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Rate Expectations: Interpreting Polls and the Mail on Sunday

Most people believe the PM will still be in office in 2026.

Anthony B. Masters
3 min readJan 11, 2025

On Sunday 05 January 2025, the Mail on Sunday published the headline:

POLL: STARMER WILL BE OUT OF No 10 IN A YEAR

The Mail on Sunday front page for Sunday 05 January 2025. The main headline is: “Poll: Starmer will be out of No 10 in a year”.
(Image: Sky News/Mail on Sunday)

The online version started:

Keir Starmer will be out of No 10 within a year, poll predicts: Furious voters deliver damning verdict on PM amid anger over migration, winter fuel payments and inheritance tax on farmers

Deltapoll conducts online interviews for social research. This poll interviewed 1,532 Great British adults between 30 December and 03 January 2025. According to a 2022 methods page, the quotas used are: gender, age, region, and past vote.

This was a long, self-administered survey, covering many political topics. The question was:

If you had to say, for how long do you expect Keir Starmer to remain as Prime Minister?

There were ten response options: ranging from ‘under one year’ to ‘more than fifteen years’. Among respondents in the Deltapoll survey, 13% said they didn’t know.

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Anthony B. Masters
Anthony B. Masters

Written by Anthony B. Masters

This blog looks at the use of statistics in Britain and beyond. It is written by RSS Statistical Ambassador and Chartered Statistician @anthonybmasters.

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