Reform’s bruising week and why postal voting is crucial to party strategy

Good morning. There are only six days left until the final voting day. I say “until the last day” because the UK has been voting for about three weeks – which is when postal ballots start arriving through letterboxes.

And as I wrote two weeks agoThe launch of party manifestos has begun to become an important part of the early stages of election campaigns as it provides a good fixture for voters as soon as postal ballots arrive. .

More than one in five votes cast in 2019 were cast by mail, although the chances of someone choosing to vote by mail vary by demographic. (A useful and informative study on that is here..)

As you’d expect, older or physically disabled voters are more likely to vote this way – the UK’s ageing society is one reason why postal voting has continued to increase over time.

Older voters are also a focus of the Conservative campaign, which is focused on winning back former Conservative voters who say they will vote Reform or not vote at all.

Please deliver the letter

Nigel Farage’s Reform Party is suffering the worst news of its short existence.

A Farage campaigner in Clacton told voters that the migrants should be used for military “target practice” purposes and called Rishi Sunak a racist insultwhile being filmed by an undercover Channel 4 reporter. The Guardian can reveal Reform had to reject its parliamentary candidate in Basingstoke after it emerged he was a former member of the BNP.

ITV discovered that the four Reform Party candidates were members of a public Facebook group that contained multiple posts, including one stating “there should be no racial mixing” and “the only thing black women White should have black leather.”

Farage himself has been criticised after saying that in an interview with the BBC’s Nick Robinson. that the West “incited” Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. What finally made Rishi Sunak quit “Reforms are right – don’t vote for them!” strategy in favor of direct criticism of Farage, using an interview with Ben Riley Smith of the Telegraph to accuse the Reform leader of “appeasement.”

All of these stories are damaging to Reform and, since Reform largely draws votes from the Tories, will probably help the Conservatives in this election. But since Farage’s party is largely targeting older voters, who are more likely to vote by post, the stories about Reform over the past few weeks will have less impact than if they were about a party appealing to younger voters.

That’s one reason why Sunak’s decision to focus his campaign on winning back Reform voters is risky. In these final days, that means pitching to voters who are more likely to have voted by post than to those who are still open to the vote. One aspect of Sunak’s poorly executed campaign is that he started by appealing to voters who were out of reach at the May election, and ended by talking to voters who history suggests might have voted.

But it is also a reason why Labor is right to continue to worry about suggestions that this election is over. Starmer’s party is much more vulnerable to a late shift in voters’ priorities – from, say, sidelining the Conservatives to limiting the size of the Labor majority – than is Reform.

While Labour politicians are being disingenuous when they say things like “no one voted yet”, “the only poll that matters is polling day”, polling day itself is much more important to Labour than weeks of postal voting.

Now try this

I saw Bad Boys: Ride or Die Last night, a stupid action movie that was built to be engaging and interesting. Martin Lawrence in particular is a joy.

However you use it, have a great weekend!

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Below are the Financial Times’ live UK opinion polls, incorporating voting intention surveys published by major British pollsters. Visit the FT’s poll tracking page to find out Our methodology and explore poll data by demographics including age, gender, region and more.