Target Town: The key constituency on the route to power

Published

3 months ago

March 5, 2024

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Britain’s electoral map could look dramatically different after voters go to the polls this year.

Labour is on course for a majority but in parts of the North of England and the Midlands, the battle is by no means straightforward.

Politics latest: Chancellor warned of £2bn real-term cuts to NHS funding

Here, there are a number of traditional Labour strongholds, where voters are more likely to be white, working class and to have voted leave in the referendum.

Grimsby is one such example.

It turned Conservative for the first time since the end of the Second World War in 2019, with many people at the time feeling a cultural rift with the Labour Party.

This constituency has now been combined with Cleethorpes, where the Tories have been in power since 2010.

Since its formation in 1997, it’s been a bellwether seat, backing the largest party in Westminster.

It contains a rural conservative base as well as urban voters who in more recent years backed the promises of levelling up and Brexit offered by the Tories.

The complex composition of this new constituency means it’s shaping up to be an interesting battleground.

Boris Johnson’s personal appeal, his party’s promise to “Get Brexit Done” and a promise to level up poorer parts of the country was a winning ticket for the Tories here.

Fast forward five years and disillusionment with the Conservatives is rife.

A cost of living crisis has eroded living standards and the promise of “levelling up” appears to have been forgotten.

Net migration to the UK is at a record high and the tax burden at a post-war high.

Tory party infighting, repeated leadership contests and a chaotic premiership under Liz Truss have eroded the public’s trust.

Support for the Conservatives may be fading but that won’t necessarily translate into strong support for Labour.

The Reform party is gaining ground in pro-leave constituencies, picking up their 2019 Tory voters.

The rebranded Brexit Party, led by Richard Tice and co-founded by Nigel Farage, has described itself as “the party of the working class”.

The party is polling at about 10%.

While this may not be enough to deliver Reform a single seat in parliament it could damage the Tories by splitting the vote and helping to deliver a Labour majority.

We saw this play out at the by-elections in Wellingborough and Kingswood.

What is Target Town?

Sky News’ Target Town series aims to tell the story of the upcoming election from the perspective of voters in the new constituency of Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes.

We’ll hear from locals all the way through to election night to understand the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead, and to discuss how the future could look depending on which political party is elected into power.

The constituency is high on Conservative and Labour target lists, lying right at the heart of the ‘Red Wall’ that the Tories smashed to take the election in 2019.

Once again they promise to be pivotal to both leaders’ ambitions.

However, Reform doesn’t have candidates everywhere yet, including in Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes. Instead, voter disillusionment and low turnout could be a bigger problem for the Tories than outright conversion to Labour.

Labour needs an 11.7 point swing to win in this new constituency and it has reason to be quietly confident.

The party has achieved larger swings at recent by-elections.

However, winning in places like Grimsby and Cleethorpes will be important if it is to secure the 12.7 point swing needed across the country to win a majority in parliament.

Labour lost people in Grimsby to Boris Johnson’s Tories in 2019.

Back then voters questioned the culture of the Labour party, whether it really stood for people like them, the working classes.

Labour will need to win them back but, in both Grimsby and Cleethorpes, it’s also contending with disillusionment with both main parties.

Sky News’ Target Town series aims to follow the build-up to the general election from a key constituency prized by both Conservatives and Labour – Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes.

To launch it The UK Tonight with Sarah-Jane Mee will broadcast live from Cleethorpes at 8pm.

Politics

General election called for 4 July, as Rishi Sunak says ‘now is the moment for Britain to choose its future’

Published

12 mins ago

May 22, 2024

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General election called for 4 July, as Rishi Sunak says 'now is the moment for Britain to choose its future'

Rishi Sunak has called a general election for 4 July, saying “now is the moment for Britain to choose its future”.

In a statement outside Downing Street delivered in the pouring rain, the prime minister said he had met with the King to request the dissolution of parliament.

Follow the latest politics news live – general election confirmed

“The King has granted this request and we will have a general election on the 4th of July”, Mr Sunak said.

The surprise move is a huge electoral gamble given Labour are ahead by about 20 points in the polls.

It comes after official figures showed inflation had come down to 2.3% in April.

Mr Sunak said this is “proof that the plan and priorities I set out are working”.

However, he said “this hard earned economic stability was only ever meant to be the beginning”.

In a rallying cry to the nation he said: “The question now is how and who do you trust to turn that foundation into a secure future for you, your family and our country?

“Now is the moment for Britain to choose its future and to decide whether we want to build on the progress we have made or risk going back to square one. With no plan and no certainty.”

Mr Sunak had to contend with New Labour anthem Things Can Only Get Better being played from beyond the gates to Downing Street as he delivered his speech.

In a sign the election will be fought on the economy, the prime minister opened his remarks by harking back to his days as chancellor during the pandemic, saying he served the country while “the future hung in the balance”.

He said that economic stability is “the bedrock of any future success” and accused Labour of having no plan.

Summer election big gamble for Sunak

By Darren McCaffrey, political correspondent

The prime minister, late, increasingly soaked and being drowned out by protesters, confirmed there will be a July election.

Rishi Sunak’s pitch to voters is essentially better the devil you know, stick with me, I have a plan and Labour has no ideas.

“Now is the moment for Britain to choose its future, to decide whether we want to build on the progress we have made or risk going back to square one with no plan and no certainty” he said.

He is hoping that a relatively long campaign, a focus on security, in what he describes as an uncertain world and his economic record will eat into the enormous poll lead Labour have.

It is interesting there was much less focus on migration and small boats.

Sunak admitted mistakes had been made, accepted they had been in power for 14 years but played on lots of voter’s apathy about what Labour’s plans are for government.

This is undoubtedly a massive gamble for the prime minister, no party has ever come back from such a difficult polling situation, but he hopes under scrutiny Labour and Starmer will crumble.

At the moment, most in Westminster think it’s a gamble that will not pay off.

Let the proper campaign begin.

He finished his statement with an attack on his rival for Number 10, Sir Keir Starmer, saying he has “shown time and time again that he will take the easy way out and do anything to get power”.

“If he was happy to abandon all the promises he made to become Labour leader once he got the job, how can you know that he won’t do exactly the same thing if he were to become prime minister?

“If you don’t have the conviction to stick to anything you say, if you don’t have the courage to tell people what you want to do, and if you don’t have a plan, how can you possibly be trusted to lead our country, especially at this most uncertain of times?”

Election ‘opportunity for change’

Delivering his own televised statement from central London, Sir Keir said the election is an “opportunity for change” as he tore into the Tories’ record in government.

He pointed to sewage in rivers, people “waiting on trolleys in A&E”, crime going “virtually unpunished” and mortgages and food prices “through the roof”.

“On 4 July you have a choice, and together we can stop the chaos, we can turn the page, we can start to rebuild Britain and change our country,” he said.

If Sir Keir wins the election, it will end 14 years of Conservative governments under five prime ministers.

Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey, who is also hoping to make gains the the rural Tory heartlands, said the election is “a chance to kick Rishi Sunak’s appalling Conservative government out of office and deliver the change the public is crying out for”.

What are the rules for calling an election?

Mr Sunak has been saying for months the vote would happen in the “second half of the year” but had refused to set a date.

The assumption was that he would wait until the autumn to give him more time to deliver on his pledges.

However, speculation he could go to the country earlier mounted in Westminster on Wednesday as Cabinet ministers were summoned for an unusually timed meeting, with Defence Secretary Grant Shapps and Foreign Secretary Lord Cameron cutting short trips abroad to attend.

As general elections have to be held every five years, the final day a vote could have taken place was 28 January 2025.

However, the Conservatives in 2019 restored the prime minister’s power to call an election at a time of their choosing within that five years.

The last general election was held in 2019, when Boris Johnson won the Conservatives a landslide over Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party.

Since then, there have been two more prime ministers, Liz Truss and Mr Sunak, and the Conservatives’ 80-seat majority has been reduced by a series of by-election losses while their popularity among voters has plummeted.

Politics

General Election poll tracker: Will Labour or the Conservatives win?

Published

12 mins ago

May 22, 2024

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General Election poll tracker: Will Labour or the Conservatives win?

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 in the run-up to a general election.

If you can’t see the latest polls, tap here for the full version of this story

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

Sam Coates

Deputy political editor

@SamCoatesSky

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.

More detail from the BPC.

Credits

Chart design and implementation:
Dr Will Jennings, Sky News election analyst
Daniel Dunford, senior data journalist
Yetunde Adeleye and Jenai Edwards, designers

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.

Why data journalism matters to Sky News