5 key questions as Starmer and Sunak make final pitches to UK voters

Britons have been voting for over three weeks via post in the UK general election, and will be heading to polling stations across the country on Thursday – with polls suggesting a new prime minister could take office on Friday.

Throughout a somewhat lackluster campaign, polls have indicated Keir Starmer’s opposition Labour Party is set to replace Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives and form the next government, and going into the final stretch little has changed that overall picture despite the disruptive rise of a hard-right party, Reform.

Here are five key questions as election day approaches.

1. Will MRP polling be accurate?

National polls have given Labour a commanding lead for several months, but in Britain’s first-past-the-post system, which features 650 individual elections, the headline figures only tell a partial story.

In this election cycle, a new type of polling has been used to try to dig deeper and project how many seats (and so members of parliament) each party could win. The results of these multi-level regression and post-stratification (MRP) polls, which face their first big test on Thursday, would have huge implications if born out.

Explainer: Who's set to win the UK election and what are they promising?

The MRP polls vary quite dramatically between pollsters, though all point to one outcome – an enormous Labour majority. Ipsos puts the margin at 256 seats, YouGov at 194, WeThink for The Economist at 280. To put those numbers in context, the largest majority in British political history was 210 for Stanley Baldwin’s Conservatives in 1924.

Given the scale of the margins and the swing required to achieve them from the 2019 election, when the Conservatives won an 80-seat majority under Boris Johnson, there is some skepticism about the projections.

A clue as to how seriously the polls should be taken comes from the parties’ campaign tactics in the final days of the election. Starmer is on the offensive, wading into traditionally Conservative areas, as his party urges voters not to be complacent about a Labour victory, while Sunak is on the defensive in what were once Conservative strongholds, warning of the dangers of unchecked Labour power.

2. What does Labour want to do?

Labour has been out of power since 2010, when Gordon Brown’s government was replaced by a Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition headed by David Cameron. In that time it narrowly lost the 2015 election under Ed Miliband, then swung further to the left under the controversial leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, who outperformed expectations in the 2017 election before losing heavily in 2019.  

Corbyn has now been kicked out of the party after a row over anti-semitism and Miliband could be back in government as energy secretary by the end of the week. Starmer, a lawyer and former head of the country’s prosecution service, has dragged Labour back towards the center since becoming leader in 2020 and run an ultra cautious campaign, high on discipline and short on specifics.

Labour has focused a lot on character, talking about a return to politics as public service, and campaigned on the simple slogan of “Change” and a mission to deliver economic growth to address shortfalls.  

Polls suggest many voters aren’t too clear on what Labour would actually do in government, but are backing the party anyway. If elected, Labour is planning major reversals on Conservative policies in its first weeks in power, including on the controversial Rwanda asylum scheme, as well as action on climate issues such as onshore wind farms, long-running strikes by junior doctors, planning rules, and announcements on investment and housebuilding.

3. What happens to the Conservatives?

After 14 years in government and five prime ministers, the Conservative Party has struggled to get its message heard in 2024. Midway through the campaign, it switched tack from talking about another Conservative government to a strategy of warning against giving Labour a large majority.

The campaign hasn’t exactly been smooth, and brief signs of momentum have repeatedly been punctured by mishaps or controversy. Sunak announced the election, which had to be held by January 2025, in a speech in the pouring rain, and proceeded to make a series of errors, from the minor, like briefing the media while standing beneath an “Exit” sign, to the major, like leaving the D-Day 70-year commemorations in France early to film a recorded TV interview.

He hasn’t been helped by a scandal involving members of his party and protection detail betting on the election date, which has led to police investigations. The party is widely expected to be defeated, and if the MRP polls are correct several high profile figures will lose their seats. The question for many is how big the loss is, and whether the Conservatives, one of the oldest political parties in the world, will be able to rebuild.

4. Does Britain want Reform?

A major plot twist in the election came when Nigel Farage, a man credited with creating the political dynamics that led to Brexit, reversed a decision to skip the election to support Donald Trump’s bid for the presidency, instead announcing his candidacy to be an MP and taking over the leadership of Reform, a right-wing populist party.

Farage doesn’t hold broad appeal, but there’s no doubt his charisma and hardline views on immigration are popular among a section of the electorate. His arrival in the race saw Reform’s polling numbers and media attention jump, and despite numerous controversies, from a voter dousing him in milkshake and racist comments from party workers to views on the Ukraine crisis that are out of step with mainstream UK opinion, polls suggest Farage is likely to be elected to parliament at the eighth attempt.

Reform’s momentum has major implications for the Conservatives, who started the campaign hoping to squeeze the smaller party’s vote. Polls suggest the opposite may happen. Farage has openly said he hopes to ape the success of the Canadian Reform party, which achieved a reverse takeover of the country’s Conservative party in the 1990s. The leader of Canada’s Reform, Stephen Harper, went on to become prime minister.

5. Are stunts a route to success?

The performance of other smaller parties, which typically struggle for attention, will be an important factor in an election in which tactical voting is expected to be high.

The Liberal Democrats are targeting a return to their status as the third party of British politics at the expense of the Scottish National Party, which is expected to lose seats after a chaotic period despite a degree of stabilization under its new leader, the veteran John Swinney.

The Lib Dems, a party which typically offers sensible policies that don’t make headlines, has taken a new approach to getting noticed in the election: their usually buttoned-up leader, Ed Davey, has engaged in stunt after stunt, from cheerfully falling off kayaks and bungee jumping to taking part in Zumba classes and daytime TV makeovers. Whether the stunts are designed to appeal to social media algorithms or TV news, the polls suggest the party is on course for a big increase in seats, mostly at the expense of the Conservatives.

Another smaller party to watch is the Greens, who have become a new home for some on the left disillusioned by the more centrist approach of Starmer. Independents could also make headlines, with 71-year-old James Bagge, a former Conservative, campaigning hard to help unseat former Prime Minister Liz Truss.