Guy Miscampbell

Director @JLPartnersPolls | Climbing when I can | Formerly @educationgovuk @stackstrat @ukonward @wpi_economics @Policy_Exchange and others

[Guy Miscampbell @guymiscampbell]

The Grand Wall, Squamish Chief. Exhausting, terrifying, hard, awesome.

[JL Partners @JLPartnersPolls]

JL Partners has not ran a voting intention poll in Makerfield. The poll numbers below are unweighted past vote numbers from a large-scale focus group exercise.

[Jim Blagden @jim_blagden]

UKIP pt.2 election boogaloo

Reform's vote share numbers are something UKIP could only dream of

In all but a handful of councils, Reform has improved on UKIP's best ever performances

But Reform isn't just a juiced-up UKIP. A short 🧵 on this

[Ben Southwood @bswud]

Note how Spain, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Poland and so on have seen their poorer areas depopulate and their richer areas grow rapidly, whereas Britain has seen slow but steady growth everywhere. A huge failure of British land use policy, causing regional income divergence.

[JL Partners @JLPartnersPolls]

SENIOR HIRE: We are delighted to welcome Alex Hickman to @JLPartnersPolls - most recently Senior Managing Director at Teneo, Alex will be running our corporate business development as we grow the firm further.

As featured in @prweek and @politico

https://t.co/vOGRMMJZM1

[Robert Colvile @rcolvile]

🚨@CPSThinkTank is recruiting for the best job in Westminster - mine.

I've enjoyed every second at the CPS, and will definitely continue to be involved, but the time has come for someone else to take the reins. Thanks to everyone, for everything...

https://t.co/t8yYhdWvz6

[Tom Lubbock @tmlbk]

Extraordinary result in the @JLPartnersPolls polling we ran for @Policy_Exchange👇

🇬🇧Under half (48%) of British adults have a favourable view of the *UK* at the moment.

▶️That includes just 18% who have a very favourable view of the country they live in.

▶️ 45% of British Muslims have a favourable view of the UK

https://t.co/mKoLgJnW6U

[Ben Ansell @benwansell]

Further evidence for something I’ve worried about for a while. Bad actors in the higher education sector are imperilling public and political support for international students in the rest of the system. The omertà about calling out some dubious universities needs to end.

[Jim Blagden @jim_blagden]

The Greens surge in our latest JL Partners voting intention, but they are still nowhere near second place

A thread on what’s happening in the numbers 🧵

For the first time in our tracking, the Greens have broken the 10% barrier, finally making it into double digits

[Guy Miscampbell @guymiscampbell]

When I was at DfE I would frequently tell the sector they were their own worst enemy and if they didn't sort out the nexus of quality and immigration a reckoning was coming.

They were lucky the dependent exemptions were maintained for research courses. Suspect that will now go.

[Neil O'Brien @NeilDotObrien]

Classic - ministers let students carry on importing relatives on particular course type, universities suddenly LOVING that course type

[Daisy Christodoulou @daisychristo]

The graduate premium is falling in the UK but rising in the US.

However even if the grad premium was rising everywhere, it still might have nothing to do what students learn at university. It could be the result of the "signal" sent by university attendance - a signal that could be replaced by something far cheaper and less time-consuming.

Even in America, where the grad premium is rising, there are plenty of people who would argue that it's still the result of a signal - not the result of the human capital gained from being at university.

There is a huge academic debate about this which is very hard to settle one way or the other, partly because we have such poor assessment data on universities.

I don't think the value of university is 100% signal. I think it's a mix of human capital & signals.

If we want to tilt it more towards human capital, we need better assessment data. We need to know which universities are the best at teaching certain skills (and which skills are most valuable in the job market).

Graduate earnings data cannot tell you this.

I just don't think it's good enough for the graduate premium to be the sole measure of university impact. You wouldn't measure a hospital by the later earnings of the people it treats! We shouldn't measure universities that way either!

https://t.co/Tp6PLBOKcq

[Guy Miscampbell @guymiscampbell]

I don't think I've ever seen a focus group or poll to back up this position...

[Joe Shalam @JoeShalam]

Bizarre editorial from @thetimes, whose leader writers seem increasingly scrambled by Reform.

“The most promising unoccupied electoral space in British politics would combine a re-embrace of free market principles, while shunning populism in all of its economic and cultural forms.”

Err? 🤨

[Guy Miscampbell @guymiscampbell]

Worth a read from @jim_blagden with @JLPartnersPolls data 👇

[Jim Blagden @jim_blagden]

Latest @JLPartnersPolls voting intention sees Reform reach their highest poll rating since September, following a wave of Conservative defections

After losing momentum late last year, the party is back above 30%, signalling a renewed upward trend

[JL Partners @JLPartnersPolls]

NEW: GB voting intention in @thesun

Reform at highest level of support since September

REF 31% (+2)
LAB 23% (-)
CON 19% (-1)
LDEM 12% (-)
GRN 9% (-)
OTH 6% (-1)

Fieldwork: 4–12 Feb, 2,006 GB adults

Full results and analysis from @jim_blagden ⬇️

[Ben Woodfinden @BenWoodfinden]

You should take all polling with a massive grain of salt right now for a variety of reasons, regardless of your political stripe, but the one thing i find genuinely odd is how if you just listen to mainstream press you'd assume conservatives were down by double digits and in massive trouble, which is not the case.

There are undoubtedly challenges for the CPC right no, but it's a much more competitive and complicated picture than some people are painting.

[James Johnson @jamesjohnson252]

A quick work update re @jlpartnerspolls and @j_l_partners. I'm immensely proud to share that we started the year on 8 people and we are ending it on close to 20!

Last week we convened our annual retreat to celebrate that success. Taking place on the Red Sea in Egypt, it was an incredible few days of team bonding, strategic and training sessions, and an opportunity for the US and UK firms to come together - plus to plan on how we are going to get even bigger wins in 2026.

I'm hugely proud of every member of these incredible, high-proficiency teams; and of my co-founder @tmlbk and director @guymiscampbell in helping to build them.

On to 2026!

[Guy Miscampbell @guymiscampbell]

@RalphGoodale Congratulations Ralph!

[Guy Miscampbell @guymiscampbell]

At the election debrief the morning after I asked:

- Do we think the Conservative c. 40% will hold better than the Liberal one? (Yes)
- Is it likely that the black swan of Trump/Tariffs/drafting Carney is a repeatable trick? (No)

That means stay the course and the Conservatives should be favoured for the next general election. Changing paths feels like madness.

[Sean Speer @Sean_Speer]

Are the Conservatives once again succumbing to Tory syndrome?

The recent criticism of Pierre Poilievre from within conservative circles has to be understood through the lens of a recurring condition on the Canadian Right: what political scientist George Perlin famously coined the “Tory syndrome.” It’s an enduring impulse—part psychological, part political—that leads Conservatives to question and doubt their own leaders even when they’re succeeding.

The Tory syndrome has deep roots in our political history. It’s the nagging sense among Conservatives that being too forceful or too popular somehow betrays the party’s deeper sense of itself as the defender of order, restraint, and moderation. From Robert Stanfield to Erin O’Toole, Conservative leaders have often faced as much hostility from inside their own tent as from outside it. The result is a pattern of self-doubt and internal critique that can sap the party’s confidence at moments of opportunity.

That dynamic is playing out again. While Poilievre has maintained support at or near record levels—polling roughly where the party stood at the time of April’s election call—Conservatives have spent the week debating his tone, his tactics, and even his temperament. If you didn’t know any better, you’d mistakenly think the party’s support was collapsing instead of actually being tied or leading several polls.

Meanwhile, the governing Liberals have been busy reversing themselves on one major issue after another. The latest about-face on bail reform follows reversals on carbon taxes, Canada Post’s operations, and more. At this point, the Carney government’s most notable accomplishments involve undoing Trudeau-era policies that elected and non-elected Liberals were defending mere months ago. Yet one doesn’t get the sense that Liberals are subjecting themselves to any comparable self-recrimination.

One could say that the Conservatives’ higher standards for themselves and their leaders are admirable. They reflect a seriousness about ideas and institutions that stands in contrast to the Liberals’ reflexive opportunism. But as a matter of politics, it’s hard to see how this kind of infighting advances the Conservative Party’s core goal of winning the next election.

The merger that created the modern Conservative Party in 2003 was supposed to mark the end of these old Tory complexes. It was meant to produce a confident, united party that could compete for power on its own terms.

The past week’s sniping and self-doubt suggest that the Tory syndrome still lingers and that Conservatives haven’t yet fully given up their historic tendency toward internecine politics.

[Simon Clarke @SirSimonClarke]

Great coverage in @Telegraph of our new @ukonward polling report today, The Ballot of The Sexes.

More unique polling with @JLPartnersPolls and @KAS_UKIRL

Gen Z is splitting in interesting ways…

https://t.co/sxB1IM7bQJ

[Nicholas Stephenson @N1ckSteph]

🚨NEW🚨

@JLPartnersPolls, KAS, and @ukonward polling of 5,000 16-40 year olds shows a widening gender divide in the UK.

Men aged 16-25:

Reform: 31%
Labour: 24%
Green: 14%

Women aged 16-25:

Labour: 27%
Green: 25%
Reform: 18%

👉 Read the report:
https://t.co/yWOzuq1Wsv

🧵/