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Steve Akehurst @steveakehurst.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

It doesn’t mean that necessarily just means it had less salience / power among Lab voters

Steve Akehurst @steveakehurst.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Final reflection: i think something like Cameron coalition is more available to Kemi than the Boris one but there's bunch of positions she's taken since '24 (ECHR, pro-Iran war, anti-EU etc) that are a shade discordant with it. Interested to see if those change or if Reform gravity reasserts itself.

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Steve Akehurst @steveakehurst.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Overall, a solid showing - I think nicely shows you the abstract dividing lines, attacks or wonkery work a bit less well but concrete old-fashioned Tory offer on jobs and tax is strong, and anti-Reform angle lands too. Tables up soon and videos here: tinyurl.com/KemiVideos

tinyurl.com

Kemi Badenoch speech testing - Google Drive

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Steve Akehurst @steveakehurst.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Lastly, was a more attack focused speech than Burnham’s - no massive sign that the attacks hurt Labour much, but they did damage Reform. (oddly attack on Burnham benefited Reform!) Youth jobs and property taxes a pull for decent number of Labour 2024 voters though.

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Steve Akehurst @steveakehurst.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Best PM numbers most boosted by the anti-Reform attack. Likewise, people who saw the whole BBC News at 6 package increased in VI - modest rises but still decent.

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Steve Akehurst @steveakehurst.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Interesting pattern on changes in her personal ratings in that the lifts are stronger overall - slightly suggests what we see in national polls is her brand can’t lift the Tory one at the moment even if people are responsible to some things she says.

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Steve Akehurst @steveakehurst.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

First on voting intention. Property taxes boosted vote intent by +6 points; jobs +5. Less than Burnham’s +10 pt lifts last week but still good. Attack on Reform saw a small bump also. It’s old-fashioned Con fare on taxes/jobs that works best tho. Strong in London & among young.

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Steve Akehurst @steveakehurst.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

The ones we chose from her speech were: - 'battle of ideas' opening salvo/dividing lines on tax and spend - attack on Burnham (back to 70s; unfunded pledges etc) - attack on Reform (re: Englishness, racism) - jobs for young people - planning dereg - property taxes incl IHT

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Steve Akehurst @steveakehurst.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Methodology: ~3600 voters split into 8; control group see no video (just get told Tories had a conf). 7 see one clip from speech, another the News at 6 package. We see how exposure changes attitudes. This cannot predict elections (!) but it can test strengths and weaknesses.

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Steve Akehurst @steveakehurst.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

NEW: How does Kemi Badenoch’s confeerence speech go down with voters when they are exposed to it? Final conference season video testing from @persuasionuk.bsky.social below. Overall - good results, even if less strong than Burnham’s. Winning themes are young people jobs/IHT, anti-Reform attack.

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Steve Akehurst @steveakehurst.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

That’s the end - in short, fairly unspectacular result; bad vibes around Greens/ZP recently didn’t help the perception they could win, but also fundamentals always favoured Labour under Burnham. And @mxmorgan.com is in the NS below. Cheers!  www.newstatesman.com/politics/pol...

newstatesman.com

What Holborn and St Pancras voters wanted

Exclusive polling reveals residents rejected the Greens in order "not to undermine the Labour government"

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Steve Akehurst @steveakehurst.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Finally, thought this was interesting and encouraging for Burnham - a safe seat yes but a London one and no sign many people here interpret him as anti-London, esp Labour electoral coalition.

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Steve Akehurst @steveakehurst.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Why *did* ppl vote Green and not Lab? Pulls to Greens was core message of pressuring Labour govt from left; housing; wealth inequality. Pushes from Labour: mostly govt delivery (housing again!) plus a little bit of residual toxicity on welfare & Gaza in what is a liberal seat.

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Steve Akehurst @steveakehurst.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Why did people not vote Green? Not wanting to hurt a Lab govt (again impressive mid-term) but also a sense Greens couldn’t win. They never built momentum and probably bad media vibes didn’t help. List was written before ‘Zionism is racism’ furore but no huge sign of salience.

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Steve Akehurst @steveakehurst.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

We see a bit of this here in net favourables - Burnham and local candidate had strong favourables; even Green/Polanski voters like Burnham while strongly disliking Starmer. Polanski not necessarily unpopular just not preferred.

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Steve Akehurst @steveakehurst.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Why did people vote Labour? The local candidate was well known and popular, and ultimately people didn’t want to do damage a Labour government.

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Steve Akehurst @steveakehurst.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Here are the voter flows on 2024 - obviously a lot of non-voters but Labour limiting losses to the Greens among those to 10% is impressive given we're mid-term and no Reform threat. Lab have meaningfully brought some people back since May also, mostly from independent and left.

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Steve Akehurst @steveakehurst.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

We worked w/ @convergentrsrch to field a poll from 20th Sept to polling day, most fieldwork 1st-8th Oct. Purpose purely to understand the result if there was an upset. Fieldwork finished yesterday, didn’t release as didn’t want to influence things unduly. Data has been weighted to the result. n=405.

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Steve Akehurst @steveakehurst.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

NEW: What happened in Holborn? Some constituency polling to help us understand a bit more. TLDR: loyalty to Burnham + a local candidate won the day; no real sign of tactical voting; Greens never convinced ppl they could win but Polanski not toxic necessarily. @persuasionuk.bsky.social

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Steve Akehurst @steveakehurst.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Also - what to say of a Tory party that loses its deposit in Makerfield but keeps it in Holborn! Curious times

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Steve Akehurst @steveakehurst.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

More the latter but just find some issues to really go at which Lab will find hard to be good on - water renationalisation, North Sea, rent control etc - and tone down the crankery

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Steve Akehurst @steveakehurst.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Only thing to say on Labour - as John Curtice notes on BBC - 2024 wasn’t a great result in the seat historically and hitting it again maybe suggests pro-Palestine Muslim vote has still not come back to Lab in big numbers.

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Steve Akehurst @steveakehurst.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Green target voter is basically a normie lib or elderly nature minded voter. Since Gorton there’s been chat about replacing Labour or winning Reform voters(!) all while ZP seems to have been slowly radicalised by his own social media feed. Refocus and they can still get 15-20 MPs next election imo

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Steve Akehurst @steveakehurst.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Holborn and St Pancras - fairly unremarkable in the end except to say: - Burnham slowly piecing back the Lab 24 coalition, albeit mostly the left bit so far - Greens a shade underwhelming and reflects less space for them but also taking their eye off the ball a bit in the last six months

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Steve Akehurst @steveakehurst.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Brazil - a country the size of a continent - takes roughly two hours to count every vote cast in its elections. Currently twice that length in Holborn for a single by-election with 27,000 votes! Very cool country imo 🇬🇧

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Steve Akehurst @steveakehurst.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Thanks for all your great work down the years, have helped so many people understand the madness going on around us!

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Steve Akehurst @steveakehurst.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Never been more convinced of agenda setting theory than last few years of this job. You end up there constantly. Important to not take it to full crankery or false consciousness but the argument that media doesn’t tell people what to think but it can it tell them what to think about = spot on imo

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Reposted by Steve Akehurst

Morgan Jones @morganj0nes.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Pleased to have this out today with @steveakehurst.bsky.social, discussing @persuasionuk.bsky.social's work on climate salience and public attitudes. I'm really pleased with the piece, do give it a read: www.break-down.org/making-peopl...

break-down.org

Making people care about the climate

As the world heats up, are we really taking notice?

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Reposted by Steve Akehurst

James Breckwoldt @jamesbreckwoldt.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Pop culture has spent the past 25 years promoting a different kind of protagonist: the anti-hero. How can political campaigns tap into some of the same appeal? What happens if, rather than trying to make yourself seem squeaky-clean, you channel your inner Nietzsche and move beyond good and evil?

jamesbreckwoldt.substack.com

How to Become a Political Anti-Hero

It’s not exhausting always rooting for the anti-hero. Being one in politics can make you more popular and relatable, and increase the intensity of your support.

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Steve Akehurst @steveakehurst.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Also a bit notable that there isn’t much wrestling with why voters went from Con to Lab or Lib Dem beyond ‘too much psychodrama’. Not much on neutralising weaknesses on public services. But generally better pitched to those voters than her early years as leader tbf.

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Steve Akehurst @steveakehurst.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Strongest Badenoch bits: - line on EU (‘do we really want to do all this again’) will resonate - distance with Reform on Englishness/ racism - bits on youth unemployment, welfare, property taxes Main downside: quite heavy on partisan attacks which test voter patience after a while

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Steve Akehurst @steveakehurst.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Thanks! Good q. Survation ran some questions for Mandate & ~50% say they saw it but honestly ppl do notoriously exaggerate their own engagement so not a perfect measure (none such exists!). In terms of real world impact, polling VI & favourables in next few days! cdn.survation.com/wp-content/u...

cdn.survation.com

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James Heale @jaheale.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Morgan always worth reading:

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Steve Akehurst @steveakehurst.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

“I was talking to my flatmate…” “Why’s he flat, what happened?” received with overwhelming hostility but I remain undeterred👍

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Steve Akehurst @steveakehurst.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Yes fair - who actually sees it and also how more competitive info environments play out clearly matters for real life VI. But I think important that this stuff has fairly large potential

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Steve Akehurst @steveakehurst.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

No they just got told he gave a speech. The point was to compare to people who were not exposed in any meaningful way.

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Steve Akehurst @steveakehurst.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Should have said here: for these reasons, this obviously cannot predict what polls will show next year or even next week. And yes delivery matters too. What it shows is more the upper-end potential of Burnham as a leader/Burnhamism as a project. What plays out in reality will ofc be more contested

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Steve Akehurst @steveakehurst.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

noted re: decay effects! will see how pricey it is. On charisma, yes and am curious how much 'emotionalism' can overcome deliverism not least as there's still quite a big gap between signalling and substance atm on Burnhamism, and CoL is about to get worse etc and so on.

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Steve Akehurst @steveakehurst.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

control saw text saying 'burnham has given a speech to conference' or whatever, no vid. But if we showed them a video of another speech he'd done, it's hard to disentangle how ppl respond to him vs the substance of what he's saying, so it's not a good control imo

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Steve Akehurst @steveakehurst.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

yeh. I think worth acknowledging also the clip went on for a long time and was uniformly positive for him really. But i think this tells you that 40-41% is about the maximum possible vote available to Lab, as we saw in 2017 (just the right got even higher !).

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Steve Akehurst @steveakehurst.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

we'll see i guess...but yes, as noted in the thread, it's an important caveat

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Steve Akehurst @steveakehurst.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

i think frankly the thing that will matter here is whether 'a cut to pensions/an end to triple lock' prevails or whether Burnham's 'a smaller increase to fund something good' does so. Am optimistic on the latter given bully pulpit and Burnham's own comms abilities.

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Steve Akehurst @steveakehurst.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

entirely fair enough! did my best but always tricky with paired statements. Only thing i'd say it's not super different to support/oppose questions. Would never say it's the final word, and framing matters hugely; what govt is doing is sellable imo. Agree more in-depth message testing is needed!

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Steve Akehurst @steveakehurst.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Ok, that’s the thread! Please do share on if you found it useful. Tables up soon. Here are the videos we tested: tinyurl.com/BurnhamConfC... @convergent-opinion.bsky.social @fintan-smith.bsky.social

tinyurl.com

POST Conf Test - Google Drive

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Steve Akehurst @steveakehurst.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Nevertheless, it does show us something important: people like Burnham even more when they’re exposed to him; many of his core themes & arguments carry people and can push up his numbers and vote share. The ownership agenda esp - if delivered - could be really powerful for him.

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Steve Akehurst @steveakehurst.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Ok, some obvious and important methodological caveats before Lab folk get too excited. Obviously we are forcibly exposing people to Burnham’s speech here, unfiltered and uncontested. In reality, most will not pay that sort of attention! Plus of course persuasion effects will decay. But…

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Steve Akehurst @steveakehurst.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

finally, we independently tested the whole BBC News at Six TV package on the speech, since this sort of thing is how more voters would actually experience the speech in reality. All the major metrics increased significantly! Impressive.

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Steve Akehurst @steveakehurst.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Some persuasion effects on policy: Burnham’s arguments moved more people to support national care service funded by triple lock change, as well as water. (the changes in other areas here weren’t stat significant, though already high). The PM as 'political teacher'.

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