Combined support for Labour and Tories hits lowest since 1918
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Labour and the Conservatives are on course to register their lowest combined vote share in a century, according to pre-election polls.
The Financial Times’ tracker of 46 polls indicates that both of the UK’s two biggest parties have lost support since Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s election announcement on May 22, with smaller parties such as Reform, the Liberal Democrats and the Greens all making advances.
Labour’s polling average has fallen to 41.7 per cent, down from 44.5 when the election was called, with the Tories also falling three points to 21.1 per cent. The Labour lead has held steady at 20 percentage points.
If the current polling were borne out on July 4, the result would produce the lowest combined vote share, of 63 per cent, for the main parties since the two-party system emerged after the first world war.
Historically, support for smaller parties has tended to subside over the course of a campaign, as the big parties “squeeze” supporters back into their camps.
However, the opposite trend has emerged over this election. Reform UK, the main beneficiary of the big two parties’ decline, has surged from 11.3 to 15.6 per cent over the past four weeks, in part because Nigel Farage announced his candidacy — and took the party’s leadership — after the election was called.
“The UK electoral landscape has fragmented dramatically, reflecting rising dissatisfaction with the established parties”, said Patrick Diamond, professor of public policy at Queen Mary University of London.
He added that the trend was evident across Europe, but has been “largely suppressed in the UK owing to the nature of the first-past-the-post electoral system.”
Unlike countries that use a form of proportional representation — a system that often leads to coalition governments made up of several parties — the UK’s system typically results in a clear majority won by a single party.
Because the largest party often wins significantly larger number of seats, the Tories have warned that voters need to back the Conservatives to prevent Sir Keir Starmer’s party winning a “supermajority”.
The FT’s projection model suggests Labour is on course to win roughly 72 per cent of the seats in parliament on about 42 per cent of the total vote.
With polls predicting a significant Labour majority, the party’s strategists are increasingly concerned that smaller parties are picking up support.
Pat McFadden, Labour’s campaign co-ordinator, warned that voting for minor parties could allow the Conservatives to win in some marginal seats. “Change, and stopping five more years of the Tories, will only come if people vote for it,” he told the FT.
Labour campaign officials also believe that more than 5mn voters are undecided ahead of polling day, making the final result even more uncertain.
The party is haunted by the phenomenon of “shy Tories” — those who declined to reveal their true voting intentions to pollsters ahead of Labour’s 1992 general election defeat.
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