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Lecture

Sam Freedman
Understanding the General Election

Monday 1.07.2024

Summary

In this talk, Sam Freedman discusses the upcoming general elections in the UK. He examines the main factors behind the likely results and their implications for political developments over the next few years.

Sam Freedman

An image of Sam Freedman

Sam Freedman is a senior fellow at the Institute for Government who writes regularly on politics and policy for numerous outlets, including his newsletter “Comment is Freed,” which has over 50,000 subscribers and is the most popular UK politics substack. His first book Failed State: Why Nothing Works And How We Fix It has just been published. He also hosts the “Power Test” podcast. Previously he was an executive director at Teach First and worked at the Department for Education as a senior policy adviser. Sam is also a senior adviser to the education charity Ark; Vice-Chair of Ambition Institute; and a trustee of the Holocaust Educational Trust.

I think they’ll split fairly evenly. That’s what the current polls are showing. It’s starting to reduce quite a lot now, as it always does in the final week, down to about 5, 10% of voters who are still saying they’re undecided. I don’t think it’s going to massively change the outcome that we’re going to see.

So roughly 40% for Labour, early 20s, 21, 22% for the Conservatives, somewhere around 15, 16% for Reform, and around 11, 12% for the Liberal Democrats. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Liberal Democrats did a little bit better than that, just because of this tactical voting effect.

Yes, we do have postal voting. About 20% of people have already voted. If we assume it’s roughly similar to last time. So about a fifth of people have already voted.