Labour can still win!

Opinion polls that purport to show the overall level of support and "voting intention" for each of the main parties can turn out to be way off the mark. They were last time! There was not a single poll in the run-up to the general election in 2017 that correctly predicted the Labour Party gaining 30 seats and the Conservatives losing their overall majority in that election. There are lots of possible reasons for this, including the fact that final results depend as much on who votes as it does on who they vote for.

But the other factor, more relevant in this election than perhaps any other election in recent memory, is that it is not the overall support for a party across the country that matters, but how that plays out in individual constituencies. Whatever the national opinion polls might suggest, the reality is that in some parts of the country, there is huge and overwhelming support for the Tories, while in other parts of the country there is jan equally huge and overwhelming level of support for the Labour Party. When these are balanced out, it looks like the country is more evenly divided than it actually is in most places.

The reality is that roughly a third of all constituencies are strongly pro-Labour and another third are strongly pro-Tory, so it's only in about a third of the constituencies that the election is decided. In recent elections, only a handful of seats have actually changed hands, and rarely more than 100 of them. In this election, probably fewer than 50 seats will change hands. Nevertheless, there are independent candidates running against their former party, smaller parties standing down to support their former opponents, new candidates that have not stood for election before and other local factors that could affect the outcome.

And the biggest unknown of all is the turnout - how many people will actually decide to vote, and will more of these people be Labour-supporters or Tory-supporters? With non-voters still outnumbering the total votes for any of the parties, it is the non-voters who hold the key to this election.

Every vote matters in this election! Convince your family and friends to vote for survival on 12 December. Keep talking to people, keep writing, keep sharing on social media all the reasons why we need a new government. And sign up to help your local Labour Party get out the vote on election day, because that is what will finally make the difference.