Can't Do a Thing If You Ain't Got Them Swings
44:47 Share

Whatever you're into, you can find it in Knoxville. Or as some call it, fun for the whole family, including your dogville. And even paddle the river before chowing down on a tasty mealville. Start planning your trip to this nature-loving, adventure-seeking, artsy kind of town at visitknoxville.com.

Did you know that Labor Day celebrates the labor effort of more than 155 million workers in the country? And that the first celebration took place in New York on September 5, 1982? If your plan is to celebrate with marijuana, remember that its components can reduce your reaction time when driving, deteriorate your cognitive performance, and hinder your ability to maintain a fixed position on your lane. If you feel different, you drive differently. Drive high. Get a DUI.

Welcome back to Beyond the Polls. I'm joined this week by English pollster Scarlett McGuire to talk about elections on both sides of the pond. I'll also profile some new ads and rant about the balance in the swing states. Let's dive in.

Well, we've been hearing a lot about whether or not there's a Biden bump in the last month because of all of the effort that he's putting out. He's certainly been energetic. He's been running around the country doing events in every single state. He has been spending tens of millions of dollars on paid media, both television and digital. He's been opening offices like there's no tomorrow. That Biden cash advantage is

that we've talked about before and that you've read about in the press, well, he's beginning to disgorge it. And certainly in some national polls, there's been some slight evidence of uptick. But then we have the Wall Street Journal polls that come out today, and they say, no way, Jose.

Let's take a look at what they say. There are seven states that everyone recognizes are going to be the key states based on existing voter demographics in the two-party coalitions. Those are Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

Trump carried only North Carolina, and he did that by a point and a half in 2020. He lost every other one of those states. So where does the race stand right now? Well, according to the Wall Street Journal that did swing state polls,

Trump is ahead in six of them, and he's tied in Wisconsin. The range of the leads goes from plus one in Georgia to plus six in North Carolina. Again, exactly what you would expect, which is that the most Republican state in 2020 is the most Republican state today. But what's important to me is not just the lead, which would say that Trump would easily win the Electoral College if the election were held today, but the shift. In Arizona, the shift from 2020 is about five and a half points.

In Michigan, it's six points. In Nevada, it's six and a half points. In North Carolina, it's four and a half points. In Pennsylvania, it's four. Only in Georgia and in Wisconsin is the shift minor. And we have reason to doubt polls in Wisconsin. And that's because they've tended to dramatically underestimate Republican vote share during the Trump era, when Trump is on the ballot. In 2016, the Real Clear Politics final average of Wisconsin polls

said that Hillary Clinton would win. The polls were off by 7.2%. That's right. The polls showed Hillary Clinton would win by over six points. They were off by 7.2% in the Republican favor. 2020, they predicted properly that Joe Biden was going to win, but they said he was going to win going away. Instead, he won very narrowly. The polls were off six points

in the Democratic favor. So what we see is that if this is a systematic problem in Wisconsin polls, what we would suggest is that maybe the true showing is not that the race is tied in Wisconsin, but that Trump leads by somewhere around five or six points, which would again put the shift roughly in line with that overall average.

Why is that shift important? Well, the national polls suggest a shift overall of somewhere in the five to six point category, depending on the average. Trump lost in 2020 by 4.4 points. Today, he leads by somewhere under a point or a little bit over a point. That would imply a shift nationally between five and six points. Again, what we're seeing here in these state polls is that in most of the polls, we're seeing a shift internationally.

in line with the national average. If you accept that Wisconsin polls tend to miss Trump voters, you see a shift in Wisconsin, and only in Georgia do you not see that shift in the Wall Street Journal polls. Other Georgia polls have Trump up by more, which would put Georgia in line with that shift. What that suggests to me is that this is real, that Trump does lead in enough of these states that he would win the election in the Electoral College if the election were held today.

That's good for Trump.

On the other hand, what we have to recognize is that in none of these polls are we looking at leads that are substantially outside the margin of error. North Carolina and Arizona, I think, are outside the margin of error or just at it. We also are not seeing a situation where Trump is killing him. It's not like Trump's at 53 or something. Trump's usually in the high 40s in these polls with substantial amounts of people who are either undecided or saying that they'll vote for third-party candidates.

This is the factor that befuddled commentators throughout the 2016 elections. They focused on the margin and not the level. What clued me in in 2016 is I was focusing on the margin and not the level until middle of October when I realized that the margin fluctuated solely depending on Trump's standing, that Hillary Clinton seemed locked.

in a non-rising high 40s. And that suggested to me that a lot of the undecided vote were going to break to Trump, that they just weren't being sold on Hillary, but couldn't quite bring themselves to Trump. I'll start taking these polls more as an indication that Trump is likely to win, as opposed to Trump can win, when I start to see...

later in the year, Trump's level. If Trump starts polling close to 50% in most of these swing states, then I think he's at the level that we can say the margin may close, but his level has to drop. But if he's beating Biden 47 to 43 or 46 to 41 or something, he still hasn't sold the deal. He's as much like Hillary Clinton in 2016,

as he is a winning candidate. So let's take as a sum up of these polls. It's clear that despite the big bump that Biden has been trying to procure, he doesn't have it yet.

Not say he won't have it. Not say he can't have it. But a month's of effort has not moved the needle appreciably in his favor in the states that are going to matter. And that is consistent with the overall showing at the national level. So right now, what I have to say is that it's seven months out. Lots can happen.

I always get asked about my predictions, and I always say anyone who would give you a prediction as opposed to odds right now is somebody whose predictions aren't worth listening to. You have to say that Trump is a slight favorite, but that's kind of like saying that somebody is leading a few minutes after halftime in an NFL game when there's still a lot of game to be played.

Get a DUI.

Get to Smoothie King today and try the new blueberry, raspberry, or watermelon lemonade smoothies. They're all made with real fruit, real juice, and no bad stuff. Just check out the no-no list at SmoothieKing.com. Try the new lemonade smoothies at Smoothie King today. Joining me this week is Scarlett McGuire, director at JL Partners, which is an exquisite British pearling firm that has started to jump the pond and speak to recalcitrant, ungrateful colonists.

Scarlett, welcome to Beyond the Polls. Hey. Well, you recently had a Daily Mail poll of the American presidential race that was quite interesting. Can you tell my listeners what you found?

Yeah, so we did a national poll of likely voters. We've done a series of these national polls. This was our latest one. And I know that there's been quite a lot of talk over the last couple of weeks about whether Biden has seen a bounce after the State of the Union and potentially is turning things around. We've not seen that in our poll. So I think it's important to say that we had Biden on 39 and we had Trump on 43.

maintaining a four-point lead that we had him out of our last poll as well. And then we have a chunk, we include undecided voters still, and we also polled for RFK, Cornwall West, and Jill Stein. So could you tell me how it breaks down between the independent candidates and the undecided in your multi-candidate race? Because you've got 18% of Americans undecided or on the third party.

And so how did that break out between third party and genuinely hands up in the air? So we've seen actually quite a big change on this. So I did say that Trump's lead has remained unchanged, which is true since the last time we published a national poll for the Daily Mail, which was in December of 2023. However, the thing that has definitely changed is a growth in support for third party candidates.

So back in December 2023, we had Biden on 36% and Trump on 40% with 19%. So one in five people saying they didn't know. And that was when the entire field was prompted for. This time around in March, we found 39% for Biden, 43% for Trump, just 8% undecided with 7% for RFK, 2% for Cornel West and 1% for Jill Stein.

One of the things that strikes me as interesting about that is when given a large number of candidates, which oftentimes in American polls means the undecided person plunks down for a third party candidate, not because they intend to vote for them, but because it's a more respectable place.

to put your undecided disposition, that you still have 8% undecided, that they're given all sorts of choices and they're not sure what is the direction that they're going to go in. Do you have some sense of who these undecided voters are?

Yes, I mean, there's been a lot sort of done on these double disapprovers as well. People who do not like Biden or Trump, we know that they are pretty unpopular candidates, not with everyone. But there's a whole chunk of voters that are not happy with either choice. I think this is actually a reflection of that. Whilst it is not necessarily unusual to have 8% of people still undecided, I think it is indicative of a field where people feel like there are no good options really, wherever they look.

So when you take a look at this, one of the things that strikes me about your poll is you're doing likely voters, as many polls are still in the United States on the registered voter as self-described or by matching with the voter file. How are you judging your likely voter screen at this early stage?

Yeah, that's a great question. We simply ask them. We ask them how likely they are to vote. They place it on a scale and then we decide what that means in terms of whether someone will likely turn out and vote. And we actually take voters pretty much on their word for this. I think it's a really important question. The whole reason why we do likely voters in the first place is because we think it gives a much more accurate picture. I think especially in an election where turnout is going to be so important, especially in some of those swing states. But

But yeah, we take votes that are valid, but we do ask them, and then we try and make a judgment from there. One of the things when I take a look at polls in Britain that I do a fair amount is that it seems to be a standard practice on a scale of 1 to 10, how likely are you to vote? And it always strikes me when I add up the 8s and the 9s and the 10s that I get pretty close to what the actual turnout is as a percentage of registered voters.

Is that a rough approximation of where you are coming down to right now? Is that if you ask one of your recipients how likely you are to vote, that you're probably not going to count or you're going to downweight somebody who says four or five, whereas you're going to completely weight somebody who says a nine or a ten?

Yeah, absolutely. It is along those lines. So where do you see the race going right now? You've done a lot of research in the United States over the last few months, both at the state level and at the national level. What sort of trends have you started to pick up that might give us an indication as to how the summer is going to evolve?

That's a great question. So we set up the American office of the company about 18 months ago, and we've been polling consistently since then. You're absolutely right on a state level as well as a national level. And we've picked up, I think what a lot of other polling companies have picked up, which is that the trends that appear to be visible, especially from the 2022 midterms of a stronger Biden and a weaker Trump seem to have started reversing over last summer.

Again, as I said, I mentioned at the beginning, there is some speculation that might be starting to become undone now. And I think there are lots of hesitations that potentially pollsters are consistently overestimating Republicans' vote share and eventual turnout when it comes to actual Election Day. And

underestimating how many disgruntled and unhappy Democrats may well come home. But I think what we can say, at least from the polling that we've done, is that Trump is on the up nationally and across swing states compared to where he was six, seven, eight months ago. And Biden's personal ratings are down and his how people think he's going to handle key issues that they say are the most important to them, most notably the economy and immigration is also down. And that does feel to be very significant to us.

One of the other things that gets mentioned a lot is the weakness of Biden vis-a-vis historic numbers among persons of color compared to other Democratic candidates. And you see the Biden campaign doing multi-million dollar ad campaigns targeted at Latinos, targeted about Asians, targeted towards African-Americans.

I know you, your partner, James Johnson, did a interesting swing through Georgia a few months ago doing focus groups where he found some explanation for why some black voters might be

Moving away from Biden, even if they're not necessarily running out to embrace Trump. What is some of your research since then helped you to understand about the person of color who may be unhappy with Biden and his.

perhaps for the first time in their lives, looking over to the Republicans? Yeah, I think that's a fantastic question. And it points to the struggle that Biden is having at the moment with his voter base. So part of the reason why he was able to defeat Trump, as you will well know, in 2020 is because of, especially in states like Georgia, in very important states with high African-American demographics, he was able to really get that vote to turn out.

We're now starting to see that drop off and increasingly go to Trump. Now, it's important to say that there's still many more black voters voting for Biden or saying they'll vote for Biden than for Trump. But the trend is going against Biden and that could really hurt him. So, for example, as you mentioned, my colleague James has been doing a lot of work in Georgia.

a dropout of just 1% amongst black voters in Georgia could cost Biden, the state as a whole, and all of its delegates. So it is hugely important. I think what our research shows is that this is a story of, again, of actually quite a lot of people across America, which is that they're having a hard time financially over the last few years, really not sure whether things will get better. Don't

really see when, you know, the White House and people are telling them that the economy is actually doing very well, they're not feeling it. And a lot of them saying, well, we did just we did just feel better under life felt better. Now, you know, you might disagree whether that's true or not, but it's certainly what a lot of people are saying. And I think that is quite important. So if you were Biden and you were addressing these numbers, you know, since the State of the Union, we've seen a month of activity. We've seen regular attacks on Trump.

You have not yet seen that that's bumping up either his personal numbers or his political standing vis-a-vis Trump. Does that mean that it's not working, or does that mean that maybe he dug himself into such a hole over the last few years it's going to take quite some time for him to see improvement, even if he is on the right track as far as the messages and the image he's trying to portray?

I think there's one thing that's really undermining him. I would not be the first person to say this. I'm not going to pretend I am. But the doubts people have about his age and his competency really is so important. And it's only growing. And that's, I think that's part of what he's having. And it plays into everything else. So when you ask people what they think about Trump compared to Biden, Biden will win out on characteristics like kind, caring, you know, compassionate, sympathetic, all these things. People actually, especially Democrat voters and even independent can have sort of favourable

in that sense, views of him. But where they are giving Trump a massive lead is things like strong, gets things done. And I think that's because they are, people are so worried about his age and his ability to do things. So, for example, you know, we talk about daily mail polls. We don't just do voting intention. We do a lot of sort of attitudinal questions as well. And we had just four in 10 Americans thinking not even actually 38%.

of Americans thought he'd be alive at the end of his second term, which is obviously a bit morbid, but I think speaks volumes about people's impressions of him. And I think the problem is at that point, when people are even doubting your sort of cognitive abilities on such a

not a big scale, it doesn't mean they have any faith in you to fix the issues that are important to them. So we talked about the economy, immigration. And so I think as long as he is fighting it on those grounds and under, and that is how he's viewed from the public, he's going to have a really hard time.

What we're now seeing obviously is huge efforts for them to turn the election into something else, for them to make it more about defending democracy, more about Trump and his personality, and more about women's rights and abortions, for example. And that may well work, but it's going to take quite a shift to get the conversation off him, his personal weaknesses, and his record on the economy and immigration first. That's very difficult for an incumbent to do. It's one thing in the midterm where the

Biden was indirectly on the ballot, but not directly on the ballot. But when people go into the polling booth or in the United States, it's election month. You know, when they fill out their early ballot, they actually have to make a choice about him.

And that's very different, it strikes me, than making a choice about the direction of the country in between parties. That they have to place, if not their faith, at least the lesser of two evils box in him. And if voters, you're finding, have a very high distrust of his capacity.

It strikes me as difficult to believe that they'll ultimately jump in his direction unless somehow he manages to alleviate some of those concerns. Is that too stark of a read?

No, I think that's true, unless he can make Trump a sort of scary enough alternative. But he's got such a mountain to climb on this one because, you know, for example, so we also asked, you know, do you think he'll be able to make decisions and be fully alert during a nuclear emergency? Do you think he can keep attention during a meeting? Do you think he can make it through one hour with Putin? Do you think he can fully digest national security briefings? Voters are very pessimistic about his ability to do this and crucially, independents.

Independence, a plurality of independence, don't think he'll be able to do any of those things in his state of mind at the moment, let alone, say, two, three, four years into a potential second term.

That's a massive issue. So that's important. And again, it's just trying to sell people anything when this is what they think of you is hard. And these perceptions are so difficult to shift. So, for example, we asked people, what do you think Biden wants for a second term in office? And the biggest word, the most commonly used word was just nothing. So I think people are looking at him and seeing a sort of void and a vacuum.

which I think is quite a damning indictment actually of them, not even just his record necessarily, but it just shows how much they've struggled to sell his record over the last few years. And I think some of the difficulties they have going into this election. And that might also explain why after a year of trying to sell, things are better than you think Bidenomics is working. The problem might be Bidenomics is that people don't believe Biden is working.

People don't believe Biden is working. And I think there's another thing as well, which is something we've seen is that Western governments that have presided over economies that have been recovering from the COVID pandemic and the fallout from that have tended to get a kicking at the ballot box when it comes to them. I think there's an element of this here. And actually, there's a parallel with the UK, which is that actually, even though the American economy is actually doing much stronger than the UK, I think I should feel obliged to say that, similar dynamic with

voters, I think, playing out, which is that they don't actually like being told the economy is doing well when they are feeling poor. And even if, you know, sort of conceptions of poor can be relative, it doesn't matter if you say, well, you know, the economy is growing this much and inflation is down this much. And, you know, we've really turned a corner. If people are feeling like they have less disposable income or feeling like they can't meet very important bills and they weren't feeling like that three or four years ago, then you're in big trouble if you're the incumbent. Well,

That's one of the parallels that I wanted to ask you about with respect to the United Kingdom, is that you are likely to have an election. I say likely because under the system, Prime Minister Sunak could theoretically call an election as late as early January of next year, but I don't think anybody wants to go voting in a cold January in the United Kingdom.

And historically, people over in America have liked to say, oh, look at the parallels between America and the UK when we have elections close to one another. You see the trend to the right with Thatcher and Reagan and a trend to the left with Blair and Clinton in some way. That strikes me that...

If you could lay the stage first for how does it look for the incumbent conservative government? 2019, they had their biggest victory in terms of vote share and perhaps even in terms of seats since the Thatcher era. Today, it's a very different picture, isn't it?

You're absolutely right. It's a very different picture. And whilst I did just sort of, you know, kick off with a parallel in that it's difficult, I think, for incumbents who presided over a sort of post-COVID recovering economy, the

you can look for other parallels as well, but in terms of the headline figures, things look incredibly different. So ours is not a tight race. So I think whatever you can say about certainly our conversation, in fact, about all the different polls, it is tight. So if anyone's saying to you, you know, Trump's definitely got this or Biden's definitely got this, it is...

they probably need their head looking at a little bit just because it is absolutely not clear at this stage and so much yet could happen still that could move the dial. The UK is in a very, very different place. So, um, the conservatives have been about 20 points behind for the last, uh, 18 months before that when this trust was prime minister. So that's our previous prime minister. Um,

They reached nearly 40 points behind, which is completely, basically unprecedented in our system. And no matter what Rishi Sunak, the incumbent Conservative prime minister, has done, things actually only seem to be getting worse for them. So the Conservatives now in this situation, absolutely right, there could be an election in January. Everyone thinks it will be before then. In fact, it might even be in the same week or within a week of the US election. We just don't know yet.

But his own personal ratings have absolutely bombed. He is now bleeding support, not just to the Labour Party or to the centre, to the Lib Democrats, but he is also increasingly losing voters to his right flank. And that means that things are looking dire. They could be, in fact,

there's been lots of polls out recently that have caused a lot of headlines in the UK. We know we have our own versions too. But one thing that is consistent for them is an almost record defeat of the Conservative Party. The question is just how big it will go and just how many of them there might be left off the next election.

In the 1997 wipeout when Tony Blair came in and won his first term as prime minister, I believe the Tories got 31 or give or take a percentage of the vote. They'd be delighted to get 31 percent of the vote right now, wouldn't they?

They would be over the moon. They are currently polling. I mean, there are some polls recently have had them under less than 20, which is, I mean, really existential for the party that was considered to be the natural party of government in our country. They are...

very rarely breaking over 25 at the moment. I mean, they are in absolutely dire straits and you're quite right. They would be looking at that thinking, yes, please. Thank you very much. It seems unlikely now the general consensus is that our polls will narrow somewhat, but there are an awful lot of voters sitting on their hands at the moment saying they just don't know. Those voters tend to be disproportionately people who voted Conservative in 2019. And a number 10 is certainly hoping that all those voters will come home, or not all of them, but a big chunk, and that will help narrow the polls.

But everything we're seeing is we don't think you can bank on that. And actually, they could be they could be looking at a result that's even worse than some of the catastrophic polls that we're seeing now. They might not as well. But I think it's definitely a possibility. Now, of course, in your system, votes get translated into seats and it's seats that matter much to the Liberal Democrats. And at one time, the UKIP, the United Kingdom Independence Party's dismay that they could get 20 percent of the vote, but only, you

in the Lib Dems' case, less than 15% of seats. And you kept famously getting, I think, 12% of the vote in 2015 and getting one seat.

What does 24% of the vote mean in terms of seats? And this might be a way to talk about your delightful addition to polling technology and polling methodology, the MRP, which became a big thing in the last part of the decade trying to translate votes into seats.

Yes. So MRP polls have caused quite a lot of excitement in the UK. They still do. It's still a sort of cycle of newspaper headlines every time a new one is released. They've been incredibly accurate with our elections in the past. And so people put a lot of faith in them now. It's worth saying that these MRPs, these models are actually chucking out quite different answers at the moment. Again, one thing they are all agreed on is a heavy Conservative defeat. The question is just how heavy.

It is very, very difficult to extrapolate vote share into seats. For some of them, we have a first-past-the-post system, and that makes it very difficult to know exactly what will happen. And you're quite right. Although the Liberal Democrats are actually happier than the Reform Party in this situation. So, for example, we had an MRP come out today, and the Liberal Democrat and the Reform Party were on similar-ish shares of the votes, if anything. And the Liberal Democrats, ending up with nearly 50 seats on this poll, reformed with none.

So, yes, it hurts small parties, but it hurts some small parties more than others. And so it's going to be quite interesting to see. But no, it's very difficult. To give you an idea, we've had MRPs that have showed, so for example, there was one out earlier this week that have showed the Conservatives on 80 seats, which is, I mean, just is unthinkable, really. And then

one that came out today, which showed them on just over 150. Now, that is a record low for them. Even that is what it's not quite a record low, actually, but it's worse than the 97 wipeout, which is seen in recent history to be the sort of totemic loss of the Conservative Party. It's worse than that. But the big conversation is whether it might go lower still. In fact, that 155, which again, would have previously seemed so out of line.

and unthinkable on the moment of Boris Johnson's victory in 2019. People are now saying that actually looks a bit optimistic for them. So it's sort of anyone's guess, but I think there's despair in the Conservative Party now. So 650 seats in the House of Commons.

And it could be that the Tories, under the worst case scenario, have under 100. What happens to a Conservative Party that is essentially consigned to ultra-minority status? There are people who draw parallels to the 1993 Canadian election.

where the then-progressive Conservatives went from a huge majority to two seats. They still got 15 or 16 percent of the vote, but they were wiped out by the Reform Party, who had a regional base in the West, and they were wiped out by the Bloc Québécois, that had a regional base in Quebec, and everywhere else they were finishing second to the resurgent Liberals, which sounds a lot like the disaster scenario.

that the Tories are worried about. This, of course, ultimately led to the PCs merging with the descendants of Reform to create today's Conservative Party of Canada. That's kind of a Reform Party dream, you know, that Nigel Farage plays the part of Preston Manning and creates a new Conservative Party with...

The reform element on top and the home county shire element on the bottom. Is there any talk of that being anything other than a reform fantasy? Or are we talking about something that actually is even more dire, which is to say 15 years of conservative infighting and who knows where things are going to come out?

Yeah, I think the first thing to say is that there will be absolute panic, both sort of amongst the MPs that have remaining and the ones that are no longer in the party. It is the MPs that choose our leader. It's not like the American system. And so, I mean, it then goes to the membership. But the first people that get to vote on the final two people that go to the membership, unless they're going to change the rules, are the MPs. So an awful

a lot will depend on exactly what you've been talking about, just how many MPs are left and who they are, what they look like, what their preferences are. As you've already hinted at, the Conservative Party has seen a lot of drama over the last 15 years. People like to call it, sort of slightly euphemistically, I think, a broad church. That's another way of saying there are people there with actually sort of almost diametrically opposed political viewpoints in there, especially over topics like immigration, but even on things like public services,

and other bread and butter issues as well. And it will get vicious. It already has been vicious. I think it will go through probably a few identity crises before it ends up somewhere that it wants to be. But I think a very real, as you've been saying, I don't think it is just a reform dream. I think there is a definite possibility where

um we've seen from the impact from some of our modeling but also from these um these polls that we've just been talking about is that uh it looks like reform could um impact the conservative seat total by sort of between maybe 50 and 70 seats so if you think about that that's the that's a massive difference when you're not left with many mps uh and in that case it would be you can definitely see um

the case for Conservative MPs thinking Nigel Farage should return, should come to the Conservative Party and to lead them in a more reformed direction. Now, I think if that were to happen, I think you'd probably be looking at a split because I think there would be some MPs that will be left standing after the election who simply won't countenance being in the same party as that. But I think, you know, again, five years ago, you would never have thought

in the Conservative Party would even be on the cards. Everyone was talking about how it had been remade in Boris Johnson's image, how it had been remade along Brexit lines. We kicked out, not we, sorry, not me, but all the Remainers in the Conservative Party were actually kicked out by Dominic Cummings and Boris Johnson in the run-up to that election and left. So people were saying, hey, well, now unified, now very pro-Brexit and we've remade sort of our coalition in the

light of a changing voters coalition, which is along Brexit lines as well after that very divisive referendum in 2016. But I really wouldn't rule out a split in the party after the election. I'm not saying it's the most likely option, but I think things are going to get nasty, things are going to get bitter. And we've seen this even from the leadership elections they've had while they've been in power, let alone when they're dealing from the fallout of the scale, I think the sheer scale of this defeat. Again,

it's worth saying that even if they hold on to what you'd call like a respectable number of seats, so far more than even the best case scenarios being spat out at the moment, losing to Labour would be massive. Even if Keir Starmer just got a majority of one, he would still have required a bigger swing than Tony Blair got in 97. So you're still talking about a humiliating defeat, however big it is. And my instinct is there'll be a lot of drama off the back of that.

Last question for you to mention the name that most of my listeners are probably most familiar with in the current UK politics. And that's the one you mentioned a few minutes ago, Nigel Farage. There's a lot of rumors that Nigel might

get actively involved in the campaign for reform. He is said to be very scared of another all-out effort like in 2015 where he gets millions of votes and only one seat. He doesn't want to be humiliated that way again. On the other hand, you've got the possibility that there's a satisfaction among conservatives and the inevitable

Front pressure that will be put on Rishi Sunak when he has to campaign rather than governing. He seems not particularly adept at campaigning might produce the opposite result, which is when they see the choice between a good campaigner and a poor campaigner that many people who lean to the Tories right now might say, I'd rather, you know, I'd rather make a full toss of it. If you had to bet,

Is Nigel going to get involved in the campaign or is he going to wait for the debacle and then try and present himself as the unifier? It's a fantastic question. I think it's one of the biggest ones going into this election, in fact, potentially even the most important one, along with how Labour's going to do in Scotland, which is a whole other issue. But on Nigel Farage, I mean, we're already seeing just in polling data terms that he is more popular with Conservative 2019 voters than Rishi Sunak. They like him more.

I hear a lot in focus groups when we go around the country is that people see Nigel Farage in a more favourable light than both Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak. And in fact, they say, you know, Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak, both sort of technocratic, both typical politicians that don't say what they mean and sort of fibbing to us to get their vote. But Nigel, you might not agree with him, but he says what he means. He went on a very popular reality TV show in the UK and that boosted his sort of, he already had very high name recognition, but it boosted his profile even more and actually his popularity

important groups of voters for him anyway. My instinct would be, and I really don't know this, but I think it's not just the scars of the UKIP as a party battle, but his personal, so you're right, he

UKIP did win a couple of by-elections and they were left in MP, but Nigel Farage also stood several times for parliament and missed out every time. And now in Thanet, he was incredibly close. There's just a thousand votes in it and both Labour and the Conservatives chucked everything they had at that seat. And so he didn't get it in the end, but he came incredibly close.

I think there is. And then he was widely mocked in our press for that. And, you know, he still is for having never actually won an election as an MP. I would think that there might be more in it for him to wait till after this election to point out the loss of the damage that the reform did and swoop in then rather than put his name to a potential defeat on any of these individual seats now. But he also might think, well, you know,

sod it. I want to cause as much damage to this party as possible. And there's no doubt, I think, that him returning to the fray would make things more difficult for Rishi Sunak. Well, a straight talking outsider with reality television experience. Where have we heard that before? Scarlett, where can my listeners follow your and JL Partners work?

Brilliant. So we have a website, Jail Partners. You Google us and the website comes up and you can follow us on Twitter. You can follow my colleague James Johnson on Twitter. You can follow me on Twitter. I'm Scarlett McGuire. All of our, well not all of our, but a lot of our American polls come out in the Daily Mail. So we do all of their polling for them. So we're constantly updating them with political polls, but also issue polls too. And then keep an eye out. Yeah, keep an eye out on Twitter.

Twitter and LinkedIn, I guess as well. But our website has all of our public polling available. So that's all of the reports and the data tables as well. Well, Scarlett, thank you. And I look forward to having you back on Beyond the Polls. Thank you very much. Okay, round two. Name something that's not boring. Laundry? Computer solitaire, huh? Oh, sorry. We were looking for Chumba Casino.

That's right. ChumbaCasino.com has over 100 casino-style games. Join today and play for free for your chance to redeem some serious prizes. ChumbaCasino.com No purchase necessary. Full work related by law. 18 plus. Terms and conditions apply. See website for details.

Normally on Ad of the Week, I will play a television ad and I'll explain to you what the ad is trying to accomplish, who the person is trying to talk to, what they're trying to achieve. But this week, we're going to look at dueling ads because, of course, ads never take place in a singular context. They're always in comparison to other ads.

And these ads are from two candidates who are running against each other in a Democratic primary in a safe Democratic congressional seat north of Baltimore. Let's listen to the first one from Harry Dunn. What's most important to you? Now, what would you do to protect it?

I'm Harry Dunn, and after defending the Capitol from Trump's insurrectionists, I used my voice to fight back. To the rioters, the insurrectionists, and the terrorists of that day, you all tried to disrupt democracy that day. You all failed.

They will keep trying, but they'll keep failing. I approve this message because Maryland's future is what's most important to me, and I'll do anything to protect it. Well, what do you learn from that? What you learn is that Mr. Dunn is a Capitol Police officer. Yes, he's a Capitol Police officer.

Mr. Dunn is somebody who protected the Capitol on January 6th from the rioters who stormed the Capitol, and he takes the stance that all Democrats take, that these were insurrectionists. He's putting his service on behalf of the country as the primary reason why you, as a Democrat, should support him.

Now that's a persuasive argument to a certain type of Democrat. What we know is that Democrats often say that democracy is the most important issue for them on the ballot. He's identifying himself with that issue, and he's identifying himself in a very personal way. Some of the things that you can't

because this is, of course, a podcast, not a television performance, is the visuals. And the visuals, again, reflect both the demographics of the district and reflect the message he's trying to portray. This is a district where the electorate of the Democrats are going to be largely split between blacks and whites.

Mr. Dunn is black. He has a number of whites in the picture. He alternates between them back and forth. He shows basically you can be of either race and support me. He also has a picture of Biden giving him a war for his service. He's not been endorsed by Biden. Biden hasn't endorsed anybody. But that clearly establishes him visually as a person who is in line with the Democratic consensus. He gets something from the leader of the Democratic Party.

He is in uniform for either some of his speaking parts or some of the pictures about him. So that, again, you are reminded he is a Capitol Police officer. He is somebody who served on the front line. For some of this, but not all of this, his name is on screen. And for longtime listeners, you know that I like this. I like the visuals that support him.

the words, the audio and the visual support one another so that you don't have to be a careful watcher in order to get some sort of message. This is a bio post. This is meant to introduce him to the electorate. This is meant to give him name identification and identify him with a cause or feeling or a theme that is crucial and important to a segment of the voting block. When he talks about

them at the end. What he's talking about, they will keep trying. There are pictures that come up on the screen quickly of Marjorie Taylor Greene, Donald Trump, and Ted Cruz. Three better noirs among Democratic liberals and progressives. Again, this isn't an accident. He's saying, they're the enemies, I'm your friend. And the final...

picture that is on screen as he's talking about I approve this message is a picture of him walking in uniform through the Capitol Rotunda. Again, this is somebody who knows what he's about. He knows what his strong suit is. He's playing it well, and it's something that is likely to give him a substantial boost in the polls. But he is not the favorite. The favorite is a state legislator named Sarah Elfrid, and she has a pretty good ad out herself. Let's listen.

I woke up the day after the Dobbs decision with fewer rights than I had the day before. We all did. So we took action. I'm Sarah Elfrith. She beat a pro-life Republican to earn a seat in the state Senate. And she went

Well, what stands out about this? What's another issue that Democratic progressives and liberals cite as often most important to them?

protecting abortion rights. Immediately, this ad is all about this with a couple of other things thrown in, but she talks about the Dobbs decision. She talks about, or one of the people on her behalf talks about her defeating a pro-life Republican. Every person who appears on the screen, either in visual or in a speaking role or both, is a woman. This is an ad that is saying not

the sort of person that Dunn is necessarily appealing to, but making a straight appeal. If you're a Democratic woman and you are concerned about abortion rights, I am a Democratic woman who is passionate about abortion rights, too. This is a laser message about a key issue to a key Democratic constituency. And one thing you should remember is that while women are a slight majority in the electorate overall, they're a decisive majority in most Democratic primaries because women tilt Democratic seats.

What about the racial makeup of the district? You can't see it, but I can. The women who appear on screen represent the races of the district. There are whites, there are blacks, there's even an Asian woman who appears a couple of times. Sarah Elfrith, through that device, is sending a message just like Harry Dunn. You don't have to be of my race, Elfrith is white, in order to vote for me. You can feel comfortable voting for me.

This would be interesting to see how this message, which is so directed towards women, you know, in the sense that I've seen abortion rights ads before, but I don't think I've ever seen an abortion rights ad this direct where there's literally no men who appear in the picture. Even when they say pro-life Republican, the picture is Sarah Elfrid, not her opponent. It'll be interesting to see whether or not this, how this plays among men. But,

The Democratic primary in Maryland is not a majority primary. It is whoever gets the most votes gets the nomination. There's multiple candidates. If you get one more vote than the next person, then you're going to be the nominee. And don't think I'm exaggerating on that. There is a race in California right now where the person is leading his competitor for the second place in a runoff by literally one vote.

That one vote will decide whether or not that person gets on to the November election. And when you're in a plurality situation, you can narrow cast.

you can narrowcast and try and build up a massive lead among one segment of the electorate and ride that to victory. That plus pre-existing name identification in her state legislative district may be what Sarah Elfrith is depending on. Marilyn votes in about a month, and we'll watch these two candidates as they go on, but each has an initially strong introduction to the electorate, and that's why both of these ads are the ads of the week.

That's it for this week. Next week, I'll dive deep into April and May's House and Senate primaries. Until then, let's reach for the stars together as we journey beyond the polls. I'm Victoria Cash, and I want to invite you to a place called Lucky Land, where you can play over 100 social casino-style games for free for your chance to redeem some serious prizes.

So what are you waiting for? The best way to discover your luck is to spin. So go to LuckyLandSlots.com. That's LuckyLandSlots.com. And get lucky today at Lucky Land. No purchase necessary. VTW Group. Void where prohibited by law. 18 plus. Terms and conditions apply.