Nick Bonstow is Head of Research at Strand Partners, a policy and communications consultancy.
History is littered with examples of politicians written off for dead before confounding the pundits. And you don’t have to be a Falklands-style war leader to turn around your fortunes.
Over the pond, Bill Clinton was famously known as the Comeback Kid. Not just in his famous 1992 Democratic primary turnaround, but also his successful re-election campaign in 1996, after being savaged in the US midterms. His defeat in those 1994 midterms was so large that Bob Dole, the Republican who Clinton easily saw off two years later, “euphorically” beamed to crowds that “we’re Winning! We’re Winning! We’re Winning!”
When you look beyond the surface, though, a once in a generation political talent like Clinton isn’t needed to engineer such success.
Think of 2013. David Cameron came back to win a majority two years later from a lower projected national share in local elections than Rishi Sunak’s performance last week (25 per cent for the Conservatives under Cameron v 26 per cent under Sunak).
Or ponder how, in just one year, Brown recovered from a greater disaster in 2009’s local elections, when he landed in third place (23 per cent national vote share) before holding Cameron to a hung parliament.
What’s at work here? It is too simple to see political comebacks as driven by isolated factors, as or the result of political operatives (Lynton Crosby for Cameron, James Carville for Clinton, et al). The real driver is electoral tightening – whereby opposition parties tend to see their leads fall away as polling day approaches.
Seminal work by the political science professor Andrew Gelman and his colleagues point to the reasons why incumbent politicians can experience a boost in popularity in the year leading up to an election.
Linked to this, Robert Erikson, another Columbia professor, has shown in US presidential elections that polls conducted a year before an election have virtually no predictive power over the outcome. His work shows that polls only become predictive within six months of election day – the time when many swing and undecided voters start developing specific preferences.
When these preferences start to the form, they tend more towards the incumbent than polls previously suggested. Studies based on these insights show that presidential elections typically tighten by two to three per cent in the year leading up to the poll towards the incumbent.
In sum, political science identifies a number of overlapping factors relevant to the UK, including:
- Incumbency advantages, which kick-in during the election campaign.
- Buyer’s remorse towards an opposition party which comes under greater scrutiny during a campaign.
- Voters, reflecting more on the election, drifting back to their initial / historic preferences (it’s easier to think freely a year out from an election to a day before an election).
- Swing or undecided voters forming preferences relatively close to election day.
In understanding last week’s election results, we’ve attempted to account for this deep-seated tendency for elections to tilt back to the governing party. Our analysis of the 2023 local elections shows that Sunak does indeed have a narrow path from which to launch his and the Conservative Party’s comeback.
In the past 10 UK general elections, historic opinion polling data shows that the governing party’s poll ratings have improved significantly in nine elections, and by an average of 4.6 percentage points.
If this is applied to last week’s local election’s results on a national basis, Labour would be the largest party, 35 seats short of a majority.
Below is where Labour would fall under different tightening scenarios (this accounts for recent polling in Scotland, though we accept that this is fluid):
- Polls tighten as they did in 2010, to Gordon Brown’s advantage: Conservatives largest party, short by 26 seats.
- Average (mean) of historical amounts of tightening: Labour largest party, short by 35 seats.
- If Sunak benefits from only half of the amount of tightening of the average of the past 10 elections: Labour largest party, short by 22 seats.
Politicians are, of course, not passive figures in a mathematical model. Electoral tightening happens because of the decisions that politicians take as participants.
Given the Conservatives are unlikely to have the pick of coalition partners after the next election, they will want to outperform the tightening that Brown enjoyed in 2010. Here are three key lessons that Sunak should focus on to maximise his chances.
- Frame the election on his terms.
During the run-up to the 2015 general election, the Conservative Party focused on a clear message: that they were the party of economic stability and security. This message resonated with voters, many of whom were still feeling the effects of the 2008 financial crisis.
Sunak will need to find a similar message that resonates with voters and stick to it throughout the campaign. The most fertile ground will be a version of practical progress against the people’s priorities in the face of an energy price shock caused by war in Ukraine and a once in a generation pandemic: a slogan needs to be crafted.
There is an obvious counter that some recent Conservative policies are correcting previous decisions taken under Tory governments. But Starmer’s inability to find a message that inspires so far – much like the Cameron of 2010 – means that he is vulnerable to a well-executed CCHQ campaign.
- Appeal to a broad coalition to minimise tactical voting.
Many studies of the Conservatives’ 1997 defeat point to the role of tactical voting in uniting an ‘anti-Tory coalition’. In other words, voters not just abandoning the Tories, but actively planning on voting for any party which would get them out of power. This was the opposite of 2015, when the party benefitted from being able to appeal to Liberal Democrat voters in the South West, Labour switchers and UKIP waverers. So called “culture wars” are kryptonite in this type of environment.
- Protect, as much as possible, the Prime Minister’s personal ratings in the heat of a campaign:
Political campaigns are unpredictable, and unexpected events can quickly derail even the best-laid plans. There will be significant pressure in the run up to and on the campaign trail for Sunak to get angry and strike out against Starmer. This should be avoided at all costs. Cameron always remained more popular than his party, and this is an asset Sunak needs to keep.
The challenge for Sunak should not be underestimated. Outperforming Brown’s electoral tightening of 2010 may not even produce an outright majority. But politics is all about definition in the moment. Ending up give or 10 seats short, given where the Conservative were half a year ago, would be a political comeback of historic proportions. How a Conservative administration could govern stably in such a dynamic is the subject for another article…
Nick Bonstow is Head of Research at Strand Partners, a policy and communications consultancy.
History is littered with examples of politicians written off for dead before confounding the pundits. And you don’t have to be a Falklands-style war leader to turn around your fortunes.
Over the pond, Bill Clinton was famously known as the Comeback Kid. Not just in his famous 1992 Democratic primary turnaround, but also his successful re-election campaign in 1996, after being savaged in the US midterms. His defeat in those 1994 midterms was so large that Bob Dole, the Republican who Clinton easily saw off two years later, “euphorically” beamed to crowds that “we’re Winning! We’re Winning! We’re Winning!”
When you look beyond the surface, though, a once in a generation political talent like Clinton isn’t needed to engineer such success.
Think of 2013. David Cameron came back to win a majority two years later from a lower projected national share in local elections than Rishi Sunak’s performance last week (25 per cent for the Conservatives under Cameron v 26 per cent under Sunak).
Or ponder how, in just one year, Brown recovered from a greater disaster in 2009’s local elections, when he landed in third place (23 per cent national vote share) before holding Cameron to a hung parliament.
What’s at work here? It is too simple to see political comebacks as driven by isolated factors, as or the result of political operatives (Lynton Crosby for Cameron, James Carville for Clinton, et al). The real driver is electoral tightening – whereby opposition parties tend to see their leads fall away as polling day approaches.
Seminal work by the political science professor Andrew Gelman and his colleagues point to the reasons why incumbent politicians can experience a boost in popularity in the year leading up to an election.
Linked to this, Robert Erikson, another Columbia professor, has shown in US presidential elections that polls conducted a year before an election have virtually no predictive power over the outcome. His work shows that polls only become predictive within six months of election day – the time when many swing and undecided voters start developing specific preferences.
When these preferences start to the form, they tend more towards the incumbent than polls previously suggested. Studies based on these insights show that presidential elections typically tighten by two to three per cent in the year leading up to the poll towards the incumbent.
In sum, political science identifies a number of overlapping factors relevant to the UK, including:
In understanding last week’s election results, we’ve attempted to account for this deep-seated tendency for elections to tilt back to the governing party. Our analysis of the 2023 local elections shows that Sunak does indeed have a narrow path from which to launch his and the Conservative Party’s comeback.
In the past 10 UK general elections, historic opinion polling data shows that the governing party’s poll ratings have improved significantly in nine elections, and by an average of 4.6 percentage points.
If this is applied to last week’s local election’s results on a national basis, Labour would be the largest party, 35 seats short of a majority.
Below is where Labour would fall under different tightening scenarios (this accounts for recent polling in Scotland, though we accept that this is fluid):
Politicians are, of course, not passive figures in a mathematical model. Electoral tightening happens because of the decisions that politicians take as participants.
Given the Conservatives are unlikely to have the pick of coalition partners after the next election, they will want to outperform the tightening that Brown enjoyed in 2010. Here are three key lessons that Sunak should focus on to maximise his chances.
During the run-up to the 2015 general election, the Conservative Party focused on a clear message: that they were the party of economic stability and security. This message resonated with voters, many of whom were still feeling the effects of the 2008 financial crisis.
Sunak will need to find a similar message that resonates with voters and stick to it throughout the campaign. The most fertile ground will be a version of practical progress against the people’s priorities in the face of an energy price shock caused by war in Ukraine and a once in a generation pandemic: a slogan needs to be crafted.
There is an obvious counter that some recent Conservative policies are correcting previous decisions taken under Tory governments. But Starmer’s inability to find a message that inspires so far – much like the Cameron of 2010 – means that he is vulnerable to a well-executed CCHQ campaign.
Many studies of the Conservatives’ 1997 defeat point to the role of tactical voting in uniting an ‘anti-Tory coalition’. In other words, voters not just abandoning the Tories, but actively planning on voting for any party which would get them out of power. This was the opposite of 2015, when the party benefitted from being able to appeal to Liberal Democrat voters in the South West, Labour switchers and UKIP waverers. So called “culture wars” are kryptonite in this type of environment.
Political campaigns are unpredictable, and unexpected events can quickly derail even the best-laid plans. There will be significant pressure in the run up to and on the campaign trail for Sunak to get angry and strike out against Starmer. This should be avoided at all costs. Cameron always remained more popular than his party, and this is an asset Sunak needs to keep.
The challenge for Sunak should not be underestimated. Outperforming Brown’s electoral tightening of 2010 may not even produce an outright majority. But politics is all about definition in the moment. Ending up give or 10 seats short, given where the Conservative were half a year ago, would be a political comeback of historic proportions. How a Conservative administration could govern stably in such a dynamic is the subject for another article…