Starmers Ghost

The Mail on Sunday says Kemi Badenoch has "stormed to an eight-point poll lead" over Nigel Farage, based on a survey by Conservative Party donor, former deputy chairman, and peer Lord Ashcroft, which puts Labour on 31 percent, the Conservatives on 26 and Reform UK on 18 Ashcroft does not ask people which party they would pick if there were an election tomorrow, he asks them to score from 0 to 100 how likely they are to vote for each party and then counts those whose highest score is at least 50, so someone who is 55 Conservative and 45 Reform still counts as Conservative, and someone who would pick Reform in a forced choice but will not give them 50 may not count as a Reform voter at all That structurally benefits Labour and the Conservatives, because people already carry residual affinity for the parties they have voted for before, and former YouGov president Peter Kellner wrote in August that Ashcroft's numbers "appear as if they are comparable to normal voting intention results. In fact, they are not" Ashcroft had Reform on 18 back in August and on 19 at the beginning of this month, so even his own numbers betray the Mail's splash about some huge shift, and against firms polling in the same late-October and early-November window he has the highest Tory figure at 26 percent against a range of about 20 to 24, and the lowest Reform figure at 18 against about 20 to 25 An eight-point Conservative lead that no conventional pollster in the same window can find is not a serious like-for-like reading of where the country stands, it is effectively a push-poll designed to boost morale for Tories, and the establishment Mail on Sunday is only too delighted to pretend it does anything other than that Kemi is not storming into the lead in British politics