By Rufus Pickles - Local Democracy Reporter
By Rufus Pickles Local Democracy Reporter and IW Observer
Reform UK would win both the Isle of Wight’s parliamentary seats if an ‘election were held tomorrow’, YouGov has projected.
The pollster’s ‘industry-leading’ MRP model, based on a representative sample of 13,000 voters projects Reform UK winning Isle of Wight West with 35 per cent of the vote and Isle of Wight East with 34 per cent. It predicts that Reform UK would end up with 311 parliamentary seats, just 15 short of an absolute majority. The party has increased their result by 40 seats from the same projections released a year ago.
A YouGov spokesman said “high levels of uncertainty and volatility” are “now the norm in British electoral politics.” The September results are “no different in that regard,” he added.
The results are not the result of a traditional poll; instead they are constructed from a complex formula that uses large data samples to find relationships between the characteristics of people and what they say about who they will vote for. It then combines these relationships with the characteristics of people in different areas to give estimates of the results of elections. The number of people answering questions in each constituency can be relatively small, YouGov say; it is a minimum of 35.
The research for these latest results was undertaken between August 31 and September 24, so they do not take account of any movement in views caused by the political party conference season.
Projected results:
Isle of Wight East – Reform UK: 34 per cent, Conservatives: 21 per cent, Green Party: 20 per cent, Liberal Democrats: 12 per cent, Labour: 11 per cent, Other: 2 per cent.
Isle of Wight West – Reform UK: 35 per cent, Labour: 24 per cent, Conservatives: 17 per cent, Liberal Democrats and Green Party: 11 per cent, Other: 3 per cent.
Carole Dennett