On Thursday morning,
@RestoreBritain founder
@RupertLowe10 tweeted: “This is important - the latest huge MRP poll has Restore Britain ahead in more Scottish constituencies than both Reform or the Tories.”
The data he cited envisaged a hypothetical tactical voting scenario in a giant MRP poll issued by FindOutNow and Electoral Calculus.
It showed that in a world where voters pick tactically (the long explainer for that here, for the nerds like me), Restore Britain would finish ahead of other “parties on the right” in 21 Scottish seats, with the Tories finishing top of this trio in 13, and Reform finishing top in just 12. Eleven of them, it claimed, would be tied.
He concluded: “This is remarkable. Restore Britain is now the second largest party in Scotland, and the largest party on the right - bigger than both Reform and the Tories.”
Indeed it would have been remarkable. If only it were true.
My analysis of the poll over hours on Thursday morning led me to realise there was a methodological inconsistency.
I found that although the tactical-voting calculations appeared to affect support for other parties, they actually incorrectly left Restore’s share in every constituency exactly as it was prior to tactical voting.
So I shared my findings with the pollster and the immediately corrected their data. The result? ZERO seats where Restore Britain finishes "top of the parties on the right" AND more crucially, it now hands Reform an extra 25 seats nationally.
My full tear down and explainer of this are at my Substack, linked in the first reply below.
You have no idea how much time and brain power it took to go through reams of data to understand what went wrong here for the pollster.