Sunak’s great Reform blunder

In journalism, it is always nice to have a document, even if it only confirms what you already suspected. If there has been any pattern in the early chaos of the Conservative election campaign, it has been a focus on their core, older vote – national service for the young, more guaranteed cash for the old.

At the start of the campaign, the Conservatives only polled a higher vote share than Labour among voters aged 70 or over – whereas YouGov analysis of the 2019 result showed that the crossover age then was 39. In other words, Conservatives had a lead among voters aged 40-70 and have lost it entirely. So why are they focusing on those voters that are older still?

The suspicion was that the party was focusing its efforts on the threat from Reform, but proof is hard to come by. Bloomberg political editor Alex Wickham seems to have obtained that proof, though – that handy document.

Bloomberg reports that internal Conservative Party polling reveals “more than 100 Tory MPs could lose their seats solely due to the rise of Reform”, and that internal documents show the party leadership is focused on addressing that potential outflow of voters.

That makes sense at first, but falls apart under further scrutiny – because it is not Richard Tice and Nigel Farage’s party to whom the Conservatives would actually lose those 100 or more seats. The narrow logic is this: Reform splits the Conservative vote by enough that it reduces the vote share by enough to let Labour (in most cases) or the Liberal Democrats take the seat.

Reform itself is likely to win no seats at all, and it would be huge shock if it won more than two. But given it is Labour that will take the seats, the Conservative focus on Reform could make their losses much worse.

The reason for this is that a voter who swaps from the Conservatives to Labour is twice as damaging to the Tories as a voter that switches from the Conservatives to Reform.

In a seat that is competitive between the two major parties, a voter switching from the Tories is a -1 to their total and a +1 to Labour’s. A voter switching to Reform is a -1 from the Conservatives, but adds nothing to Labour – and the vote for Reform is irrelevant. The Reform switcher is mathematically the same as a Conservative voter who just stays at home.

That is the danger of fixating on Reform. If the Conservatives focus on winning back Reform voters, they need to win back twice as many voters as they would versus convincing Labour switchers to come back to the Tories.

That’s actually a best-case scenario: it is possible that efforts to appeal to pensioners and ‘core’ voters puts off even more 2019 Labour/Conservative switchers and drives 2019 Tory voters to Labour. The graphs and charts showing the ‘threat’ from Reform is distracting CCHQ from both mathematical reality and political history – elections are won from the centre.

Part of this will be driven by the fact that many Conservatives are simply happier campaigning for their ‘core vote’ or against Reform. It is more comfortable than trying to win back Labour voters, and helps MPs align themselves for forthcoming internal elections – such as that to take the leadership.
Yes, the Conservatives might lose 100 seats “because of Reform”, but they have forgotten that they will not lose those seats to Reform. That short-sightedness could be a huge gift to Labour.