🐧 The public have spoken on the penguins kept in a windowless basement in London Aquarium: 40% think it's unacceptable and just 19% think it's acceptable

Interesting how much Bluesky usage has fallen - it is now about half of what it was in November 2024 - would be intrigued to know people's theories about why that is

Fascinated by this way of measuring a Prime Minister's popularity... By the same measure, here's the number of babies given the first name of our PMs one year into office: Keir: 0 Rishi: 37 Liz: 24 Boris: 43 Theresa: 20 David: 1,163 Gordon: 14 Tony: 135 Source: ONS

Every week we ask who Britons would vote for - this week we asked who they'd vote *against* Here's what a negative voting intention looks like: 🌹Lab 23% ➡️ Ref: 22% 🌳 Con: 10% 🌏 Green: 4% 🐦‍ LD: 4%

Something really striking about the energy transition in the UK is that, despite having halved our emissions since 1990, very few people are aware of this success - only a quarter of the public think we've made a meaningful difference to cutting our emissions

Great blog from Rory about where AI rhetoric and policy might reinforce a sense that the government isn't focusing on the issues that people care about

Really strong connection between life satisfaction and voting intention - people with low life satisfaction are much more likely to take a risk on a smaller or newer party, Labour is only comfortably ahead on people who give their life satisfaction at 10/10

The standout feature from Reform’s performance in the polls is not how many votes they are winning from the Conservatives and Labour, but how many they are gaining from non-voters. Whether or not these voters actually turn out will shape the next election - a 🧵

I think this is really interesting and revealing polling, but also worth remembering that in a fragmented/multiparty system these head-to-heads matter less to national vote patterns - it makes no difference if a Green voter prefers Badenoch to Farage if they won't vote for either anyway

🆕 Latest @moreincommonuk.bsky.social voting intention. The Tories fall below 20% for the first time in our tracking, and Reform reach above 30% for the first time too. ➡️ REF 31% (+1) 🌹 LAB 22% (nc) 🌳 CON 19% (-2) 🔶 LD 14% (nc) 🌍 GREEN 8% (nc) N = 2,000 | 23-26 May | Change w16-19

Sign of how things have changed on Twitter/X over the last year: In the 2024 local elections, Green gains won easily the most likes on Twitter. In this year's locals, those were overshadowed by people liking and engaging with Reform wins.

At 30% of the vote, Reform UK have now effectively doubled their vote share since the General Election, drawing almost equal amounts of votes from the Conservatives, 2024 non-voters, and Labour and other left-wing parties

Should you need to have GCSE maths and english to vote in UK elections? A fifth of Britons think so - and younger Britons are most supportive of the idea

One way to measure levels of polarisation between different voter groups is to assess whether people can understand or explain why people might vote for another party: On this measure, Liberal Democrat voters are the least understanding of what might be driving people to Reform

Number of wards won with more than 50% of the vote: 🌹 Labour: 3 (!!) 💚 Greens: 9 🕴️ Independents: 14 🌳 Conservatives: 27 🐦 Liberal Democrats: 55 ↗️ Reform: 66 (!!)

There has been lots of talk about a theoretical Tory-Reform pact at a national level - but look locally and around the country these parties will have to work together if they want to administer their county councils, where a Reform-Tory deal is the only way to get a majority.

Expect we will see more and more charts like this by the end of the day - an absolutely totalising rise of Reform in Staffordshire, which has be solidly Conservative for 16 years

If Runcorn really is within 4 votes it would be the closest result in a by-election in modern history. Only 2 parliamentary by elections since World War 2 have been decided by fewer than 100 votes.

Looking at initial data from Northumberland - it's revealing (and to some extent surprising) that Reform are performing best in the more Labour-y areas, and doing less well in more Conservative areas - could signal more worry for Labour later tonight

Turnout in Northumberland so far looks more or less spot on what it was in 2021

Political nerdery is a finite resource... Interest on wikipedia for UK local elections peaked in 2021 and has been declining ever since

🔥 Putting my geography degree to good use and looking at some historic weather data - Today is Britain's hottest local election on record! Typically, warm weather can increase turnout, but today's unseasonably hot May day could have the opposite effect if it ends up TOO hot...

Some dramatic age profiles for voting intention at these local elections: Steep drop-off in Lab and Green support with age, Conservatives doing particularly well with the 75+ group, Reform winning among middle-aged voters

The big test for Reform at these local elections will be if they can convince their voters to come out to vote - in our polling, Reform voters are the LEAST likely to say they usually vote in locals, but the MOST likely to say they'll definitely vote in these ones

We asked voters in this week's local elections to describe the four largest parties in England in a word - can you guess which is which?

Our polling shows Reform are likely win the mayoralty in Hull and East Yorkshire next week - to find out why people are voting for Reform we’ve been holding focus groups across the mayoralty for the last week. Here’s what I learned from a group of voters in Hull on Thursday 🧵

For St George's day, here's how English voters would vote based on how proud they are to be English: 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Very proud: Reform ahead by 6 pts 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Somewhat proud: Tories ahead by 2 pts 🤷‍♂️ Neither proud nor ashamed: Labour ahead by 7 pts 🚫🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Ashamed: Greens ahead by 3 pts

Public opinion on issues like this is not unmovable - but this certainly goes agains the grain of even Reform voters, who are strongly opposed to allowing imports of chlorinated chicken to secure a trade deal

In an electorate this fragmented, MRP modelling reveals some extremely unprecedented and unusual results - here is a thread of some of the more interesting details from this model… 🧵

Looking at demographics for the four mayoralties up for election in May - the range of educational level is quite substantial and probably says a fair amount about what the results will be in each...

We’ve had some great feedback on our report on Progressive Activists and are keen to work with orgs that want to get the best from progressive workforces. Though I’ve seen a handful of people have interpreted what we’re saying as progressives need to be more centrist and wanted to respond to that. 🧵

‘Our polling suggests viewers who would prefer to play as a Faithful are more likely to vote Labour, and ones who would prefer to play as a Traitor are more likely to vote Tory. How can we explain this?’ 🖋 @moreincommonuk.bsky.social’s @edhodgsoned.bsky.social https://buff.ly/4hirex2

Here's an alternative look at Britain's current voting intention: 6 in 10 of today's Reform UK voters come from the Boris Johnson block of Conservative voters, which has completely splintered since 2019.

One striking consequence of this is that Labour would loose three quarters of their rural constituencies, and Labour's hold over rural Britain would fall from a third of rural constituencies to just under a tenth, while the Conservatives regain most of their rural strongholds

Last few days to apply to work with us as a Research Associate / Research Manager at MIC UK - Deadline Sunday evening! more-in-common.jobs.personio.com/job/1853035?... Feel free to reach out if you have any questions about the role

We've seen an 85% decline in department stores over this last decade. This report sets out how communities are charting a new path for these national institutions.

Made this chart yesterday and can't stop thinking about it - how Brits plan to vote according to what they see as the top issues...

As part of our commitment to transparency, excited that today we are releasing the raw microdata behind this poll so that other researchers can explore the data in much more detail

Quite a striking gap: Private sector workers are 16 pts more likely to say they are satisfied with their work lives than people who work in the public sector

Over the weekend we asked the public whether they thought Parliament made the right or wrong decision by voting in favour of the assisted dying bill - 62% said right decision and only 16% opposed. A short 🧵 of other reactions from the public to the Bill's passage...

NEW - We don't know the ages of every MP, but for those we do, younger MPs were much more likely to vote in favour of assisted dying. The average "aye" voter was 5 years younger than the average "no" voter.

🧵Lots of discussion about unhappiness with the social contract recently. Some of our new findings on how that might be linked to growing electoral fragmentation. 1) Reform & Green voters are significantly more likely to say their parents will have had a more comfortable life than they will have.

One surprising thing about British support for assisted dying is that support is not a sign of increasingly liberal attitudes over time, but goes back decades and is basically unwavering. Here's a Gallup poll from *1950* showing support outnumbering opposition 2 to 1

Having spent the last months researching public opinion on assisted dying, one of the most interesting things has been how it doesn't polarise along traditional lines of political party, gender, socioeconomic group, or region. So what does shape public opinion on this? 🧵....

Pretty striking from the British Social Attitudes Survey: In 2016, 58% of Brits supported trans people's right to change their legal sex; by 2022 that number had halved to just 31%

🏳️‍🌈🗳️ - Just seven percent of the UK voted for the Green Party at this election, but 14% of gay and bisexual people did - including more than a fifth (22%!) of bisexual women

Ask people to predict how likely they are to vote for each of the main parties, and Gen-Z are (narrowly) more likely to say they would vote Reform than the Conservatives

One of those polling findings that is exactly the opposite of what you might expect - young Britons are *much* more likely to believe in life after death than their older counterparts, even though they are far less religious

Safe to say the pressure would have only built on the Archbishop had he not resigned - this weekend six in ten Britons thought the Archbishop should resign when told about the findings of the review into the handling of the John Smyth case.

This excellent research by @edhodgsoned.bsky.social concluded that the public back action to tackle emissions from private jet flights. As well as backing taxes, the public is almost three times as likely to support an outright ban on private jets (43 per cent) than oppose such a ban (15 per cent)