Keir Starmer: Labour's massive YouGov poll lead isn't quite what it seems.

Keir Starmer's Labour is currently enjoying a record breaking 17 point poll lead, but unearned as it is, what's the reality? So, Labour’s record breaking, stonking great 17 point lead in YouGov has had mainstream pundits getting excitable as more and more of them have been instructed to back Team Keith over crackpot Truss, the media barons deciding it’s time to switch allegiances again and push for a change in government – they’ve successfully done so since 1979 after all. However, the poll lead is not what it seems and just as Labour’s poll leads when facing Johnson were built on sand, the foundations are no more solid now. Looking at the YouGov charts, you can see that the churn is pretty much only between Labour and the Tories, with a demonstration of how badly the Tories are doing as across just a matter of days they’ve dropped 4 points and Labour have risen 5, a 9 point swing to Labour, but are we seeing Tory voters going to Labour here? Look at this bit here. These are people who voted Tory in 2019 expressed in percentage terms and a massive 25% of Tory voters then are now saying they don’t know who they would vote for. If you follow the column up a bit you can see that of those 2019 Tory voters, just 8% of them would vote Labour now. I actually flicked back through the last several voting intention charts for YouGov Voting intention polls and that Tory don’t know column has been significant for a while, but 25% is the highest yet. A quarter of the Tory vote in the last General Election aren’t sure they’d do the same thing again, yet far fewer would vote for Starmer now. It doesn’t look like the red wall is swinging back towards Labour significantly, it does appear that Labour’s consistent leads with YouGov are down to the number of Tory voters now becoming don’t knows. The Tories are losing voters, but Labour isn’t gaining them particularly. How those don’t knows would end up splitting if they vote at all is anyones guess right now, but these charts do not reflect a Labour Party on course for a landslide victory, equally it’s not necessarily as bad for the Tories right now as the headline numbers suggest. Take your polls with a pinch of salt as always.