Sky News poll tracker: How are political parties performing as an election looms?
The live poll tracker from Sky News collates the results of opinion surveys carried out by all the main polling organisations – and allows you to see how the political parties are performing.
By charting changing voting intentions from January 2020 to now, the tracker allows you to monitor the evolving picture as we head towards the next general election.
Below you can learn more about the methodology, and how to read the data.
The tool you need as the election looms
Bookmark this page, remember this tool. Sky News has launched its own, authoritative version of one of the most important indicators available ahead of a general election next year.
Almost every day between now and the election, there will be new opinion polls by a clutch of different pollsters – each using different methodologies and all asking who voters will support on polling day.
Which pollster will be closest, which method is the right one, who should you look at? Those questions will always be unanswerable until the morning after election day, with the past only a broad guide to the future.
There is a tendency for political professionals to seize on every one of the polls, magnify every percentage point of movement, and draw dramatic headline conclusions. No doubt I will at times be guilty of this, but it will also put you at risk of over interpreting a single outlier poll.
Every poll has a margin of error of two or three percentage points either side. This isn’t just ignorable small print, it’s a big challenge for all of us – and a warning for all of us not to impatiently rewrite political narratives based on a single number change.
So the best way to use opinion polling reliably requires patience – and a lot more data. That is where this tool comes in.
How does one pollster, with its (usually) consistent methodology, move over weeks and months? Is there a discernible pattern from several different pollsters over a matter of days? Those of us with our noses pressed firmly up against the glass don’t want to wait for this.
This sort of analysis is only available through a “poll of polls”, which takes data from every single pollster that is asking voting intention questions and signed up to the industry standards body, the British Polling Council.
It is drawn up by Sky election analyst Will Jennings and Sky data and elections editor Isla Glaister – and supported by a team of Sky data scientists and designers. It’s an important piece of work for us, and a lot of thought has gone into it.
The poll of polls seeks to give an answer to the most important question of all – the direction of travel of public opinion over time. Are the closing months of this parliament, the declining state of the economy and the emergence of Labour’s policy platform making any difference? Keep coming back to this page.
There are limits. Crude attempts to turn the polling averages for the main parties into a number of seats for each party will always be just that: rough and ready and probably ultimately unhelpful (not that people will stop trying). This is a GB poll so the level of support for the SNP necessarily reflects how they fare comparatively across Great Britain, not just in Scotland.
Likewise, there is nothing here about Northern Ireland. Liberal Democrats might say they perform better in target seats where they focus resources, rather than nationally where they rely on air war alone.
Nevertheless, this is the page – and a tool – which will tell you the biggest picture story about the main parties and their comparative level of support as we hurl towards a general election where anything could happen. See you back here soon.
How does the tracker work?
The main line
The main line travelling from left to right shows the average support that each party was recording on a given date. The average is a simple mean of each of the most recent polls from all pollsters recognised by the British Polling Council.
Pollsters have slightly different methodologies in how they interpret raw results from the sample of people they ask. Our average uses a maximum of one poll per pollster, which means it is not skewed by pollsters who happen to publish surveys more regularly than others.
If the most recent poll by a given pollster was more than 28 days ago, we exclude it from the average.
The dots
The dots on the chart represent results from individual polls. If you click on a dot you can see the details of that particular poll for each party, including the name of the pollster who carried it out and the date they finished asking people.
The pollsters
The polls we include are all those by pollsters recognised by the British Polling Council (BPC).
The BPC is an association of polling organisations that publish polls, with a commitment to promoting transparency.
It is concerned only with polls and surveys that set out to measure the opinions of representative samples – such as the views of all adults, or all voters.
Membership is limited to organisations who can show to the satisfaction of the BPC that the sampling methods and weighting procedures used are designed to accurately represent the views of all people within designated target groups.
How are polls carried out?
Most polls these days are carried out online. Pollsters use a panel of people whom they know demographic information about – such as age, gender, education and where they live – so they can pick a sample that best represents the whole UK.
If polls are carried out over the phone, they will ask people this information at the time so that they can factor it into calculations.
Over the course of a few days, they ask these people their political preference and then take into account how many people of different demographics they’ve asked – and adjust the results according to what each pollster thinks is the best way to make the sample most representative of the country as a whole.
In general, pollsters should ask at least 1,000 people to get a reliable result. Statistical theory indicates that you are unlikely to get much more reliable results by asking any more than a couple of thousand people – even in a country of almost 70 million – but too many fewer than 1,000 could make the poll less likely to accurately reflect the views of the population.
Credits
Chart design and implementation:
Dr Will Jennings, Sky News election analyst
Daniel Dunford, senior data journalist
Jenai Edwards, designer
Production:
Przemyslaw Pluta, lead data engineer
The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.
UK
Police investigating alleged attack on prison officer by Southport triple murderer Axel Rudakubana
Schoolchildren are asking teachers how to strangle a partner during sex safely, a charity says, while official figures show an alarming rise in the crime related to domestic abuse cases.
Warning: This article contains references to strangulation, domestic abuse and distressing images.
It comes as a woman whose former partner almost strangled her to death in a rage has advised anyone in an abusive relationship to seek help.
Bernie Ryan, chief executive of the Institute for Addressing Strangulation, has been running the charity since its inception in 2022 after non-fatal strangulation became a standalone offence.
“It’s the ultimate form of control,” she says.
She says perpetrators and victims are getting younger, while the reason is unclear, but strangulation has seeped into popular culture and social media.
“We hear lots of sex education providers, teachers saying that they’re hearing it in schools.
“We know teachers have been asked, ‘how do I teach somebody to strangle safely?’
“Our message is there is no safe way to strangle – the anatomy is the anatomy. Reduction in oxygen to the brain or blood flow will result in the same medical consequences, regardless of context.”
Bernie Ryan, CEO of the Institute for Addressing Strangulation
A recent review by Conservative peer Baroness Gabby Bertin recommended banning “degrading, violent and misogynistic content” online.
Violent pornography showing women being choked during sex she found was “rife on mainstream platforms”.
Ms Ryan says she “wants to make sure that young people don’t have access to activities that demonstrate that this is normal behaviour”.
Read more from Sky News:
Suspect accused of Derby bank murder appears in court
Man whose body was found in suitcase ‘had raped teenager’
Strangulation is a violent act that is often committed in abusive relationships.
It is the second most common method used by men to kill women, the first is stabbing.
According to statistics shared by the Crown Prosecution Service, in 2024 there was an almost 50% rise in incidents of non-fatal strangulation and suffocation – compared to the year before.
Kerry Allan pleads for other victims of abuse to seek help
Domestic abuse victim Kerry Allan has a message for anyone who is in an abusive relationship.
Kerry met Michael Cosgrove in September 2022. While she said “at the beginning it was really good”, within months he became physically abusive.
In August last year her friends found his profile on a dating app.
“I confronted him and he denied it. I knew we were going to get into a big argument and I couldn’t face it, so I said I was going to my mum’s for a few days and take myself away from the situation.
“I came back a few days later and stupidly I agreed we could try again and everything escalated from that.”
Injuries to Kerry’s chest. Pic: CPS
In the early hours of 25 August the pair had come in from a night out at a concert and got into an argument.
“He was having a go at me, accusing me of flirting with other people, and I was angry. I told him he had a nerve after what he’d done to me in the week and how he humiliated me.
“I told him that I wanted to leave, that we were done and that I wanted to go to my mum’s and that’s when it got bad.
“He pinned me to the bed and that’s when he first strangled me.”
Kerry’s neck injury. Pic: CPS
Kerry says this was the first time she’d ever been violently assaulted. Cosgrove was eerily silent as he eventually let go and Kerry gasped for air.
“I remember trying to get my breath back, I was crying and hyperventilating… I was sick on the bedroom floor and I was asking him to go.”
Cosgrove strangled her for a second time before letting go again.
“He was saying I wasn’t getting out of this bedroom alive. I was dead tonight, he hoped that I knew that. Just kept saying how I’d ruined his life.”
Injury to Kerry’s eye. Pic: CPS
“I remember feeling a sort of shock thinking at this point, I’m not going to get out of this bedroom, he’s actually going to kill me.”
Kerry began screaming and shouting for help as loud as she could.
Her neighbours heard the commotion and called the police. While they were en route, Kerry was once again being assaulted.
Bleeding in Kerry’s eye
“I ran over to the bedroom window and tried to jump out, he grabbed me as I went to open the window, and we struggled. And then I was back in the same position, he was on top of me on the bed, and his hands were round the throat again. But this time it didn’t stop.
“I remember trying to struggle and trying to kick out and hit him and I just kept thinking that I definitely was going to die, because at this point, it wasn’t stopping.”
The next memory Kerry has is opening her eyes to see police and paramedics in the bedroom.
Michael Cosgrove. Pic: CPS
Cosgrove had heard the sirens, jumped out of the bedroom window and went to hide in Kerry’s car.
Kerry remembers opening her eyes to paramedics caring for her: “I remember thinking, I’m alive. I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe that I was alive and I wasn’t dead. My last memory is him being on top of me with his hands on my throat.”
Kerry met Michael Cosgrove in September 2022
She gives this advice to anyone who is in an abusive relationship: “Please speak to somebody, whether it’s friends, family, a work colleague, whether it’s somebody online, whether it’s a charity that you’re directed to, any sort of abuse is not okay.
“Whether it starts off emotional, they often start off that way, and they escalate, and they can escalate badly.
“Take what happened to me as a huge warning sign, because I wouldn’t want anyone else to be in the position I’ve been in the last eight months.”
Cosgrove was found guilty of attempting to murder Kerry and intentional strangulation.
He will be sentenced in July.
If you suspect you are being abused and need to speak to someone, there are people who can help you.
The National Domestic Violence Helpline: 0808 2000 247
Respect, the helpline for male domestic abuse victims: 0808 8010327
Galop, the LGBT+ anti-violence charity: 0800 999 5428
Two men have been found guilty of cutting down the famous Sycamore Gap tree that stood for more than 150 years.
Daniel Graham and Adam Carruthers were convicted of causing more than £620,000 worth of damage to the tree and more than £1,000 worth of damage to Hadrian’s Wall in Northumberland.
On 27 September 2023, the pair drove 30 miles through a storm to Northumberland from Cumbria, where they both lived, before felling the tree overnight in a matter of minutes.
The Sycamore Gap tree before it was cut down. Pic: CPS
The pair each denied two counts of criminal damage to the sycamore and to Hadrian’s Wall, which was damaged when the tree fell on it, but were convicted by a jury at Newcastle Crown Court on Friday.
The Sycamore Gap tree sat in a dip in the landscape and held a place in pop culture, featuring in the 1991 Kevin Costner film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.
It also formed part of people’s personal lives, as the scene of wedding proposals, ashes being scattered and countless photographs.
Footage of the moment the tree was felled was played during the trial.
Daniel Graham. Pic: Northumbria Police/PA
Adam Carruthers. Pic: Northumbria Police/PA
In the clip, the sound of a chainsaw can be heard, and the silhouette of a person can be seen, before the trunk eventually tumbled.
The footage was shot on Graham’s iPhone 13, with the metadata providing the coordinates of the tree.
Part of tree kept as ‘trophy’
Over the course of the trial, the pair blamed one another, but the prosecution argued they were both responsible for what the court heard was a “mindless act of vandalism”.
As well as the video footage of the felling, an image of a piece of wood and a chainsaw was found on Graham’s phone.
Adam Carruthers (R) and Daniel Graham (L) worked together felling trees. Pic: CPS/PA
An image of a piece of wood and a chainsaw was found on Graham’s phone. Pic: PA
Richard Wright KC, prosecuting, told the court: “This was perhaps a trophy taken from the scene to remind them of their actions, actions that they appear to have been revelling in.”
Voice notes played in court
The jury was also played voice notes the pair had sent one another, commenting on the media coverage the incident was receiving.
In one of them, Graham, 39, said to 32-year-old Carruthers: “Someone there has tagged like ITV News, BBC News, Sky News, like News News News”, before adding: “I think it’s going to go wild.”
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Sycamore Gap seeds saved
Another piece of evidence was a photo of the defendants felling a different tree, about a month before the Sycamore Gap was cut down.
The prosecution said Graham, who owned a groundworks company and Carruthers, who worked in property management and mechanics, were “friends with knowledge and experience in chainsaws and tree felling”.
From the beginning, much of the trial focused on the significance of the tree, with Judge Mrs Justice Lambert telling the jury to put their “emotion to one side” before proceedings began.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Voicenotes from Sycamore Gap tree trial
‘Mindless acts of violence’
Northumberland Superintendent Kevin Waring, of Northumbria Police, said: “We often hear references made to mindless acts of vandalism – but that term has never been more relevant than today in describing the actions of those individuals”.
Graham and Carruthers gave no explanation for why they targeted the tree, he said, “and there never could be a justifiable one”.
Northumbria Police and Crime Commissioner, Susan Dungworth, called the felling of the tree “unfathomable” and said, although “there was no remorse [from the defendants], there was compelling evidence, and now there will be justice”.
Gale Gilchrist, chief crown prosecutor for CPS North East, said Graham and Carruthers took “under three minutes” to bring down the “iconic landmark” in a “deliberate and mindless act of destruction”.
She said she hoped the community “can take some measure of comfort in seeing those responsible convicted”.
‘Enormity of the loss’
Reflecting on the verdict and the actions of the pair, Tony Gates, chief executive of Northumberland National Parks Authority, said: “It just took a few days to sink in – I think because of the enormity of the loss.
“We knew how important that location was for many people at an emotional level, almost at a spiritual level in terms of people’s connection to this case.”
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Moment Sycamore Gap tree cut down
Read more from the trial:
Two men went on ‘moronic mission’ to fell Sycamore Gap tree
Man told police he was being ‘framed’ over tree felling
Defendant says friend wanted to cut down world’s ‘most famous tree’
Jurors played voicenotes in Sycamore Gap tree trial
The tree’s stump still sits by Hadrian’s Wall, where new shoots have been emerging.
Its largest remaining section will go on display at the National Landscape Discovery Centre in the Northumberland National Park later this year.
The effort to preserve the tree’s legacy also goes beyond the region where it stood.
Forty-nine saplings taken from the tree have been conserved by the National Trust. They will be planted in accessible public spaces across the country as “trees of hope”, which will allow parts of the Sycamore Gap to live on.
The defendants, who didn’t react when the verdicts were delivered, will be sentenced in July.
-
Sports3 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports1 year agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports2 years agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports2 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports4 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Environment2 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Environment2 years agoGame-changing Lectric XPedition launched as affordable electric cargo bike
-
Business3 years agoBank of England’s extraordinary response to government policy is almost unthinkable | Ed Conway