like Burnham while strongly disliking Starmer. Polanski not necessarily unpopular just not preferred.

Why did people vote Labour? The local candidate was well known and popular, and ultimately people didn’t want to do damage a Labour government.

Here are the voter flows on 2024 - obviously a lot of non-voters but Labour limiting losses to the Greens among those to 10% is impressive given we're mid-term and no Reform threat. Lab have meaningfully brought some people back since May also, mostly from independent and left.

We worked w/ @convergentrsrch to field a poll from 20th Sept to polling day, most fieldwork 1st-8th Oct. Purpose purely to understand the result if there was an upset. Fieldwork finished yesterday, didn’t release as didn’t want to influence things unduly. Data has been weighted to the result. n=405.

Also - what to say of a Tory party that loses its deposit in Makerfield but keeps it in Holborn! Curious times