BritPolls
UK Politics Explainers
Plain-English guides to British democracy, polling methods and the UK electoral system. No jargon, no spin.
How pollsters sample, what margin of error means, and why polls can be wrong.
Read explainer →Online vs telephone vs MRP, sample sizes, weighting and historical accuracy.
Read explainer →What a poll of polls is, how aggregation works and why it reduces noise.
Read explainer →Multi-Level Regression and Post-Stratification — the method behind seat-by-seat forecasts.
Read explainer →What voting intention means, how it is measured and how to read a tracker chart.
Read explainer →How UK elections actually work and why vote share rarely equals seat share.
Read explainer →FPTP, safe seats and why 28% Reform support does not equal 28% of seats.
Read explainer →What happens when no party wins a majority — 2010, 2017 and the 2029 outlook.
Read explainer →How they work, what recent results tell us, and why they are unreliable national guides.
Read explainer →Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland — powers, parliaments and polling differences.
Read explainer →Parliament, Prime Minister, Cabinet — the structure of British democracy.
Read explainer →Donations, Short Money, union links and the rules governing party finance.
Read explainer →Current voting intention, leader ratings and 2029 GE forecasts updated weekly.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is First Past the Post?
First Past the Post (FPTP) is the UK electoral system for Westminster elections. Voters choose one candidate per constituency; the candidate with the most votes wins regardless of majority. This creates strong disproportionality: a party winning 28% nationally may win far fewer than 28% of seats.
What is voting intention in UK polls?
Voting intention is the share of respondents who say they would vote for each party if a general election were held tomorrow. Weighted by demographic factors and past vote recall, it is the standard measure for UK political polling and forms the basis of the BritPolls poll of polls tracker.
What is an MRP poll?
MRP (Multi-Level Regression and Post-Stratification) uses a large national survey combined with census data to estimate voting intention in each individual constituency. Used by YouGov, More in Common, and Survation for seat-level forecasting; far more granular than standard national polls.
What is a hung parliament?
A hung parliament occurs when no single party wins an outright majority (326+ seats) in the House of Commons. Parties must form coalitions or minority governments. The UK has had hung parliaments in 1974, 2010, and 2017. Multi-party fragmentation in 2026 polling makes it a realistic scenario for 2029.
Why do different polls show different results?
Polls differ due to house effects — systematic biases from different weighting schemes, sampling panels, and question wording. A firm that consistently shows Labour 3 points above average has a Labour house effect of +3. The BritPolls polling average combines multiple pollsters to reduce the influence of any single firm’s methodology.
How does tactical voting work under First Past the Post?
Tactical voting is when voters choose a party they prefer less but who is better placed to beat the party they like least in their constituency. In 2024, roughly 3–4 million UK voters voted tactically, concentrating anti-Conservative votes behind the Lib Dems in southern England and helping them win 72 seats. Under proportional representation, tactical voting would largely become irrelevant.