With the Mile End Institute's latest opinion polling suggesting that Labour's lead in London now stands at just 12 percentage points, Elizabeth Simon explores what the data tells us about the Government's first five months in office and what it could mean for British politics as a whole.
The Labour Party led the Conservative Party by 22 percentage points in London, at the 2024 general election which was held on 4 July; winning 43 per cent of the vote to the Conservative’s 21 per cent. Just four months later, a new poll commissioned by the Mile End Institute at Queen Mary University of London shows that Labour’s lead in the capital now stands at just 12 percentage points.
When asked how they would vote if there was a general election tomorrow, 36 per cent of Londoners say they would opt for Labour, compared to 24 per cent who say they would vote Conservative, 12 per cent who say they would vote Liberal Democrat, 12 per cent who say they would vote Green and 13 per cent who say they would vote Reform UK.
Of concern for the Labour Party will be that almost a fifth (19 per cent) of the Londoners who voted for them at the 2024 general election say they would not do so again if there was a general election tomorrow. 6 per cent of 2024 Labour voters would vote Conservative if there was a general election tomorrow, compared to 6 per cent who would vote Liberal Democrat, 3 per cent who would vote Green, and 3 per cent who would vote for Reform UK. This suggests a considerable portion of those who voted Labour in the capital at the 2024 general election might regret their decision to do so.
When we explicitly asked Londoners this question, we found that three quarters (75 per cent) of those who voted at the 2024 general election said they did not regret their vote choice, but that just over one fifth (21 per cent) said they did have regrets about this. The proportion of Londoners who regret how they voted at the most recent general election rises to 27 per cent among 2024 Labour voters and 29 per cent among 2024 Liberal Democrat voters; while this figure sits at just 14 per cent and 5 per cent among 2024 Conservative and Reform UK voters, respectively.
The honeymoon period appears to be over for the Labour government in the capital. Not only does our most recent round of Mile End Institute polling show that the Labour Party’s lead over the Conservatives in London has declined dramatically since the election, and that more than a quarter of Londoners who voted Labour at the 2024 general election (27 per cent) regret how they voted, but that many in the capital are concerned about the way the new government is running the country.
43 per cent of Londoners are dissatisfied with the way national government are running the country, compared to just 28 per cent who are satisfied, giving the Labour government a rather lacklustre net satisfaction score of -15 percentage points in the capital.
While it is worth mentioning that this net satisfaction score rises to +14 percentage points among 2024 Labour voters (41 per cent of whom say they are satisfied with the way national government is running the country, compared to 27 per cent who say they are not) – it is negative among all other Londoners. It sits at -39 percentage points for 2024 Conservative voters, -8 for 2024 Liberal Democrat voters, -76 for 2024 Reform UK voters, -35 for 2024 Green voters, -11 among Londoners who voted for other parties in 2024 and -19 for those Londoners who did not vote at the 2024 general election.
Immediately after the 2024 general election it was remarked that the public were impatient to see ‘broken Britain’ fixed, and that if they didn’t feel the newly elected Labour government were implementing the changes required to improve their day-to-day lives, and doing so quickly, they would take their votes elsewhere. Might we already be seeing this begin to happen in London, with just over a quarter of those in the capital who voted Labour in 2024 saying that they regret this decision and that they are dissatisfied with the way the newly elected government have been running the country? Only time will tell, but the early signs do not look overly positive for the Labour Party.
Note: Savanta interviewed 1004 adults living in London online between 30 October and 11 November 2024. You can find the full data tables here: Polling London Data, November 2024 - conducted by Savanta [XLS 745KB]
Dr Elizabeth Simon is Postdoctoral Researcher in British Politics at Queen Mary University of London and runs the Mile End Institute's 'Polling London' project.