Question: If the General Election were held today, who would you vote for?

polls conducted between the 20th and 26th of June

Movements: Social Democratic Party up 1 place, Green Left down 1 place

Notes on polling:

• We are using the new method (same as the last poll) of generating the margin of error - Gaussian random numbers using this generator - the margin of error is generated using a normal distribution with a standard deviation of 1 (the results are around the same as before - slightly smaller than the old 3% range)
• This polling is for the date range specified, that means that if some recent events will not have been included in this, they will be included in the next set of polls
• Any complaints about the polls are probably due to the above two points, so please don't launch us with questions like "why has x party not fallen/risen?" or "but x party did this last week, why haven't we done really well?" because I will just point you to this thread

Explainer Notes

Well, I suppose it is a good thing you asked for explainer notes so I can explain *this*. But first, the good:

• Conservatives and Classical Liberals were very active (with the latter submitting a lot of legislation but crucially also backing it up with being the most active commenters. So no, spamming legislation won’t get you loads of modifiers but commenting on it/any legislation will - go figure!).
• LPUK, Labour and the Democratic Reformist Front were also very active. The latter is held back a bit by being new, but the first two - way to go.
• Liberal Democrats and Social Democratic Party are what I’d call ‘average’. Good, but not as good as the peers above. SDP gains more as it’s a lower base (this is what the DRF are looking at if they keep it up over a couple of weeks).
• The People’s Movement steady.
• New Britain, Green Left and NUP could do better.
• Oh and Plaid doing well although all/most the activity is from one person, but they are holding steady.

Now, onto the elephant in the room, the Conservatives drop. First of all, to come clean, margin of error held it back a bit last week - the Tories really fell about 2% in both weeks rather than 1% last week and then this massive 3% drop so it is certainly not a result of something specific this week (in fact, they’ve been a lot better this week than last). Additionally, it’s not because of events that happened this week, this is pure ‘activity’ stuff.

What is happening, is that quite a few parties are actually improving in activity to the point when they are actually week-on-week matching or coming close to the Conservatives - which is good, but something we are not used to. This leads to parties getting boosts and, those percentages come from the Conservatives most prominently because they are the largest party.

To give some more detailed information on this, in 4 recent weeks before/at the Conservatives fall - they were about 40, 20, 20, 20 comments in front of the next nearest party (and the other parties even further behind). Likewise, on ‘active members’, the Tories were 10, 9, 3, 3 in front (the latter two begun the slippage). In the two weeks we’ve seen the big fall, the Conservatives were 10 comments behind the leader in Week 1 and 5 comments in front in Week 2 but - notably - not only has the gaps fallen and the Conservatives are in second place on comments some of the time, there are 4/5 parties reasonably competing for top spot each week on comments rather than it being best of the rest. The same trends are found in active members and in debate quality.

Basically, all the time that the Conservatives were 20-40 (and I’ve seen higher leads in the past, even 100 when they were in 2 week blocs) comments in front (and members etc), they would rise to 35% etc but now that the other parties aren’t just catching up but are beating the Tories on some metrics AND it’s not just one party but 3/4/5 of them, the system can’t justify the Conservatives being double their next rival and thus, the fall.

It’s slightly unfair because the Conservatives haven’t done much wrong and are still at or around the most active party, but when put in the context of a 15-20% lead over the next biggest party, this fall is explainable.

Will it continue? That’s the main question. If the Conservatives redouble their efforts and return to activity levels seen before then they could grow again, it’s all relative. If the other parties slip off expect the Tories to regain as well. If the parties maintain this trend then the Conservatives probably will still fall but at lower rates (because as they get closer together the difference that ‘catching up’ to the tories makes becomes way smaller. If the other parties redouble their efforts and become even more active then yes, expect more weeks like this.

I hope this makes sense, I thought it deserved a longer explanation. Happy to answer any questions/concerns but please don’t just ask a million times “does this count/did this count” because the answer is - as always - if it’s something good in game then yes.