Hi everyone, welcome to this latest episode of the Uciss Itel podcast from the UK in a changing Europe.

Today we've got an election special featuring two of our all-star cephalological expert team in the form of

Rob Ford from the University of Manchester. Hi, Rob.

Hi, I am. And our very own Sophie Stowers from the UK and Changing Europe team. Hi, Sophie.

Hello. So today we're just going to chat all things, voting elections. We don't have a script.

Steve, you can tell when you've listened to the whole episode. So we're just going to wing it and see where we get to.

But I suppose the first question is, it's a bit dull, isn't it, on the polling front?

Nothing is changing.

It's a bit of a yawn, isn't it, you two?

It kind of is, yeah.

I've been trying to put together, because we're kind of half time at this point

actually we should bring the oranges out uh 21 days you're campaigning done 21 to go so i was trying

to do a thing sort of looking at what's happened in the polling in in the first half and it's a kind

of great big nothing burger the headline polling hasn't moved a lot.

The leadership approvals haven't moved.

The issue agenda hasn't moved.

The public haven't noticed a great deal and what they've noticed hasn't really changed their minds.

So it does seem to be so far not a very, I mean the main sources of excitement seem to be various pratfalls from the

Prime Minister, but they don't actually seem to have done massive damage to his party's

poll ratings, perhaps because they were so low already. I was going to say the same thing. Actually,

I think if you look, you've got, did a thing, which is they've got some like new AI tool which they

use to see which stories from the campaign have cut through or I think just stories in the news

...