Peter McLeod
mcleodp.bsky.social
Peter McLeod
@mcleodp.bsky.social
Opinion polls and focus groups, UK and elsewhere.
Then: HL2Ep2; now... Probably Stalker SoC.
...aaaand we're back! It's the Big One

Quote this with your favourite game NOW that was released in 2007, and what your favourite was THEN (if you had one)

Localisations/early access count, remasters/ports don't. Remakes depend.

Two-way ties count.

Refresher list: backloggd.com/games/lib/po...
December 26, 2025 at 9:19 PM
Elden Ring by a distance, then and now. A colossus, a landmark.
Quote this with what you would have said your game of the year was at the end of 2022, if you had one, and what you would say your favourite game of 2022 is now, if it differs

Localisations and early access count, remasters don't. Remakes depend

Full refresher: backloggd.com/games/lib/po...
December 18, 2025 at 6:54 PM
Many thanks to NYT connections for the free publicity. Check out my blog! www.hold-sway.com/blog
December 12, 2025 at 11:58 AM
Time to re-promote this week's blog post: on how to read polls that tell you a majority of the public support any given policy.
December 5, 2025 at 11:15 AM
As I was saying on my new blog just last week:
December 3, 2025 at 8:35 AM
Reposted by Peter McLeod
Rightly lots of debates about growth this weekend - rightly because it was low productivity growth that saw wages entirely flatline during the 2010s.
November 30, 2025 at 12:00 PM
Reposted by Peter McLeod
Look, I’m a union MP. I want the employment rights bill in full. But I am also a pragmatist. Unions sat round the table with business and ministers and hammered out a compromise which means protections from unfair dismissal come in from six months not two years and we get Royal Assent by Christmas
November 29, 2025 at 10:52 AM
"Platty Joobs."
November 28, 2025 at 4:16 PM
Reposted by Peter McLeod
I have worked to end the two child limit ever since the day I was elected. Today this Labour govt acted to give every child the best start in life.

5,540 children in Tipton, Wednesbury and Coseley will be out of poverty immediately. This is what a Labour government is for 😍
November 26, 2025 at 1:40 PM
Still a few hours until the budget, why not have a read of my first blog post, on Labour's target voters?
www.hold-sway.com/blog/labour-...
November 26, 2025 at 10:26 AM
Started a blog, beginning with some discussion of Labour's target voters.
www.hold-sway.com/blog/labour-...
Why Labour needs to win voters from the right — Hold Sway Insight & Strategy
Labour won’t win if it only targets progressive voters
www.hold-sway.com
November 25, 2025 at 4:49 PM
Real pleasure to join Benedict for the latest episode of his excellent podcast!
November 13, 2025 at 7:16 PM
This is a really interesting analysis but I don't think it's quite the debunking of Labour's strategy that it claims to be. The premise is that strategists believe people who've shifted Lab->Reform since GE24 have different characteristics in marginal constituencies than elsewhere.
A month ago I looked at what I called Labour's midlife crisis- an obsession with chasing socially conservative Reform-curious voters and ignoring groups of disaffected voters with social attitudes much closer to Labour voters. But some people thought there was method in their madness. Was there? 1/n
November 12, 2025 at 4:39 PM
This is good. Shows humour working at 2 levels: 1) a signal that you're smart, confident, charismatic and authentic; 2) a tool you can use to launch attacks without seeming mean, and divert without seeming slippery.
I had enormous fun writing this piece over the half term break for @thetimes.com Why humour is the superpower of politics. Featuring polling from @focaldata.bsky.social and @ipsosintheuk.bsky.social
Why we should pay more attention to political humour @jameskanag.bsky.social
www.thetimes.com/article/8bf3...
October 31, 2025 at 1:10 PM
There are many, many ways of dressing up your "the voters are stupid" point of view, and this is among the more creative, but it's still that.
I’ve been thinking a lot about a new kind of polling I’d like to see. We have polling that measures public opinion, which is obviously important, but I’d love to see a little more empirical work on public knowledge: what do voters know about politics and policy?
October 29, 2025 at 9:58 PM
This is what happens when you think you're Gandalf but you're actually Saruman. NB we also know who Sauron is here (he controls the palantiri).
Elon Musk: "It is time for the English to ally with the hard men, like Tommy Robinson, and fight for their survival or they shall surely all die" 29th October 2025. 2 million views in its first hour.
October 29, 2025 at 12:17 PM
Horrifying to learn that I was born within 4 days of RJ.
The chances that Robert Jenrick *literally* went to "more than a few football matches in the away end" at Villa Park *in the 1980s* (ie, before his 8th birthday on 8.1.1990) are vanishingly small to non-existent. (He may have been in the away end at Villa Park as a child or teenager in the 1990s)
October 18, 2025 at 10:18 AM
Reposted by Peter McLeod
We should be so proud to have an education secretary whose purpose shines through everything she does, who remembers the free school meals kid she was, who believes every child matters, and who acts on it
These kids would quietly have been written off, and it would have blighted their lives. But they haven’t been. Thanks to ministers and teachers and parents who didn’t give up on them.
Together we’re turning the tide on the absence crisis among our kids.

Five million more days in school is the biggest improvement in a decade.

I want to thank not just the parents but the school leaders, teachers & support staff who’ve made this happen.
www.gov.uk/government/n...
August 8, 2025 at 11:11 PM
New data from me, for @tuc.org.uk, on tax. Overall support for several measures inc. a 2% wealth tax, notably shared by 2024 "hero" switchers and with Lab24 now considering Reform.
June 8, 2025 at 11:12 AM
Am at a handball festival in western Norway. Couple of c. 10 yr old boys just walked by towing a big portable speaker, pumping out Gangsta's Paradise.
Related-ish point. My sample size here is purely my eldest two and their friends: but one thing I’m really interested in is how streaming means that young people listen to a lot more ‘older’ music than they used to. They’ll happily listen to something released in 2025 then something from 1995.
June 8, 2025 at 11:06 AM
One of the weirder bits of the ERB debate is opposition parties claiming it amounts to a crackdown on pub banter. (Needless to say?), voters find this an odd line of argument to take. Daily Mirror story on Hold Sway poll findings for the TUC here: www.mirror.co.uk/news/politic...
Tories accused of 'insulting' voters with desperate pub banter claims
Shadow Business Secretary Andrew Griffith claimed vital legislation to keep employees safe from being harassed by abusive customers was an attempt to 'ban banter'
www.mirror.co.uk
May 13, 2025 at 10:45 AM
Reform on 27% in this More in Common poll. On these figures that means a little over 3% of the electorate are Lab24->Ref25 voters, or in other words, about 10% of Labour's voters at the GE are now with Reform. Not insignificant.
May 10, 2025 at 2:47 PM