Outside the Beltway

Boris Johnson In Strong Shape As General Election Campaign Begins

With the 2019 United Kingdom General Election campaign just starting, Boris Johnson and the Tories look to be in strong shape. However, anything can happen in the next six weeks.

Doug Mataconis · Sunday, November 3, 2019 · 8 comments

Forty days from today, British voters head to the polls for the third General Election in four years, and the fourth if you count the Brexit Referendum in 2016. In each of those elections, the issue of the United Kingdom’s leaving the European Union will be at the center of the race, but it has been different in each case.

In the 2015 election that solidified the Tory majority that had been won in 2010, Conservatives won in no small part on the fact that they were promising to put the issue of leaving the E.U. on the ballot during their next term of office. While the relationship between the United Kingdom and the European Union had always been somewhat rocky, it’s fair to say that it was at this point that the issue took center stage, especially since it obligated Cameron to follow through on his promise of a Brexit referendum.

That happened in 2016 with the Brexit Referendum itself in which Leave won a narrow victory over Remain in a victory that caused former Prime Minister David Cameron, who had supported the Remain side, to step down as party leader. Cameron, of course, was replaced by Theresa May, who was charged with guiding the nation through the Brexit process and negotiating a Brexit deal with the European Union.

In 2017, eyeing an opportunity to increase her bargaining power with the E.U. based on poll numbers that showed favorable numbers for the Tories, May called a snap election that ended up backfiring on her and required her to into a relationship with Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party to keep her hold on power. Fort the next two-and-a-half years, May attempt to negotiate a Brexit deal that Parliament would accept only to be stabbed in the back (and in the front) by her own political party. Unable to negotiate a successful deal, May stood aside and was replaced over the summer by Boris Johnson.

Anyone who has been following British politics and Brexit over the past three months is aware of what has happened since Johnson took over at Downing Street. We’ve seen rejections of Johnson’s own proposed Brexit plan, a suspension of Parliament that was obviously designed by Johnson to force a hard Brexit, a historic legal ruling nullifying that extension, and further moves by Parliament to limit Johnson’s authority vis a vis Brexit, an extension of the Brexit deadline yet again, and the calling of an election for December 12th.

Now, with the United Kingdom on the verge of a new election during which Brexit will be the primary, if not the only, issue, Johnson finds himself in a very good position in the polls:

U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservatives have 36% support, ahead of Labour’s 28%, the Sunday Telegraph reported, citing the results of a survey by ORB International.

That was followed by the anti-Brexit Liberal Democrats, with 14%, and Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party, with 12%.

The results indicate a narrowing advantage for the Conservatives before the Dec. 12 election, the Telegraph said, citing four polls in the previous two weeks in which the Tories’ lead was 13 to 16 percentage points.

ORB conducted the survey of 1,510 voters Wednesday and Thursday. The Sunday Telegraph didn’t indicate the margin of error.

In addition to this poll, a number of other polls show the Tories with a strong lead over their competitors:

There have been four whole polls released in a single day, and yet somehow we’ve learnt next to nothing about the election. Let’s go through what they say.

Ipsos MORI released a poll with the Evening Standard, which gave the Conservative a massive 17 point lead.

Last night two other polls were released, one from YouGov, which put the Conservative lead at 15 points, and one from Survation, which put the lead at 8 points. A further YouGov poll was released, with fieldwork done over the course of 10 days rather than 2 or 3, and with 11,000 respondents, ten times the usual amount.

The odd thing about this is that, essentially, these polls don’t really show us anything. Compared to the start of September, nothing has changed. Of the four most frequent pollsters, ComRes was on 4 then, and it’s on 4 now. Survation was on 7 then, and it’s on 8 now.

YouGov was on 14 by the 6th of September, and it’s on 15 now – except for the larger poll, which is also on 14. Up until now, only Opinium has shown a major change, rising from from a 2 point Conservative lead, to a 14 point Conservative lead.

That means that as the new polls come out, all they tell us is that most of the pollsters are seeing a stable trend, but each is seeing a trend at a different scale. Of the four polls that have come out in the last 24 hours, YouGov and Survation have a more or less consistent narrative. Survation thinks there’s a moderate Conservative lead, and YouGov thinks there’s a big Conservative lead, including with it’s larger poll – though that doesn’t tell us as much as you might think, given how similar the results are.

At the same time, the “poll of polls” being followed by Politico Europe shows the Tories in the lead at 38%, followed by Labour at 26%, the anti-Brexit Liberal Democrats at 16%,, the pro-Brexit Brexit Party at 10%, and a handful of smaller or regional parties, such as the Scottish National Party at 3% or less. As is the case with the Generic Congressional Ballot here in the United States, it’s not easy to predict what this would mean for a final seat count in the House of Commons. It suggests, however, that if the election were held today, the Tories would be expected to get a sufficient majority to govern on their own without the need of a coalition partner like they’ve needed since the 2017 election. Of course, we saw similar numbers a month before that election as well and, instead of strengthening Theresa May’s majority it ended up requiring her to enter into a Supply And Confidence Agreement with Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party.

That’s why, as The New York Times notes nobody really knows what will happen over the course of the next six weeks or so:

It was shaping up as an ordinary day of campaigning in Britain’s extraordinary general election.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson visited a primary school in Suffolk where he showed children old pictures of London and told them about the days when rulers “used to stick the decapitated heads of the enemies on spikes.” His opponent, Jeremy Corbyn, promised a crowd in London that the Labour Party would never sell out Britain’s National Health Service to greedy American companies.

Then, shortly after 6 p.m. on Thursday evening, Nigel Farage, the insurgent leader of the Brexit Party, welcomed a special guest to his national radio show: President Trump, calling in from Washington to disparage Mr. Corbyn and urge Mr. Johnson to forge a hard-line pro-Brexit alliance with Mr. Farage.

In less than 30 minutes of drive-time banter, Mr. Trump had utterly scrambled the narrative, dominating the next day’s headlines, giving Mr. Farage and his fringe party much-needed oxygen and reminding analysts that nothing in this six-week campaign is likely to go as the soothsayers predict.

“Looking at the polling as it is today, the Conservatives are going to win, and win big,” said Tony Travers, a professor of politics at the London School of Economics. “But the polls looked like this in 2017, and it all evaporated for the Conservatives by the time people voted.”

In that election, Mr. Johnson’s predecessor, Theresa May, set herself the goal of expanding her parliamentary majority. But she proved to be a poor campaigner, and by the time it was over, she was left with a minority government that hobbled her in Brexit negotiations with the European Union and ultimately doomed her withdrawal plan.

Mr. Johnson is viewed as a better campaigner than Mrs. May. He plans to run on a simple message: Get Brexit done quickly, under the agreement he negotiated with the European Union, so that Britain can embark on a shiny future of profitable trade deals with the United States and other countries.

Yet he, too, is a hostage to fortune, facing the danger that the narrative may shift unpredictably and in ways that hurt the Conservative Party.

The number of potential outcomes here is quite varied, of course. Britain could end up with the majority Tory government that the polls seem to be indicating now. This would likely mean early ratification of Johnson’s Brexit deal and a Brexit earlier than the current deadline of January 31st. On the other extreme, there’s the possibility of Labour somehow managing to pull of a win, which would leave the fate of Brexit unclear since the party is not united on the Brexit question at all. It’s also possible that we could see one of the two minor parties — the Lib Dems and the Brexit Party — will see their power in Parliament increase to the point where they could prove to be the deciding factor in which major party ends up controlling the House of Commons. The final possibility, of course, is that the result could end up close to 2017’s hung Parliament, leaving the House of Commons and the status of Brexit as unclear as it was before the election was called.

It’s going to be an interesting six weeks.