YouGov’s latest polling in the Labour leadership election which gives Corbyn a twenty point lead on Owen Smith, combined with the news that 183,000 people have signed up as registered supporters to vote, should prove to be enough confirmation to make predictions at this early stage. While affiliated supporters can still be signed up through trade unions, and CLP nominations have only just begun, it is very hard to see how Owen Smith would get over 50% of the support.

Polling in party leadership elections is much more unpredictably and even less of a scientific exercise than those of General Elections, yet YouGov’s polling last summer showed Corbyn in the lead from the first poll to the last. Polling between Friday 15th and Monday 18th showed Corbyn beating Owen Smith in a head-to-head among pre-2016 Labour members, by 56% to 34%, with around one in ten voters undecided. That is a huge lead for Smith to overturn in just a few weeks, as most members will fill out their votes either online or by post when voting opens in mid-August. Even some more negative polling results, from Labour councillors, actually shows a year-on-year increase for Corbyn from 2015.

To win the election, the Corbyn team simply need to repeat many of the same tactics as last summer, which saw the victor speak at over a hundred public events, some of them thousands-strong and called at very little notice. The only remaining opportunity for Smith to reshape the electorate in his favour is via affiliated supporters, signed up through the unions, but many Corbynites will do the same.

The social media landscape has shifted dramatically, too. While last summer Jeremy Corbyn was not a household name beyond those of us on the Labour Left, and the campaign’s brilliant social media strategy was built from scratch, this year the Jeremy Corbyn campaign Facebook page and official account boast a million likes combined. Can Owen Smith compete with that to get his message across?

Brexit and immigration will, according to some, prove a sticking point for many party members, and according to various news reports, plenty of those in the party are disappointed with Labour’s efforts in the campaign. Leaving aside the fact that Corbyn spoke at more Remain rallies than any other Labour MP, including the Labour In leader Alan Johnson, many party members simply don’t buy the PLP’s line that Corbyn didn’t pull his weight. Further to that, for many members the worry is now that the party will tack right on freedom of movement and immigration controls. The candidate best placed to allay those fears is Jeremy Corbyn.

Even Smith’s apparently unique selling points: that he can provide Corbynism without Corbyn, radicalism and competence, are slowly being unpicked for what they are. In just a week, Smith’s past working for Big Pharma company, Pfizer, is seeping into mainstream news, and despite a cringeworthy publicity piece in the Daily Mirror, a readers’ poll at the foot of the page showed 80% of readers still preferred Corbyn. If the Left wanted to find an ideal candidate to run against Corbyn to ensure that he won a second time, then an ex-corporate lobbyist who couldn’t make his mind up on the Iraq war and has abstained on welfare cuts, is quite close to the mark.

The election itself could prove an opportunity for Corbyn, beyond simply ensuring his re-election. While the £25 registered supporters scheme and freeze date have had the intended effect of preventing another huge membership surge, the Corybn campaign has around two weeks to effect one in the trade union movement, encouraging shop stewards to sign up their members before August 8th, for free, in order to vote to re-elect.

But the election should prove an opportunity for policy formation, and further staking a claim to Labour’s future. Unbound by the restrictions of Cabinet protocol, Corbyn, McDonnell and their teams can use the summer to put across more bold policy ideas and convince the membership not just of their vision, but their plans.