
In a first for YouGov, this poll (link to tables) is only getting a “Lite” analysis piece. That’s because although the fieldwork for this ran until the 7th of June, they did not publish the findings until the 18th. In a non-election period that wouldn’t really have been a problem, Scottish polling being so infrequent. But we’re in the run up to a UK General Election right now. By that point, we had seen no less than three more recent polls from other firms published.
When this kind of thing happens, it isn’t just that I would be reporting on a slightly outdated poll, it’s that I need to go back to various averages and change often multiple earlier data points to account for a new poll slotting in earlier. Obviously, it’s not the job of polling firms to make my life as a voluntary election nerd easier! However, it adds to my workload, and this is a jam-packed period for me as it is. So, running my full suite of detailed analysis on a late-publishing poll isn’t good use of my time. Hence, Lite. I explain what I mean by a “Lite” piece here.
The previous YouGov covered the 13th – 17th of May 2024. Changes are shown as (vs that poll / vs last election).
Votes
Seats
As outlined in a (now very, very, yeesh, look at the lack of quality) old post, I’ve generally avoided providing Westminster projections here on BBS. First Past the Post is really difficult to get right, and even small errors can give huge differences in seats. At Holyrood, that’s moderated by a proportional element that means you can’t be that far off, but pure FPTP at Westminster is a different beast. In addition, plenty of others do those projections much better than I ever could, so why bother?
That said, I have pulled together a simple projection model for this campaign. Unlike Holyrood, I won’t be providing seat-by-seat projections, and I’ll provide the Electoral Calculus estimate on the votes too for comparison, but this just helps provide a little bit more context to the vote figures.
Regional Vote
Constituency Vote
Seat Projection
Projecting that into seats might give us something like this:
Please see this page for how projections work and important caveats.
Hypotheticals
Scandinavian Style Westminster
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