Patrick Flynn

A&E: www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpYl...

ZP: www.youtube.com/shorts/0MDzM...

Full write-up below, including our latest Westminster voting intention figures.

www.focaldata.com/blog/westmin...

NEW: Brits would back Zack Polanski if they had a vote in the Green Party leadership election.

After seeing campaign videos from each candidate, voters across all age groups, parties and regions preferred Polanski to the Adrian Ramsay and Ellie Chowns candidacy 👇

We've got some polling coming on the Green Party leadership race this week, with voting still open for party members.

We showed the public videos from the two campaigns and asked who they would vote for if they were eligible. One campaign leads with voters of *all parties*.

Foundations at Risk: A new white paper from Focaldata We are delighted to announce the release of our latest white paper, Foundations at Risk: Why support for philanthropic ventures like overseas aid and climate action is crumbling across the West – and ...

You can read more on this ‒ including a message-testing case study on how the aid sector could restore support ‒ on our blog 👇

www.focaldata.com/blog/foundat...

In-donor refugee costs and misinformation around where aid is spent are both damaging support for the aid sector.

Overseas aid is by far the UK public's lowest spending priority ‒ almost off-the-charts bad.

Voters across the four countries we studied basically don't trust their government to deliver anything. Overseas aid is the area where governments are least trusted to spend money well.

Unsurprising, then, that unpopular govts are cutting aid while increasing defence spending.

Net Zero has quietly become a culture-war issue, and is now almost as politically-divisive as multiculturalism.

We've just released a new white paper here at @focaldata.bsky.social, explaining why support for overseas aid has fallen among both voters and governments in the West, and why Net Zero risks going the same way.

🧵 Quick thread of some of the findings:

Small samples so would be careful over-interpreting, but seeing evidence of the young gender split in our poll (Reform at 25% with male 16-17 year olds, 10% with female)

Tables: docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

Write-up: focaldata.com/blog/westmin...

Latest Westminster voting intention from us at @focaldata.bsky.social sees minor impact of votes at 16 (Reform's lead cut from 3.7 points to 3.3)

As for the UK, another 0 public points may well be on the cards, but some mild jury love may be enough to keep us off the bottom of the scoreboard.

Stats-based forecast for tonight's Eurovision final.

The model is based on a combination of historical voting patterns, running order analysis, betting odds, and my own subjective opinion.

Basically a coin flip that Sweden 🇸🇪 gets its 8th victory tonight based on 5,000 simulations.

Labour about to fall into *sixth* including independents...

'Trump effect' may cost Conservatives victory in Canadian election The Liberal Party of Canada appears on course for a narrow victory in Monday’s federal election, holding a 3-point lead over the Conservatives.

You can read our whole report here: www.focaldata.com/blog/trump-e...

However, while some of the fundamentals favour the Liberals, we think we should be cautious. The 'wisdom of the crowd' method, which successfully predicted Trump's swing state victories in November, points towards a polling error and a Conservative victory today.

Trump's actions have dramatically affected Canada's views of the United States. Almost half of Canadians now see the US as either 'unfriendly', or an enemy of Canada, a higher percentage than those who say the same about China.

With Canadians whose vote was influenced by Trump's recent actions, the Liberals dominate with 53% of the vote, and Mark Carney leads by 44 points on who would be best to handle the US-Canada relationship (the second most important issue) among those who see it as important.

🇨🇦🧵 Quick thread on some of our findings ahead of today's Canadian election.

Our headline results put the Liberals ahead, but we've uncovered evidence that the Conservatives may have won the election (or at least the most seats) if Trump had not won in November.

Our poll for Monday's Canadian election finds the Liberals with a narrow 3-point lead, with 40.5% of the vote to the Conservatives' 37.5%.

Some very interesting findings under the hood -- more details coming over the weekend.

We made a few methodological changes since the last election following an internal review. You can read more about that here:
www.focaldata.com/blog/review-...

Latest UK voting intention from us finds Labour, Conservatives and Reform neck-and-neck...

www.focaldata.com/blog/westmin...

The survey also includes our first (public) Westminster voting intention result since the election:

🔴 Labour: 24% (-11 since 2024)
🔵 Conservative: 22% (-2)
🟣 Reform: 21% (+7)
🟠 Lib Dems: 14% (+2)
🟢 Green: 8% (+1)

Will security be the wedge issue which splits Europe’s radical right? The radical right in Europe is achieving its best election results in history. In Germany, the far-right AfD surged to 21% of the vote in last month’s election, finishing in second place nationally fo...

New piece from me on where the public in 🇬🇧🇫🇷🇩🇪 stands on defence and security.

www.focaldata.com/blog/will-se...

Yesterday, we presented some exclusive findings from a European survey (covering 🇫🇷🇩🇪🇬🇧) at the CEPS Ideas Lab in Brussels.

With defence and security in the news, here are our key findings on that particular topic... 🧵

'Fragmented and Dealigned: The 2024 British General Election and the Rise of Place-Based Politics'. An article by Will Jennings, Jamie Furlong, Gerry Stoker, and Lawrence Mckay in The Political Quarterlly. Abstract While the outcome of the 2024 British general election signalled a resounding repudiation of the incumbent government—returning a 231-seat swing from the Conservatives to Labour—it did not radically overturn the geography of electoral outcomes in England and Wales. Indeed, demographic predictors of party vote for parliamentary constituencies at the aggregate level mostly represented a continuation of recent trends. With the Conservative Party's vote collapsing most in areas where it started highest—and where the Leave vote had been highest in 2016—Labour secured shock victories in relatively affluent parts of southern England as well as retaking all the ‘red wall’ constituencies in northern England that it lost in 2019, despite its national vote share only increasing slightly. This represented the other end of the ‘realignment’ observed in 2019: as the electoral tide went out on the Conservatives, the relative weakening of their support in areas with graduates, middle class professionals and mortgage holders came home to roost. The election exposed a fragmented and marginal map, bequeathing a fragile electoral future, despite the Starmer government's large parliamentary majority.

Our analysis of the geography of GE2024 is now out in
@politicalquarterly.bsky.social. This offers an important update of The Changing Electoral Map of England and Wales by @jwfurlong.bsky.social and me, published by OUP just ahead of the election. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Bi_Focal #21: Four lessons from a year in research Explore key lessons from 2024, including innovations in opinion polling, demographic shifts, and the rise of zero-sum thinking. Learn how we expect MRP, 'wisdom of the crowds,' and qualitative researc...

Our final Bi_Focal of 2024 looks at the key lessons we've drawn from a very busy and consequential year of polling:
what went well? What were the mega themes? What should the industry be doing going forward?

www.focaldata.com/blog/bi-foca...

In case we didn’t know already, Biden-Trump would have been a landslide…