UKIP in freefall

Three weeks to go! Many, many polls in the final few weeks so I've updated the running average, which now reflects the interesting changes from the last two weeks.

UKIP's collapse continues apace as its supporters see which way the wind is blowing, with the Conservatives being the overwhelming beneficiaries. From an all-time peak of ~16% shortly before the EU referendum, most pollsters now have them on 5% and falling.

On the other hand, it's an interesting fact (greeted with a certain amount of surprise and disbelief in some quarters) that Labour are having a pretty good campaign: they've picked up 5% over the last month. Indeed, if the Conservative party wasn't running away with all those UKIP voters the positions would likely now be more or less where they were just before the referendum, or indeed the day after the 2015 election.

However, percentage points don't make prizes in UK politics, and the current Conservative lead of 17% is easily sufficient to secure a landslide. The problem seems to be that Labour are proving unable to make inroads into the Conservative vote: instead they seem to be achieving a consolidation of the Left. The Lib Dem build-up since the referendum has been almost entirely reversed and (although it's hard to see here) the Greens are suffering: they are now regularly polling 2% rather than 4%, so could conceivably lose up to half their voters.

There may also be a turnout-driven effect: if more Labour-leaning voters say they'll show up at the polling station this time, the estimated vote share will rise at the expense of everyone else even though no-one has actually changed their mind. The bad news is that this isn't likely to translate into winning seats: this is because the places in which turnout is typically worst are already held by Labour (on average, turnout is 10% higher in seats held by the other parties).

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Labour supporters may find much to be cheery about in this news, but it's worth a reminder that under the brutal mathematics of democracy, getting one Conservative voter to switch to Labour is worth two from any other party. There are also some real concerns about how firmly resolved these Labour voters are, with as many as 1 in 6 saying they are still considering voting Conservative. Note also that for Labour to out-perform its recent local election showing would be genuinely unprecedented (which is why the most recent polls have raised a few eyebrows).