Aubrey Allegretti: Times Chief Political Correspondent on the potentially low voter turnout for the UK's election

There’s speculation it's a low voter turnout in the UK, despite projections of a historic and dramatic election result.  

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's Conservative Party is expected to take up opposition for the first time in 14 years.  

In the meantime, Keir Starmer's Labour could win the biggest majority since 1832.  

Times Chief Political Correspondent Aubrey Allegretti told Mike Hosking they're wondering if voter turnout could be very low. 

He says the opinion polls show record lows for the main two parties, so turnout could dip below 70%. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
But in coming to a close in Britain in the
next hour or so. The expectation is history is about
to unfold. The polls right there's against you and red
waves sweeping Labor into office with a majority not seen
in decads. Cheap political correspondent at the Times, Aubrey Eligritty
is with us on this, Aubury, very good morning to you.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Good morning.

Speaker 1 (00:16):
Any sense of turnout.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
So I would see the very hotly sated topic and
we're still waiting for any kind official numbers, but the
speculation is that this could be potentially quite a low
turnout election because when you look at the opinion polls,
you're seeing record low numbers for the main two parties,
the Labor Party and the Conservative Party, and so it
could be diffing below seventy percent.

Speaker 1 (00:42):
The actual campaign itself, did it make any difference or
was this a full on conclusion since day one?

Speaker 2 (00:50):
Well, Richie Sunac had the chance to all this election.
It's part of the sort of biggest gift he has.
He can spring it as a surprise on the opposition
and try to use it to his own advantage. But
it doesn't seem to have worked. He went into this
election campaign with the Conservative Party the governing party at
the moment, twenty points behind the opinion polls, as they
really have been ever since the ill fated premiership of

(01:13):
Liz Trust that lasted only forty nine days, and during
the course of that campaign the Poles have been particularly sticky.
They haven't moved substantially. If anything, really the Conservatives have
seen a little bit of a dip, seeing their vote
share being eaten into by the other party on the right,
led by Nigel Farage, known as Reform. So actually the
campaign doesn't seem to have substantively changed very much.

Speaker 1 (01:35):
Do you, with your experience believe the polls? Is history
going to be made? Is the wave messap?

Speaker 2 (01:43):
It certainly seems that way. I mean, opinion polls obviously
have been used with varying degrees of accuracy before. I
think the thing that is so different about this time
is that they have been stuck this way for so long.
So all the way back to October twenty twenty two,
they have showed that Labour's leaders about twenty points in
front and the Conservatives have been on the complete back foot.

(02:05):
So that suggests that there hasn't really been any sort
of radical shift that there isn't a sort of outlier poll,
and certainly MPs and ministers feel it on the doorsteps
as well. We have even had ministers tonight effectively tweeting
their resignation and saying that they know that they're going
to be out of office, even though you know, officially

(02:27):
we don't know how anyone's voted yet. So actually, I
think the result of this election does, to a lot
of people feel like a fore gone conclusion.

Speaker 1 (02:33):
And what's your assistment of Stammer And does he have
the discipline to control a caucus that's potentially messive with
a tremendous amount of inexperience.

Speaker 2 (02:42):
Absolutely, there is a danger, if you like, to winning
the largest majority for a political party in modern political history,
and that is that people become potentially unruly, that they
might rebel against the government. I suppose the thing that
he can count on is that his majority is so
big it doesn't matter. But there's also the issue of

(03:04):
lots of kind of sleeves and scandal that's dogged the
Conservative Party for many years, and that was partly seen
as a result of the fact that lots of people
got elected who didn't anticipate becoming MPs back in twenty nineteen,
and if the same is true this time, then potentially
you have people with a lot of baggage, a lot
of history who get into parliament. There aren't enough roles
for them to have any sort of official title of

(03:27):
the party or politically as ministers, and so they languish
in the comments, they get up to no good and
so that could present as danger for Kissama as well.

Speaker 1 (03:35):
Great and so will we go well a couple of
hours just under a couple of hours to go or
be ellegritting the two political correspondent at the time. For
more from the Mic Asking Breakfast, listen live to news
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