Now, the elections on the 7th of May will be a big moment, not just in deciding how Scotland, Wales and local authorities in England are run, but also because they'll show how voters in the real world are feeling about politics, the parties and their leaders.

And there's no better way to get a feel for what people up and down the country are thinking than by convening the Times Radio Focus Group.

Over the next few weeks, we're going to hear from some of the key groups at these elections and try and discover what's informing their views of their area and the country. And the focus group has been run as ever by JL Partners, and their founding director Tom Lubbock is with me here in the studio. Hello, Tom. Great to be with you, Hugo. good to have you with us. This was a great one. This I sat in and heard a lot of it.

So look, for this first group, we're hearing from wavering to with me here in the studio. Hello, Tom. Great to be with you, Hugo. Good to have you with us. This was a great one.

This I sat in and heard a lot of it.

So look, for this first group, we're hearing from wavering Tories. Their voters who backed back the Conservatives in 2024, but are now tempted by reform. And we're going to try and find out whether the Badenoch bounce is a figment of Westminster's imagination. and what, if anything, can bring these people back to the Tories and what, if anything can stop them from backing reform?

Tom, for sort of like new listeners,

for anyone who doesn't know, what is and what isn't a focus group? So a focus group definitely

isn't a replacement for an opinion poll. We're not trying to find out what the distribution

of views is here in the country. What we are trying to do is

answer a very specific essay question here. What is the battleground between reform and the

conservatives looking like, this very key group of wavering conservatives. Are they about

to jump ship to reform? Are they going to do something else? Are they going to sit on their hands?

What do they think about Kemi Badenock? What's the future prospects of the Conservative Party? Very specific question

here. We want to see the whites of their eyes, the colour of their anecdotes. We want to hear all

of that in a focus group. So just once again to preempt the text that we will get. Nonetheless,

when people say these people aren't

representative they're all voted the same way that's the point exactly we hope that they're

representative of this very specific group that we picked them out from yeah it's not necessarily

it doesn't have to be representative we just want to see what they're saying okay well so look you

started as you usually do by asking them what they'd seen or heard about in the news here's a few of those answers

i've seen obviously they want to do the whole um call on uh what's his face about the Epstein

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