On Thursday, Brits will go to the polls to elect their new leader.  This is the third national election there in four years. Virtually all polls suggest that Boris Johnson will win the popular vote handily, but with Britain’s first-past-the-post electoral system, a parliamentary majority isn’t guaranteed. Johnson has been ahead in all polls since the election was called in late October.

Virtually everyone agrees that the electorate there is more volatile than in the past. The highly respected British Election Study, the leading survey of voting patterns in the UK since 1964, recently reported that nearly half the country (49 percent) voted for different parties across the three elections between 2010 and 2017. According to the study, 2017 “saw the highest level of switching between the Conservatives and Labour since the BES started in 1964.”The study notes that voters have become “less loyal or partisan,” and it argues that voters are “hugely influenced by unique events or issues” it describes as “electoral shocks.” (The polls show that people are more committed to their stand for or against Brexit than they are to a political party.)  Brexit is clearly one of those shocks, and in polling there, 70 percent tell pollsters they have “Brexit fatigue.” For more polls on this week’s election, see the new issue of AEI’s Political Report. And for a discussion of the results on December 12, join AEI’s Stan Veuger and Dalibor Rohac for a panel discussion at AEI at 4:30.

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