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Peter McLeod

@mcleodp.bsky.social

141 followers 255 following 336 posts

Opinion polls and focus groups, UK and elsewhere.

Posts Replies Media

Peter McLeod @mcleodp.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

A better tomorrow eh? Some interesting imagery there.

Still from A Better Tomorrow (1986), showing Chow Yun-Fat lighting a cigarette with a flaming banknote.

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Peter McLeod @mcleodp.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

Among the weirder overcorrections to "fewer" that I've ever seen. Honestly, the grammar pedants of c. a decade ago have done untold damage.

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Peter McLeod @mcleodp.bsky.social · 14/05/2026

Sunder I will not stand for this Tottenham erasure.

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Peter McLeod @mcleodp.bsky.social · 30/04/2026

Banksy this is not how you play hide and seek.

BBC News headline: Banksy confirms he's behind statue in central London

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Peter McLeod @mcleodp.bsky.social · 24/03/2026

Sanity was restored on Sunday evening.

100 jumps "completed" screen, showing that the player achieved the goal after 74 attempts.

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Peter McLeod @mcleodp.bsky.social · 22/03/2026

Why.

The Game Over screen of "100 jumps" showing that the player failed with only 1 jump left.

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Peter McLeod @mcleodp.bsky.social · 03/03/2026

Scene from The Squid and the Whale, character describes Kafka's The Metamorphosis

Scene from The Squid and the Whale, character says The Metamorphosis is "very Kafkaesque"

Scene from The Squid and the Whale, character says that's because it's by Kafka

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Peter McLeod @mcleodp.bsky.social · 21/02/2026

Can't make up my mind whether this is a very funny headline, or one that the writer hasn't thought about at all.

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Peter McLeod @mcleodp.bsky.social · 12/12/2025

Many thanks to NYT connections for the free publicity. Check out my blog! www.hold-sway.com/blog

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Peter McLeod @mcleodp.bsky.social · 03/12/2025

Disclaimer:

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Peter McLeod @mcleodp.bsky.social · 03/12/2025

As I was saying on my new blog just last week:

Text from blog, incl: "we should expect consolidation to take place on the right... [e.g.] a pact or alliance, as when the Brexit Party stood aside for the Tories in many seats at the 2019 election."

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Peter McLeod @mcleodp.bsky.social · 28/11/2025

"Platty Joobs."

Keir Starmer stands at a lectern, the Stars and Stripes and Union Flag resplendent behind him. He frowns as he looks down at what we assume are his speaking notes. The on-screen subtitle reads: "there's a famous slogan in the United Kingdom".

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Peter McLeod @mcleodp.bsky.social · 26/11/2025

Can't we just rely on the right to remain split? I don't think so.

Any of the following are more than plausible: right wing voters act tactically to get rid of a Labour government; the Tories collapse completely, leaving Reform to clean up; Reform collapses completely, to the Tories’ benefit; the right wing parties form a pact or alliance, as when the Brexit Party stood aside for the Tories in many seats at the 2019 election.

Second, Labour pursuing a progressive alliance strategy would be a signal to right wing voters that it’s against them and their priorities, increasing the pressure for anti-government tactical voting.

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Peter McLeod @mcleodp.bsky.social · 26/11/2025

Combine the swing against progressive parties since the election with our existing electoral geography, and it gets ugly.

At the 2024 election, the combined progressive vote was larger than the combined right wing vote in 416 of the 575 constituencies in England and Wales (I’m excluding Scotland from this simple analysis because the independence question complicates the progressive/right wing divide much more than in Wales).

Applying a 7-point uniform swing from the progressive to the right-wing bloc shows that the right bloc is now bigger in 313 of them, with the progressive bloc falling to 262. That is to say, if voters in each bloc sort themselves perfectly to back the type of candidate they (theoretically) favour, the right is in touching distance of an overall majority in Parliament, regardless of what happens in Scotland.

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Peter McLeod @mcleodp.bsky.social · 26/11/2025

Just to give the game away little: I think the notion that Labour wins by uniting all the progressive voters is wishful thinking.

It's often suggested that a) Labour is seeking to appease Reform voters while ignoring its own base, and b) that it should instead try to unite a progressive bloc of voters currently split between itself, the Greens, Lib Dems and nationalist parties in Scotland and Wales. While I don’t think it’s strictly accurate that Labour’s main target is Reform voters, my main issue with this argument is that a progressive-voter strategy is set up to fail. This post aims to explain why.

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Peter McLeod @mcleodp.bsky.social · 18/11/2025

You wait years for a Roald Dahl reference and two arrive in a day. Brilliant image from Rushdie here.

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Peter McLeod @mcleodp.bsky.social · 05/11/2025

Someone needs to subtitle it "An Office for Ovals"

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Peter McLeod @mcleodp.bsky.social · 03/10/2025

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Peter McLeod @mcleodp.bsky.social · 02/04/2025

"...but that's not important right now."

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Peter McLeod @mcleodp.bsky.social · 31/03/2025

Think I've got to the bottom of it.

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Peter McLeod @mcleodp.bsky.social · 27/01/2025

Quote with a photo of a bridge from your gallery.

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Peter McLeod @mcleodp.bsky.social · 23/11/2024

The real quiz.

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Peter McLeod @mcleodp.bsky.social · 18/11/2024

Fair enough but if anything he'll be glad of missing that Q&A.

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Peter McLeod @mcleodp.bsky.social · 16/11/2024

I have this characteristically enormous footnote from a David Foster Wallace essay to thank for my familiarity and, hence, discomfort with the term.

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