New political strategy survey from Hold Sway covered by Comment is Freed

I’m pleased to introduce the brand new Hold Sway Political Strategy Tracker. This is the first in what I hope will become a long-running series. For the first wave I’ve partnered with Britain’s leading politics Substack, Comment is Freed. You can read Sam Freedman’s analysis of the survey here (I firmly recommend subscribing if you haven’t done so already). Data tables relating to Sam’s article are here.

There will be plenty more to say about the findings in the coming weeks but for now, just a few words about how this survey thinks about the electorate.

Academic analysis of voting behaviour in Britain this century shows sharply rising voter volatility: old party identities have broken down and voters have felt more comfortable switching between parties from one election to the next. With this has come a declining share of the vote for the two largest parties of the last century, Labour and the Conservatives. Their collective share dropped below 60% at the 2024 election, comfortably its lowest since the Second World War.

At the same time, the electorate appears to have become more polarised. Increasingly, academics and analysts talk about “bloc voting” in which voters pick either the right or the left, and vote for a party within one of those categories, rather than switching between blocs. For example, there was a great deal more movement from the Conservatives to Reform at the 2024 election than there was from the Conservatives to Labour, the Lib Dems or the Greens. Stan Greenberg’s recent polling and analysis has focused on this polarisation, and how the Brexit divide has been replaced by one centred around Trump, immigration, climate and net zero policies, and wokeness.

My contribution to this ongoing discussion is an effort to measure and analyse the “blocs” of the British electorate, with a particular focus on the group of voters that remains open to voting for either the left/progressive bloc or the right wing bloc. In this survey, what I’m calling the progressive parties comprises Labour, the Liberal Democrats, the Green Party, Scottish National Party, and Plaid Cymru. The right wing parties are the Conservatives and Reform UK. A voter is defined as belonging to the “progressive bloc” if they currently intend to vote for one of the progressive parties, and do not have a “good” or “fair chance” of voting for either of the other bloc’s parties. A “centre left” voter is voting for a progressive party, but does have a “good” or “fair chance” of voting for the Tories or Reform. A “centre right” voter is currently with a right wing party, but gives themselves a chance of voting for at least one of the progressive parties. And a “right wing bloc” voter is a Tory or Reform voter who doesn’t give themselves a chance of voting for any of the progressive parties.

Breaking the electorate down in this way throws up a number of insights, both about the kind of people who might be described as swing voters, and about the strategic conundrums facing the major parties. For much more on this, again, check out Comment is Freed.