Dylan Difford
@dylandifford.bsky.social
YouGov data journalist • Elections, polls, voting systems • "I like people, places and things" • dylan.difford@yougov.com
I did not ask for this gift of prophesy.
Dylan Difford@dylandifford.bsky.social · 4w agoIt's not improbable that Reform fall below 20% in VI by the end of the year. It's reasonably likely that some Lab to LD/Grn voters will give Burnham the benefit of the doubt. What's definite is that both happening will lead to a flurry of terrible "whisper it, the two-party system's back" articles.
A useful reminder that the Conservatives' electoral problems are not solely about appeal and image, but also organisational.
Joe Egerton@joeegg.bsky.social · 2d agoThe great Conservative debacle in Greater Manchester has attracted comment by @timbale.bsky.social , @dylandifford.bsky.social , @robertsaunders.bsky.social @stephenkb.bsky.social and others. Electoral Commission data shows the Party's organisational disintegration open.substack.com/pub/jegerton...
"You'd imagine a poster on the SS would focus on all the bad things they did, the atrocities. And this one, it's well, weapons of the SS, medals of the SS, heroes of the SS. You know, it's a bit SS-y."
The Crusader Project@crusaderproject.bsky.social · 3d agoRe-enactors again not beating the allegations. Market Harborough at War today, apparently. @waitmanwbeorn.com @alanallport.bsky.social @garius.bsky.social @andraswf.bsky.social
32 tomorrow? Fuck off. When did this come in? I will never besmirch the good name of winter ever again.
Some questions about whether vanilla wins purely from 'favourite' being a first past the post contest, but it's the most popular no matter how you cut it. Raspberry ripple arguably the shorest changed by FPTP.
YouGov@yougov.co.uk · 5d agoBeyond their overall favourites, which ice cream flavours do Britons like? Vanilla: 84% love or like Raspberry ripple: 70% Chocolate: 67% Strawberry: 66% Mint choc chip: 64% Salted caramel: 64% Neapolitan: 50% Pistachio: 48% Coffee: 41% Banana: 38% Rum and raisin: 35% yougov.com/en-gb/articl...
Went back and forth on the graphic so many times. Really wanted the bubble chart (which I do like) to stand by itself, but couldn't get a way of labelling that I was happy with. A few ways that nearly worked, but never quite there.
YouGov@yougov.co.uk · 5d agoYouGov's latest scoop: vanilla is Britain's favourite ice cream flavour Vanilla: 18% Mint choc chip: 14% Chocolate: 13% Strawberry: 5% Salted caramel: 5% Rum and raisin: 5% Pistachio: 4% Coffee: 3% Raspberry ripple: 3% yougov.com/en-gb/articl...
So many poll reporting things, but particularly people conflating the various types of leadership rating. Last September, Farage had a net well/badly score of +18 and a net favourability rating of -31. That's a 49 point gap, they're not synonymous.
Sanjay Srivastava@sanjaysrivastava.com · 6d agoWhat is an extremely nerdy/obscure/specific thing you hate with a white-hot wrath?
Maybe the French Navy just really hate appalling typesetting, in which case, fair enough.
Henry Mance@henrymance.ft.com · last wk.update: Chris Philp has invaded France.
I did not ask for this gift of prophesy.
Dylan Difford@dylandifford.bsky.social · 4w agoIt's not improbable that Reform fall below 20% in VI by the end of the year. It's reasonably likely that some Lab to LD/Grn voters will give Burnham the benefit of the doubt. What's definite is that both happening will lead to a flurry of terrible "whisper it, the two-party system's back" articles.
Andy Burnham's lead over his opponents on who would make the better PM has grown over the last month Burnham: 48% (+5 from 23-24 Jun) Farage: 22% (-1) Burnham: 38% (+6) Badenoch: 26% (-2) Burnham: 45% (+7) Polanski: 9% (-2) Burnham: 41% (+9) Davey: 8% (-3) yougov.com/en-gb/articl...
The number of Britons backing Kemi Badenoch against Nigel Farage or Ed Davey over who would make the better PM has increased significantly over the last year Badenoch: 41% (+20 from 3-4 Aug 25) Farage: 17% (-6) Badenoch: 32% (+14) Davey: 23% (-3) yougov.com/en-gb/articl...
The problem with the idea the UK has low turnout because it lacks compulsory voting is that it has managed a high turnout vote (inc among young voters) in recent years: the Scottish independence referendum. And the difference between it and e.g. GE2024 explain low turnout, and aren't solved by CV.
Although our latest voting intention poll (22-23 July 2026) is largely within the margin of error of our previous poll, Labour is up six points from its low of 16% recorded as recently as May, while Reform UK's figure is the lowest recorded by our tracker since March 2025 yougov.com/en-gb/articl...
Logo perhaps the funniest one. Bordering on a literal five second job to isolate the 1O numeral and type the word "NORTH" in Trajan. Probably most time consuming bit would have been fussing on the letter spacing for "NORTH".
James O'Malley@jamesomalley.co.uk · 2w agoNew mad conspiracy theory just dropped. (Answers: It's a GCHQ building, and I presume black paint and doors are available at B&Q.)
Endlessly fascinating how many in the Tories and Labour combine an obsessive preference for two-partyism and a hatred of the internal pluralism needed to have the big tents required for a two-party system. The cost of ideologically pure silos is external pluralism.
Financial Times@financialtimes.com · 2w agoTory party ‘bans’ candidates who don’t back its human rights and net zero pledges ft.trib.al/6Q5KBLD
A hearty well done to SWR for making it 5/5 on me getting home at least 20 minutes late every day this week because of their inability to run a punctual service. This included the 3rd occasion in three weeks of being on a train that randomly decided it would be running fast minutes before departure.
Although our latest voting intention poll (22-23 July 2026) shows all parties within the margin of error of our previous poll, it reaffirms the tightening of the race seen in recent months, with Labour up five points from its low of 16% recorded as recently as May yougov.com/en-gb/articl...
Latest major party leader net favourability ratings, July 2026 Andy Burnham: +3 Ed Davey: -8 Kemi Badenoch: -11 Zack Polanski: -26 Nigel Farage: -46 yougov.com/en-gb/articl...
Nigel Farage's latest net favourability rating of -46 (21-22 July 2026) is the joint lowest figure recorded by YouGov in the ten years we have run our favourability tracker Favourable: 22% (-3 from 12-13 July) Unfavourable: 68% (=) Net: -46 (-3) yougov.com/en-gb/articl...
How does Andy Burnham's first net favourability as prime minister compare to his recent predecessors'? Theresa May: +12 Andy Burnham: +3 Keir Starmer: -3 Boris Johnson: -18 Rishi Sunak: -19 Liz Truss: -31 yougov.com/en-gb/articl...
Some people really down on the Sarwar appointment, but you have to remember that beyond his stellar record of results for Scottish Labour, he's also a special category of political operator: someone who got outplayed by Keir Starmer.
Exactly why the Keminaissance stuff is so detached from reality. Sure, she's become more popular among 2024 Tories and Reformers, but no progress elsewhere, and that's from a low information situation. It works as a path to unite most of the right, but works against anything further.
Chairman Moët@chairmanmoet.bsky.social · 2w agoBadenoch positioning the Tory party to appeal to people who hate Net Zero and *checks notes* want someone more right-wing than Nigel Farage? www.thesun.co.uk/news/3865659...
What's the electoral inheritance for Andy Burnham's government and how could he change it? Using our new Big Voter Study, we can see that a good proportion of the voters Labour has lost - mainly those to the LDs, Greens and DK - are at least open to the idea of voting Labour again.
Everybody is reading levels of precision into this that the underlying data just isn't robust enough to support.
Gavin Jackson@gavinjackson.bsky.social · 2w agoThey don't like Burnham in the Thames Estuary www.economist.com/britain/2026...
If FIFA are so desperate to find out what "Sudetenland is German" is in Argentine Spanish, they could just use Google Translate. No need to wait for the banner.
If FIFA are so desperate to find out what "Sudetenland is German" is in Argentine Spanish, they could just use Google Translate. No need to wait for the banner.
Just remembered there's the likelihood of an increase in Labour's VI share around the same time as a weakening in Reform support, so am probably going to have to prepare for another round of ecologically fallacious thinking within Westminster circles.
- Why have 59% of 2024 Labour voters abandoned the party? - What do different Labour groups think of Burnham? - How solid is Reform UK's rise? - Who likes Kemi Badenoch? - What's driving support for parties from the Greens to Restore? These questions - and more - covered by our new big voter study:
Big YouGov Voter Study 2026
A major new study of British voters, two years since the 2024 election, examining why some voters moved and why some have stayed
yougov.com
It was the summer, there's a brand new Labour PM. They need to pick something for their first big policy announcement, looking tough is a bonus. Among the many things they could go for, they pick something that is going to be divisive among the Labour coalition. It all goes swimmingly.
James Ball@jamesrball.com · 3w agoAndy Burnham is going directly against the 2024 Labour manifesto by doing this (as the BBC correctly and prominently notes). That opens a door that his team have tried hard to keep shut. If he can go against the manifesto for *this*, he will hear, why not for other issues?