Communicate Research: polling in the old fashioned way
November 28th, 2006-
Labour ahead in the paper that brought you the Harman poll cock-up
Back in 1992 they used to run polls like the one by Communicate Research that appears in the Independent this morning. That was the year of what Nick Sparrow of ICM calls “the great polling debacle”
The final opinion polls gave the Conservatives between 38% and 39% of the vote, about 1% behind. On the day itself exit polls were carried out and everything was pointing to a hung parliament. But when the votes were counted the Conservatives, under the leadership of John Major, had a margin of 7.6% over Labour.
Much work was done by pioneering pollsters like Nick Sparrow after that disaster and now all the firms, bar Communicate Research, carrying out telephone surveys use a system known as “past vote weighting” to ensure balanced samples.
For the big challenge is that the process of telephone polling almost always seems to produce many more people saying they voted Labour at the previous General Election than actually did so.
-
Thus in all the published data in the year after the 2005 General Election from the two polling firms that ask how respondents how they voted last time an average of more than 44% said Labour - compared with the 36% that the party got.
Thus, for whatever reason, getting on for a quarter more people say they voted Labour than did on May 5th 2005 and this pattern is repeated in poll after poll.
ICM and Populus adjust their figures to take part of this into account allowing for a level misremembering. Communicate Research, which has just started regular surveys for the Independent, does not.
When their first Independent survey appeared last month showing a 6% Tory lead I wrote: “This is quite remarkable given the findings. For the main impact of past vote weighting is usually to reduce the level of Labour support because telephone surveys, for whatever reason, invariably find many more people who voted Labour last time than actually did.”
All this is by way of preamble to today’s CR shares which are: CON 34%(-4), LAB 36%(+4), LD17%(+3). Clearly, as we saw in last week’s ICM poll, there has been a move away from the Tories in the past month.
-
I think it is a sad and retrograde step that the Independent should now be commissioning polls in a form that was so discredited a decade and a half ago.
I am emailing Andrew Hawkins of Communicate Research to ask if he wants to respond.
Mike Smithson
MessageSpace Advertising
test
So the Tories could still be in the lead if they weighted the figures to allow more accurately to reflect past votes?
It is sad that the Independent should suggest why Labour is in the lead, that Labour looks tough on crime and terrorism after the Queen’s speech and the Tories look soft, especially when they do not give any warnings about the margins of error in the poll. Surely the Independent could do better than that?
Yes, but don’t we need to uncover the reason?
If people are accurately recalling their past vote then this kind of “past vote weighting” seems fair enough.
“Past vote weighting” would also appear to be a useful correction work if past vote recollection is biased, but only if future voting intention is also affected in the same way. For example bias in favour of:
1) The most popular party
2) The labour party (perceived as less ’selfish’)
But what about a third source of bias…
3) Bias according to what people now think
If this is important a “past vote weighted” survey would (in the current context) underestimate tory gains. And if all factors are in play then all surveys past weighted or not would underestimate tory revival.
Past vote weighting make poll results more stable and less susceptible to sampling error. But even corrected this way it seems the polls could still be subject to this kind of sytematic bias?
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2475122,00.html
This for me represents how labour are totally dominating the economic arguments of the day. How often does Osborne actually try attacking browns record rather than his personality. In fact can we say that in the last year Osborne has managed to nail brown 5 times.
I really think the tories are making a big mistake here. They are going to end up defining Brown as someone who is maybe too serious but with that will be a reputation cemented in his utter competance it will eventually work to the positive as did thatchers chracture as being a b!tch but being firm at the same time
There are no real details at all from today’s Labour Party/Populus leaked poll, published in The Herald.
All we know is that “Populus found Labour lagging eight points adrift of the SNP on both the constituency and the regional votes. One analysis of those figures suggests Labour would lose 14 of the 50 seats it holds, while the SNP would gain as many as 18 seats, on top of the 27 it won in 2003.”
The only other substantive information is:
*the poll was completed just after the SNP’s annual national conference
*the SNP would win nine seats more than Labour
*Stephen Lawther, Labour’s in-house polling expert, suggests in a memo: “that the one pollster giving Labour a lead may be getting it consistently wrong. “It’s starting to look more like the TNS System Three result should be discounted, which makes the position even bleaker.””
http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/75470.shtml
I’m not surprised if Conservative support has dropped over the last couple of weeks. Their PR operation seems to be all over the place. I just don’t understand why they are wandering about making comments like “Toynbee is our philosophical guide”, if the moment anyone questions them they respond with “look beyond the headlines to see what we are actually saying”.
re 3. The issue that ICM and Populus have to face is whether the distortions are down to sample bias or misremembering. What they both do is have a formula that sets it somewhere in the middle. Thus in the past five ICM and Populus polls for which there is past vote weighting data available the average responses were
CON 29.1%: LAB 44.3%:LD 19.7%
The GB actuals from May 2005 were:-
CON 33.2%: LAB 36.2%:LD 22.7%
The current weightings that are applied are:-
ICM: CON 32.3% LAB 38.4%LD 21.7%
Populus: CON 32%: LAB 40%:LD 21%
5
I should have mentioned that this year’s Scottish National Party conference was held between 16-20 October 2006, in Perth. Therefore the Populus fieldwork must have been approx 22-25 Oct, meaning that this data is just over one month old. The more recent ICM, YouGov and Progressive Partnership (but not Taylor Nelson Sofres System 3) polls have seen the SNP pulling ahead of Labour, so it would be great to know what Populus are showing after the Scottish Labour Party’s annual national conference in Oban last week. The powerful focus on the SNP, especially in Tony Blair’s keynote speech (to a mere 500 delegates), has boosted the SNP’s public profile.
The main question is: why was this leaked? The most likely answer is that it is a Brownite/Westminsterite leak against Jack McConnell and the Holyroodites who are in the driving seat of the Labour campaign, to the chagrin of Gordon Brown, Douglas Alexander et al. If they can discredit the competence of McConnell as campaign manager then they can wrestle more control for themselves. But McConnell is not as daft as he looks, recently taking on board Wendy Alexander (Douglas’ sister) into the election campaign team (”keep your friends close… and your enemies even closer”.)
Alternatively, it is the usual Machiavellian tactic of leaking a poor poll, so that when (or if!) you get a better one later on you can spin that “our opponents are in freefall” or somesuch. Its the way you tell ‘em.
As this is leaked, I don’t suppose Populus are obliged to release the dataset under BPC rules, are they? What methodology do Populus use?
Wasn’t the Telegraph’s Yougov poll supposed to be out today?
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/funding/story/0,,1958626,00.html
Looks like panic is starting to set in at Labour HQ.
It is tempting to assume that tight limits would benefit the LDs disproportionately, but I tend to think a lot of the extra money available to Labour and the Tories is wasted anyway.
As always it’s more interesting to discuss the poll we’ve got than to spend all our time shooting the messenger. And anyway CR haven’t changed their methodology since last month so it’s a 4% swing to Labour however you look at it.
If this continues will Cameron move to the right like his predecessors? I expect so. Blair and Kinnock shifted Labour over a period of 12 years. It was thought out and incremental. Cameron is moving like an out of control kite. His own supporters don’t know where he’s taking them. They don’t even know if he knows!
9 Jack W said he had insider information that it was. Jack?
Maybe they have given up on the poll.
For international political anoraks, Canada has 2 byelections yesterday. Liberal held London Centre North (Ontario) after a strong challenge by the Greens. The result was: Liberal 34.9% (-5.2), Green 25.9 (+20.4), Con 24.4 (-5.5), NDP 14.1 (-9.6), Others 0.7
Bloc Quebecois held easily their Repentingy seat. Result: Bloc 66.3% (+3.9), Con 18.7 (+0.6), NDP 7 (-0.7), Liberal 6.2 (-2.4), Others 1.9
The Bloc candidate (now MP) is a Catholic Priest, former gay prostitutr and leather bar worker. His colorful past and present gained a couple of headlines (for a by election in a safe seat)
“The Bloc candidate (now MP) is a Catholic Priest, former gay prostitutr and leather bar worker”
That should give Cameron some ideas for his next A-list
test
7. Nice hatchet job, Mike….would I be right in thinking that if weigted by past vote this poll would produce results quite similar to the recent ICM/Yougov surveys?
14. Roger, I think Chairman Maude would be delight to find such candidate available in UK
12 Commentator. It appears that the Telegraph pulled the poll from today as they’ve run big with their Grade/ITV scoop.
I did suggest yesterday that the Telegraph might do this, but thought the reason might be Harriet Harman scratching her rump !
The fact is that polls are easy to move dependent on the rest of the news cycle.
13 Andrea. How dull our by-elections are by comparison. Even Lib Dem bar chart erotis*sm can’t compete with priestly frolics in gay leather bars.
8. Surely the story is that when the SNP have a charismatic leader as they do in Alex Salmond they do well and when they haven’t they do badly? I’m not sure why anyone would be interested in a poll that’s a month old when three new ones have come out since and if it shows anything it shows that the SNP were doing better a month ago.
18 Jack then we can expect it tomorrow?
Well the question is when do we get a poll we can trust?
Mike is of course right that there is litle point in either commisioning or reporting a 1992 style poll.
7 Mike , what is the reasoning for ICM and Populus using the weighting figures that they are using rather than any other figure ?
When the Telegraph used Gallup, Gallup used to record the largest Labour leads. It was always amusing, to read a Telegraph editorial, saying how hideous the Labour government was, then turn the page and see a poll giving them a 15% lead.
Tweo attempts to post have just disappeared without trace (not “held for moderation”) - I’m not sure what makes this happen? Briefly, in case it happens again, I think it’s generally sensible to compare like with like, and the 4% swing to Labour is large enough to suggest something is happening. IMO the main thing is simply that the Tory rebranding effort has overreached itself, and people are starting to think “this is getting silly”.
21 You will not trust a poll unless it shows the Conservative lead is increasing , Benedict .
You would have thought the independent if it is desperate to be taken seriously, as taken by the fact its bringing back monthly tracker polls, would have demanded that Communicate Research actually added past weight recall. it just find it very hard to be swayed by any poll which doesnt take a past vote recall. My old GCSE statistic teacher (who was also my maths teacher) would have been spitting feathers about that.
RE 25, No Mark, I don’t trust polls that look ridiculous in terms of their methodology. You might as well rely on my anicdotes of Labour voters switching to Conservatives as being a guide to the next GE.
Also in the Indie: “A poll by Ipsos MORI among members of the Political Studies Association shows that 49 per cent regard Mr Brown as the most capable next Prime Minister while only 14 per cent opt for Mr Cameron. Mr Brown is rated the most successful post-war chancellor and is regarded as the most capable chancellor by 68 per cent. Only 4 per cent back George Osborne, his Tory shadow.”
Who are the PSA? See http://www.psa.ac.uk/
25. Not when its method is so discreditated.
RE 10 Jon, Yes that story looks like Labour are afraid. Very afraid!
re 7. Applying the average of the wieghtings that Populus and ICM use to the CR figures and we get CON 35.1: LAB 33.2: LD 18.1. So only a little bit of change and shares that are very close to what Mori wass reporting.
19 Roger
I agree that it is slightly out-of-date data, and therefore slightly less relevant, but AFAIK it is the first Populus poll of Scottish voting intention ever published, which surely makes it of some interest to us anoraks? Remember, we have had an absolute dearth of Scottish voting intention data since The Herald stopped commissioning its monthly series of System 3 polls at the end of 2003, so please allow those of us concerned with Scottish politics to enjoy this almost unprecedented luxury of plentiful polling, from a wide variety of pollsters.
Your “charismatic leader” theory is almost (but not quite) as weak as Mike Smithson’s “rugby union” theory! Billy Wolfe (who he? you rightfully ask) led the SNP to its best ever election result, in 1974. Billy is not a bland character, but hardly fits the mould of the great charismatic politician! He was never even successful at getting himself elected, and therefore had a very low media profile.
It’s true to say the Telegraph, isn’t totally on board with project Cameron. However would they have pulled the poll, if it had been really good news for the Conservatives? All will be revealed!
Stuart @ 26: I think it is the other way round. I think the Indy wanted to have figures without past vote weighting.
If I were Jack W I’d be checking my Telegraph source
(Well, if I actually were Jack W I probably wouldn’t be, since if I were Jack I wouldn’t work at YouGov and wouldn’t be in a position to know when the Telegraph poll is conducted, and wouldn’t be in a position to know that my source was wrong. Such is life.)
31. The last pre 2005 GE CR poll was Lab 39, Con 31, LD 23… what would they have produced with ICM/Populus wieghting?
27/29 - You weren’t discrediting it because of methodology last month when it showed the Conservatives 6 points in the lead see Benedicts comments on the thread on October 24th .
We shouldn’t even be having this discussion: third term Labour government,Afghanistan,Iraq,cash for peerages, etc. etc. Tories should be a stonking 15/20% in the lead, that should be it!
RE 36 Mark, Unless its a Yougov or ICM poll, I may be pleased with the results, but I don’t take them that seriously. That said CR showing us in the lead when their method favours Labour is good news when it happens.
34 Anthony W Delphic, but I know you are right.
Anthony when will there be another YouGov poll?
Mike, although that shows a Tory lead, I hope we see it stretch shortly. I want to see leads in the sustained 5% range. A 2% lead is mildly disappointing. I await the next real poll with interest.
Looking at that picture of John Major on his soap box reminds me of the way that he campaigned in 92′, he seemed to relish taking on the hecklers in the crowd. Blair did something very similar in 2005 when he took part in various TV debates with at times hostile audiences.
It will be interesting to see if Gordon Brown or David Cameron do something similar at the next GE.
I think the surge in SNP support in Scotland recently, has more to do with dissatisfaction with the Lab/Libdem coalition at Holyrood and Labour in Westminster rather than because of a big increase in support for independence. I think that when the results are in we will see them surge in some area’s but not in other’s. A bit like the conservatives have in the South of England while still struggling in area’s in the North.
28. Nick. Interesting. Many on here have said that a year is about as far as you can take fashion shows and photo ops before people get bored. What was a breath of fresh air once now looks tired. Could he cycle round Parliament Square with matching cycle shorts and helmet and avoid getting laughed at? Wouldn’t the webcameron have to go into his bedroom for anyone to show the slightest interest anymore?
Anyway I’m off to let the NHS and BUPA do their worst and if all goes well I’ll report on their relative performance when I get back!
41 ChrisD - “when the results are in we will see them surge in some area’s but not in other’s”
Well, of course, because throughout the electoral history of the planet there has never been such a thing as uniform national swing - that is just a psephological conceit, albeit quite a useful one, especially for punters.
Where do you think the SNP surges will occur?
re 35. That final 2005 CR General election poll would have produced using the Populus/ICM weightings LAB 36.01: CON 32.1: LD 24.5. So pretty close.
RE 44, Mike, in which case why not produce CR adjusted by PB figures for the CR polls?
It would save us disscussing eronious figures.
41. Three aberrant apostrophes in a single ppgh…please!
45. Thanks Mike. The Lab and Con figures would have been pretty close.
44 Mike So let me get this straight.
Let’s say there were two polls taken:
The first January 2005
The second January 2006
Each poll returns exactly the same raw response.
L 36 C 36
The figures also give the same past voter recall: L 36 C 36
My questions are:
In the the ICM’s weighting system, which will give the biggest lead and to which party?
Has the Tory’s capacity to show a lead gone since the last election, because of Labours reduced showing at the polls in 2005. So the same poll will systematiclly show a different result?
20/40 Commentator. Who knows now !!
The thing with daily newspaper polls is that they can pull their poll from the paper if spacing for other stories means the poll is less newsworthy that day. It’s not as if other papers have the story. It’s their very own little scoop, but they do want to get a decent bang for their buck, £5,000 normally, on the front page.
IIRC earlier in the year the Guardian held an ICM poll for several days and trailed the contents like the dance of the seven veils !
34 Antony.
… once I deciphered the post !
………………….
Caption Competition.
1. “Yes over there …. that’s my mistress, Edwina !
2. “I’m not sure about this dark chocolate ice cream cone.”
3. “I’m a pink teapot …..”
Jack. What I am saying is that you clearly don’t have a “source” that is in any way reliable or knows the first thing about it and I wish you’d stop pretending that you did.
I was asking Anthony since he also was saying your “source” doesn’t have the first clue.
Morning all :). Definite straws in the wind showing the Conservative lead narrowing but a long long way to go yet.
Re: 10 - I used to be an opponent of State funding but I’ve come to the view that if it becomes necessary to level the playing field then that has to be done. In a genuine mature democracy voters are faced with equal points of view and have to choose between them. In a capitalist democracy, the party with the most money gets to shout its message the loudest to the detriment of other messages. It cannot be healthy to have one Party with all the money blanketting billboards and newspapers with its messages with the other parties unable to reply. We all know (and the US is a good example) that if a message is repeated often enough and loudly enough it gets through.
If democracy can be “bought”, it is no longer democracy. In an ideal world, the parties themselves would agree a code of campaigning conduct (and I think ALL parties have produced leaflets which have crossed the line) for both election and non-election periods. Even so, a spending limit for parties (pretty small) should be imposed.
Back to yesterday and it was fascinating to read the views on politics in Scotland the desire for independence. The Unionist die-hards or should that be dinosaurs, paint apocalyptic pictures of checkpoints at Carter Bar and Gretna and of something more akin to the 38th Parallel.
Rather like Conservative or UKIP policy on Europe, I need to understand the distinction between the aim and the process. Is there anyone, even in SNP circles, who advocates an aggressive and unilateral move to independence (akin to Rhodesia in 1965)? IF there is a genuine desire among the Scottish and English people for the Union to end in its current form, that signifies to me the beginning of the next process toward the redefining of the political and economic relationship between Scotland and England as well as the other constituent parts of the UK.
Britain, like France, has never been a “federal” entity. Although in the French example, areas like Burgundy, Savoy and Lorraine were at periods not part of France and were either independent principalities or occupied by foreign powers (Lorraine was part of Germany from 1871 to 1918), the French “state” has exercised strong central control from Paris like the British state has from London.
Redefining the Anglo-Scottish relationship won’t therefore be easy and will take, I suspect, months if not years of negotiation. One option might be to treat Scotland like Canada or New Zealand where the Head of State is the same but the Government is different. The Dominion of Scotland might be one alternative. Of course, a redefinition of the Amglo-Scottish relationship could trigger a redefinition of the Anglo-Irish relationship so a “British” entity might genuinely reflect all those who live in the British Isles (also including the IOM).
I do think it would be fascinating to hold a referendum in Scotland in 2007 (300 years after the Act of Union). I think the Scots should be offered three options: status quo, separation or a re-negotiated relationship. That might make political life interesting too.
50 Commentator. If I’d realized it was your intention to be offensive I wouldn’t have bothered … and certainly won’t in the future.
For the record, I had a brief conversation with a Telegraph journalist yesterday who indicated they had a poll ready. I posted that information in good faith, adding the rider that I did.
Sometimes sources make mistakes, if indeed they have here, unlike yourself of course whose blinding integrity is on full show when ever you bend over !
49&50. Must admit that when I saw the Telegraph leading with the Michael Grade story last night I gave up on the their YouGov poll being in today’s paper.
This poll from CR does not ring true with the reaction on the doorstep where there is a growing anti-Labour feeling.
CR uses likelihood to vote weighting, which AFAIK as I know wasn’t a part of the 92 polling scene. happy to be corrected if this is wrong.
I assume they use as an alternative method of holding down the “soft/not real” Labour vote than past vote weighting. A bit unfair to accuse them of “92 style polling” if that’s the case. I’ve not idea if they’re weighting is valid, but they are trying to hold down those who arent “real” voters.
The big news here is not that CR doesn’t weight by past vote, but that 2 polls now show the political scene tightening after a period of reasonable tory leads.
btw- those of you with access to JSTOR (eg everyone in parliament web service), might want to google search for “The 1992 British Election: The Failure of the Polls” as the whole article is available on line and is very interesting.
52. OUCH.
44. Mike. That last CR poll in 2005 was for the Sunday before the election and had fieldwork carried out 23-28 April.
Given that according to Polling report ICM produced a near identical poll the very next day (it had LDs down one point compared to CR), I think that there’s as much chance that the poll was pretty accurate, and labour slipped a couple of points in the intervening period as that the sample needed to be weighted.
Jack. I find your posturing as an insider very boring, and am aggravated by your pretence at Conservatism when you are in fact a LibDem. Anthony Wells actually works for YouGov and confirms that you are talking nonsense about a poll due out today and “held” for Michael Grade. Enough with you.
Jack. I find your posturing as an insider very boring, and am aggravated by your pretence at Conservatism when you are in fact a LibDem. Anthony Wells actually works for YouGov and confirms that you are talking nonsense about a poll due out today and “held” for Michael Grade. Enough with you.
Commentator. To be misinformed about the date of a Yougov poll isn’t a hanging offense! Fortunately CR stepped up to the plate so nothing was lost!
43. Stuart, I think you will do well in your heartlands and where the SNP are a strong 2nd to Labour. I would also be interested in seeing how well you do in the Labour heartlands in the central belt, with the SSP/Solidarity vote effected by the recent Tommy Sheridan court case you might receive a tactical vote boost.
“I used to be an opponent of State funding but I’ve come to the view that if it becomes necessary to level the playing field then that has to be done.”
Guido Fawkes speaks for me wrt State funding.
Mike (7) is right to point out that the overstatement of recalled Labour past vote is a combination of sample bias and misremembering. Panel surveys (e.g. British Election Study) have indicated that around half of the difference between recall and result is misremembering/misstatement and therefore the other half is assumed to be sample bias. That is why Populus weights by past vote to the mid-point between recall and result, which was the methodology pioneered by Nick Sparrow at ICM that made them Britain’s most accurate pollster.
11. Roger observes re the CommR poll that since they haven’t changed method since their previous poll, “its a 4% swing to Labour however you look at it”. Unfortunately that cannot be assumed to be true. Recalled past vote is surprisingly stable over time but can be spiky from one individual sample to another. Not only does past vote weighting make polls more politically representative, it also makes them comparable. With a poll that is not past vote weighted, not only will it have too many Labour voters, but because recall is not perfectly consistent, it is literally impossible to judge if variation from one poll to the next is actual switching or just a blip one way or another in recalled past vote of that sample.
It is worth remembering that even past vote weighted polls have in general tended still to overstate slightly Labour’s support, and understate the Conservatives - non past vote weighted polls have a significant degree of Labour bias.
For comparison with CommR’s figures of 36%/34% to Labour, our last Times poll would, without past vote weighting or turnout filter, have been Labour 35%/Conservative 32% (and I believe that CommunicateResearch apply some kind of turnout weighting, which will be bound to improve the Conservative position relative to Labour by a per centage point or so).
A caveat to Mike’s application of his calculation of Populus & ICM weightings to CommR numbers: our weights are applied to each individual line of data, effectively compounding the value of each respondent’s answers by reference to the accumulated effect of their response to the questions by which we weight (principally past vote and likelihood to vote), so though what Mike is doing will give a reasonable rough guide to how a poll would look if it were so weighted, it is very crude (and certainly not accurate to one decimal place, let alone two, as in 44 above).
[58 & 59] Commentator, I think I see the difference now between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats - the Conservatives exclude anyone who will not sign up for their agenda in toto- “unless with us, then against us”, whereas the Lib Dems say “if not against us, then with us”.
Are sure that telling people who might be sympathetic -from Jack to the CBI- to get lost, is such a great strategy for Little Daves Woodland folk?
59 Commentator. It appears you can’t accept that sources and posters may make mistakes without pouring scorn. Nevertheless I’m sure we all stand in awe at your infallibility.
I’ve done battle with several other “commentators who’ve decided my political philosophy and I’ll not bother others with a repeat, unlike you @ 58/59.
I’m sure you’ll be glad to hear that like Nick Palmer, I’ve my own “can’t be arsed list” that I’ve happily added your moniker to.
[62] Sean- Absolutely. NO STATE FUNDING!!!
It will only reward the crime.
61/43 - I’m not sure the SNP ‘heartlands’ are up against Labour - they are historically the rural NE where the Tories are the main challanger.
In the central belt (particularly) the western bit Labour’s vote is pretty monolithic and their majorities in most seats are vast. Even with a 6% swing to the Nats then most of these seats would stay red. There are a few exceptions - Kilmarnock for example where the SNP have been breathing down Labour’s neck. As an interesting aside - does anyone think Nicola Sturgeon will finally take Govan? My feeling is that although on paper she should, having not done so by now might make it beyond reach. If there’s a book on particular seats I’m sure the odds on a Labour hold would be attractive.
I also suspect that as the Labour vote declines it does so in areas where they are less entrenced or that voters more recently came over to vote Labour. Areas such as the Highlands, Aberdeen and Lothian do not have the almost 100 year Labour voting tradition of Clydeside. This is likely to mean that Labour will do worse in and around Edinburgh than Glasgow for example - which means Lib Dem gains rather than SNP ones. But feel free to accuse me of wishful thinking!
56/65 Thank you wife for buggering up my postings !!
Post 65 is from me !
Interesting how when the pollsters get it wrong it’s not their fault but the fault of the people polled who have ‘misremembered’ their previous vote. It seems to me that the most likely cause of error is simply that they are not sampling properly.
I have followed the recent US elections. They have what the call the ‘generic’ opinion poll which just asks Democrat or Republican. Most comments on this are that it usually gives the Democrats about 5% too much. The Democrats were ahead and won the recent elections but not by as much as most of these ‘generic’ polls.
What do the Labour party and the Democrat party have in common from a polling point of view? They are both predominantly urban parties. The Tories and the Republicans are largely rural. In both countries the battle is won or lost in the suburbs and middle sized towns.
It seems to me that pollsters are not able to properly sample the rural electorate.
66 State Funding from a matched funding pot.
Roger and other Labour people are guilty yet again of wishing this poll true.
The trend is important and I will concede that the upward trend in Conservative vote share has stalled.
I will also readily concede that by now I had expected polls to be nearer 40% than still at 37-38%, so I am not especially satisfied with my party’s current showing.
Having said all that every poll seen so far suggests that GB will further weaken Labours share.
And next year sees the Conservatives move on from our current position of closing down the debate on our past to opening up the debate on our future; and revealing much more detail about specific policy stances which I am certain will add at least 5% to our polling figures.
Doesn’t anyone else think that the Telegraph’s scoop is profoundly boring? Most of us wouldn’t recognise Michael Grade if we tripped over him. Who cares where he works?
70 It will all depend on how much the reality of Brown matches the characature of Brown. If you have faith that it’s spot on you might be right, if however Brown as pm is not as he’s been portrayed the polls may still move against you. We’ll see.
RE 58 and 59 Comentator, JackW is a liberal. Which party he votes for changes according to what they want to do, hence he voted Conservative in 1979 etc because they were most economicaly liberal.
Also I don’t see personal attacks as helpful between regulars.
re 63. Andrew - thank you for a very helpful post and for taking the trouble to share your experiences as boss of Populus with us. Your figures on how your last survey for the Times would have been without past vote weighting support very much the main argument.
I have maintained a spreadsheet on all the Populus and ICM surveys since the General Election and it is amzing how the average past vote weighting figures across the two pollsters remain so constant.
I think that it is great that the Independent is now commissioning a regular monthly poll but I do wish that CR would adopt past vote weighting.
66. Cicero, well said. But I think that we already have a form of state funding!
http://www.dti.gov.uk/employment/trade-union-rights/modernisation/what-is-the-fund/page20774.html
71. Thank you for saying so. I was shouting at the TV last night as I watched BBC journalists consider at depth the significance of their boss’s departure. Media navel gazing.
74 Do we know how the the past vote figures compare with 2001-05?
71 Nick P. I disagree. If news scoops were all about public recognition then the Telegraph would be leading on “I’m a Non Entity, Get Me Out of Here” and politics would be on page 37 !! Which brings me to ITV. The Grade defection is a good story. There’s no doubt that ITV needs revitilizing. In a few years its share has fallen from almost half to around a fifth. Advertizing revenue is well down and the Beeb need a strong terrestrial competitor.
Grade is a “will do” executive and I would predict a better future for ITV under his leadership.
71, 76. For once Nick, we agree!
The average man and woman doesn’t give a hoot who runs ITV, BBC, etc; nor should they, given its overall significance.
I too was yelling at the TV last night. The Beeb even ran it as a newsflash within the news, ‘we hope to have more soon’. For pete’s sake, get a grip.
Media stories about the media always make me slightly nauseous. Like novelists who write about novelists.
71&76. Watching the BBC/Sky coverage last night was the worst type of media naval gazing. Would love to know if their average late night viewing figures dipped.
Andrew Cooper
“11. Roger observes re the CommR poll that since they haven’t changed method since their previous poll, “its a 4% swing to Labour however you look at it”. Unfortunately that cannot be assumed to be true. Recalled past vote is surprisingly stable over time but can be spiky from one individual sample to another. Not only does past vote weighting make polls more politically representative, it also makes them comparable. With a poll that is not past vote weighted, not only will it have too many Labour voters, but because recall is not perfectly consistent, it is literally impossible to judge if variation from one poll to the next is actual switching or just a blip one way or another in recalled past vote of that sample.
It is worth remembering that even past vote weighted polls have in general tended still to overstate slightly Labour’s support, and understate the Conservatives - non past vote weighted polls have a significant degree of Labour bias.”
Very interesting and from a Conservative point of view reassuring. Thanks.
“Doesn’t anyone else think that the Telegraph’s scoop is profoundly boring? Most of us wouldn’t recognise Michael Grade if we tripped over him. Who cares where he works?” -says Dr Nick Palmer MP.
Is that not a case of the pot calling the kettle black?
Can somebody remind me what the last Populus for the Times came out at
Re: 62 - Sean (and others): I’m of the view that it MAY be the lesser evil in democratic terms. I don’t want to see State funding but nor do I want to see a situation in which our democracy is a commodity which can be bought by anyone having enough money to pay for it and that is, I fear, where we may be going.
The political “process” is becoming more costly - the recent US midterms “cost” $2.6 billion I believe - and as that cost increases, it will only be those parties which can attract such sums that will be able to compete. Other parties will be effectively disenfranchised by the financial cost of fighting elections.
There are effectively two solutions. One is to provide money for other parties so that they have a better chance to compete. The other and I think the infinitely preferrable is to reduce the amounts that can be donated by individuals and above all companies and reduce the amounts that can be spent outside constituency campaigns.
In the current situation, only the Conservatives, supported by numerically few but financially important backers will be able to deploy the full arsenal of political campaigning tools. This gives him a significant advantage over Labour, LDs and the others which may have more volunteers and may be able to campaign effectively in some constituencies but vannot match the Tories in terms of the broad national campaign picture (billboards, newspaper ads etc).
The current situation demeans and diminishes democracy. I am trying to argue for alternatives. I don’t expect the Tory-inclined to be interested - after all, the current process works to their advantage.
O/T UKIP resurrected from the dead? I have received an e-mail from Nigel Farage this morning to my District council e-mail inviting me to consider helping them in the run up to next years elections. I preusme this will be going to every district councillor (even LIBDEMs like me). Look for a sharp increase in UKIPs poll rating (with or without past recall adjustment) as we all splash our defections in the media
The Lib-Labs are having a public stushie over the new Single Transferable Vote ballot paper design, for the Scottish council elections in May. The SNP and Tories are siding with the Lib Dems. Labour are going to be incandescent with their coalition partners, and there are few things more amusing than a Scottish Labourite in a huff (witness Gordon Brown). I would not like to be in Nicol Stephen’s shoes.
http://www.theherald.co.uk/politics/75446.html
I got it Con 36 Lab 35. I wonder why their vote adjustment raised the Tories a full 4 points but left Lab untouched at 35?
It looks like the Tories and Labour will be down the pawnbrokers any time soon … whist the Lib Dems will probably have to do the odd car boot fair :
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6190510.stm
It looks like the Tories and Labour will be down the pawnbr*kers any time soon … whist the Lib Dems will probably have to do the odd car boot fair :
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6190510.stm
88/89. Apologies for double post. I thought “pawnbrokers” might have been caught in the spam trap, but it appears that was all balls.
Whatever the flaws with the Indy poll, what it does demonstrate is that Project Cameron is very close to veering desperately off track.
I say this as someone who was backing Cameron before Cameron had even decided to stand, and who has largely backed everything he’s done in year 1 even if much of it hasn’t personally resonated with me. However, one year on and with all the difficulties Labour has experienced, I really did expect to see clear blue water now in the polls, and whilst this did look like happening for a while, the truth appears to be that it is not doing. We may even be getting back to neck-and-neck.
I hope Cameron holds his nerve, and doesn’t veer off to the right. He is the first electable Tory in ten years, and people are recognising the Tories as a possible alternative government. Plus we’ve got the inevitable benefit of a Brown succession.
However, it’s time for some policies, gently right of centre, and offering an alternative to this discredited and incompetent government. Tory voters and potential Tory voters need to be excited, and it’s just not happening at the moment. He’s had a year to work on the image, to set up his focus groups, etc - but now it is very much time to deliver. The Tories need to be consistently at 40% by next summer, or else they will have blown it.
Blimey those are stonking debts - anyone know what they are as a proportion of annual turnover.
67.”As an interesting aside - does anyone think Nicola Sturgeon will finally take Govan? My feeling is that although on paper she should, having not done so by now might make it beyond reach. If there’s a book on particular seats I’m sure the odds on a Labour hold would be attractive.”
The Labour MSP risked deselection because even Labour thought it wasn’t hardworking enough. She would have no execuses not to take it this time
And her hairstyle (appearance in general) improved since 2003 leaflets:
http://gdl.cdlr.strath.ac.uk/aspect/aspect2003/snp/a03snpggo01a.html
86. o/t i know but since the argument is all countries are constraits of imagination and the current country is United kingdom if, like Quebec in Canada has to, scotland wants to seperate shouldn’t England Wales and Ulster vote on it it to, as it will affect the other countries in this union to.
91 a little harsh don’t you think. Though I reckon it is true that if the Tories perform anything less than very well in next May’s elections the Cameron wheels will come off pretty fast. I don’t know any Tories who agree with what he is coming out with - they all agree Tories winning elections though.
93 Andrea
Good-looking candidates clearly do better:
http://gdl.cdlr.strath.ac.uk/aspect/aspect2003/snp/a03snpban.htm
(Sorry Stewart!)
84.”The current situation demeans and diminishes democracy. I am trying to argue for alternatives. I don’t expect the Tory-inclined to be interested - after all, the current process works to their advantage.” Stodge, I disagree and the results of the last 3 GE elections are an excellent example.
The Libdems have performed well over the last 10 years without the kind of funds at their disposal which both Labour and the tories have enjoyed. The LibDems have effectively targeted their more meagre funding into marginal seats with a lot of success.
96. I was joking about her appearance having an effect, but I really think she improved in that field.
This local byelection candidate got my attention at the time:
http://www.glasgowsnp.org/category/Kings_Park_By-election/
91 Bob. Cameron is playing the long game. So far it’s served him well and turning round a few point deficit to a few point advantage (notwithsanding the CR poll today) is a good start. The danger is that the project stalls. I certainly think the “hug a hoodie” fiasco and Labour’s fear agenda have hit the Tories.
The policy framework will need to be carefully pitched, not to frighten the right wing horses whilst at the sane time tempting centre ground voters, the “Blair Tories” and C2s. A nifty trick if it can be pulled off. And then of course there’s the Scottish elephant in the room - Our Gordon !! ….. remembering of course that Scotland are World Elephant Polo Champions !! … plenty of scope to step in the political doings … and elephant sized doings at that.
34: “I think the Indy wanted to have figures without past vote weighting.”
If that is the case, and the pollster believes it significantly misstates the result, why would CR be willing to go along with it, when their reputation is ultimately on the line?
74. Mike, the reason that the Populus & ICM past vote weights are so stable over time is that - in order to avert blips in poll numbers arising purely from blips in recall of a given sample - we both put the recalled past vote from our latest poll into a series of recent previous and calculate the actual weights for the latest poll from the average figures for recall. In this Parliament so far, actual recalled vote for Labour at the last election in our polls has ranged from a low of 39.5% to a high of 49.7%, though most samples are much closer to the average of around 44%. If we didn’t base the weighting on a moving average we would pass these occasional blips in recall straight into the published vote intention figure. And if (like MORI and CommR) we didn’t weight by past vote at all we would be reflecting in our published figures a persistent, but randomly variable, pro-Labour bias.
77 Jonathan, on our data for the second half of the last Parliament (Populus didn’t exist until 2003), average recalled past vote from the 2001 election was about 51% Labour (i.e. 8% above their actual vote share), whereas in this Parliament it is around 44% Labour (i.e. again 8% above actual vote share).
83 & 87. Our latest published vote intention figures appeared in The Times on November 7th and were (with change from previous month) Labour 33% (-2%), Conservative 36% (unchanged), Lib Dem 20% (+2%). As I said in my earlier post, our pre-past vote & turnout weighted figures were Labour 35, Conservative 32. The past vote weight turned this into Conservative 34, Labour 33. The turnout filter then turned it into Conservative 36, Labour 33. We then apply a ’spiral of silence’ weighting (reallocating some of the don’t knows), which often puts a percentage point or so back onto Labour, but in this case did not make any net difference.
92 Jon. Labour and Tory loans to donations are running at around 6/1. The nature of the loans is the important factor. There are a variety of soft loans included in both sets of figures. In the short term they appear sustainable, in the long term ???? … perhaps that’s why we’ve been hearing all this state funding mood music !
67, 93. The Labour MSP for Govan, a highly-paid advocate, was well-known for dashing off to court the minute parliamentary business was over even in 2003 and it didn’t do him any harm. But then again the SNP fell back everywhere that year. I could see Sturgeon winning Govan next year, but only by a whisker; cf. the SNP gains in Dundee East and Ochil in 2003, which were very close - far closer, in fact, than the SNP’s performance in local elections in those areas might have suggested. (And the SNP don’t have that local government base in Govan - only one councillor currently.)
Elsewhere: broadly, I agree with Dan’s points, especially re Kilmarnock, but would suggest Cumbernauld & Kilsyth and possibly Renfrewshire West as other possible SNP gains. I suspect they’ll also be in the running in at least one of the two West Lothian seats, probably Linlithgow. And then there’s Dundee West and the Western Isles (ironic, isn’t it, that they’re called the Western Isles at Holyrood but Na h-Eileanan an Iar at Westminster?) But I can’t see many other realistic SNP targets at the constituency level.
101 Thanks Andrew, most informative, I went to ConHome and selected the wrong poll of yours.
Can you tell us why it is that Populus polls always seem to be best for Labour? The three main firms are ICM - best for Tories, YouGov - in the middle and Populus - best for Labour. Somehow in Populus polls the Tory lead is consistently smaller (after weighting) than the other two main pollsters. This is often a topic on PB.com.
Why do you think this is and are you confident Populus accurately measures the vote shares given YouGov/ICM usually has a slightly better Tory lead?
The Daily Politics are attempting to improve their viewing figures in Italy by having Alan Duncan on the show tomorrow.
Andrew on the spiral of silence factor, is there a poosibility of a small percentage of labour voters who say ‘don’t know’ now because its not fashionable or slightly embarrassing for some to admit that they’re Labour. In other words has the shy Tory factor disappeared and been replaced by its opposite. How does one prove that this has happened and, if one can, how can one put a figure on it? what worries me about all the polls is that they get so very far away from their raw data. Of course each correction can be justified but in total it represnts a very considerable change. What is wrong with going on ringing until you get a statistically valid sample which fits the population in terms of geography, gender, socio economic category, age group etc and then reporting what you find? Or do the costs of such an excercise make that unfeasible?
103. “The Labour MSP for Govan, a highly-paid advocate, was well-known for dashing off to court the minute parliamentary business was over even in 2003 and it didn’t do him any harm”
Now it seems he didn’t even attend some parliamentary business…his attendance record was one of the points that were argued by those who wanted to deselect him (I don’t know his attendance record in the previous parliament though).
One thing that can help Sturgeon can be the collapse of SSP vote if she manages to get a good proportion of it.
101. Very interesting - it becomes increasingly clear that a very great deal of statistical ’smoothing’ is going on as part of the production of some polls. I can see the advantage of this, inasmuch as it avoids the extreme fluctuations seen in the MORI polls, but there must be a risk that this will also mean the heavily ’smoothed’ polls could be slow to pick up genuine changes in support patterns for the parties…
105 ChrisD
.. they’d better get the high chair then.
103. I think that what ever the poll ratings are just now for political parties in Scotland the big story on the night will be voter turnout and tactical voting. Just how big a bl**dy nose will the Scots give Labour and how nifty will the Libdems be at disengaging themselves from any dissatisfaction at the current Lab/Liddem coalition at Holyrood.
110 Is there any actual polling evidence that tells us whether Scots are satisfied or dissatisfied with the ruling coalition at Holyrood as opposed to dissatisfaction with the Westminster government ?
103. Aidan Thomson, how much do you rate their chances in Paisley South?
Nick Palmer I reckon that a lot of people would recognise Michael Grade, grumpy old man and Channel 4 boss who told it as it was. Unlike the other grey faces at the BBC he has style and charm and energy, and that is why he is leaving the Bloated Broadcasting Corporation.
When are we going to get rid on the airwaves poll tax that funds that lavish bureaucracy?
107. Good point re the collapse of the SSP vote, which cost the SNP several council seats in Govan in 2003. There’s also something of a Muslim vote to consider in parts of the seat; historically it’s Labour but that may not be the case so much next year. (Though of course the 2003 elections took place just after the invasion of Iraq.)
112. In a word, slim. The SNP have always polled well in parts of the seat in locals, but are relatively weak in Johnstone (which makes up about a third of the seat). The local MSP is, if I remember right, Hugh Henry, a minister who is a safer pair of hands than some. If the SNP are canny they’ll be putting their efforts into Renfrewshire West.
Andrea – IIRC there’s a by-election quite soon in one of the Paisley wards (Elderslie) which may be a bit of a pointer to how things go. Can’t remember if that’s in North or South though.
As to Chris’ point I’m not sure Labour will get all that much of a bloody nose and I’ll be surprised if the losses are into double figures.
As I have said many times the current polls are pretty meaningless-they will start to become interesting 3-6 months after Brown becomes leader.
However, the fact that Cameron cannot get 10%+ sustained leads in the polls, in this period, at this time is not good for the Tories.
During the Thatcher era I was told Labour under Kinnock needed 10%+ consistent leads, sustained over 18 months to represent a genuine threat to the Tories. This only happened in the late 80’s/early 90’s when Lab started getting leads of 20%+ pretty much over that period. Cameron really needs this kind of head of steam now before the Labour succession.
I think that Cameron has probably done enough to breathe some life into the Tories which is some achievement. I genuinely thought the party was finished as a force of government, and was slowly being reduced to a narrow sectional interest group barking the mantra of the reactionary Daily Mail.
What really interests me is the strategic overview of where politics is going in the UK. It is beginning to look impossible for the Tories to win a majority, and even unlikely for them to be the biggest party- though that must be their realistic goal. But depriving Labour of a majority is a prospect, and then the interests starts.
I would expect a centre right grouping, and some hard bargaining. A Tory/ Lib dem alliance of some kind with the bargaining points being PR, an English parliament and a fully elected upper house.
There is a good likelihood that 2005 may be the last of single party government in the UK. If not 2005, then definitely 2009- it would be unthinkable for Labour to go on for more than 4 terms!!
99,
The damage may have already been done regarding `hug a hoodie`anecdotely at least especially with Blair Tories , c2s and most conservatives.
However the last group will put it to one side, if it means winning an election.
Nevertheless, snubbing the CBI and going to Irag looks like another PR stunt to far in search of the holy grail.
Ming C just been on talksport - said the WLQ is an issue which should be addressed and that he can envisage the day where Scot/NI & Welsh MPs dont vote on English only matters !
Re: 97 - Chris, as an LD I know full well how the Party uses its meagre resources and the use of volunteers to best effect. The fact remains, however, htta its “national” campaigning remains at a very primitive level.
As for the last three elections, I think there’s little or nothing the Tories could have done in both 1997 and 2001. As for 2005 and indeed 1992, I think the maounts of money spent by the Conservatives on, for example, anti-LD billboards in the south and west did have an effect in a number of marginal seats. In a close contest such as may happen, the “spend” factor may well come into play. I don’t know exactly how much the main parties spent in the last three elections though I suspect Andrea does…:)
I broadly agree with Jack W points on this thread. Cameron is doing reasonably well so far, but is starting to struggle due to a lack of policy and a bit too much spinning of controversial policy announcements. There was nothing wrong with the Tories stating that relative poverty was important but venerating Polly Toynbee was an OTT dig at the right of the party who do not share her statist approach for dealing with these matters. I think he sometimes forgets that most Tories are Thatcherite not Heathite these days.
I also think DC should think about taking Labour on in the National Security debate but vigorously and repetitively putting forward Conservative policies in this area, like our commitment to a border police, embarkation controls and a new homeland security department all of which seem to have survived the policy cull.
118. So now who is copying whose policies exactly?
115. Max, I think it’s in South. Labour had a 36% majority over 2006 in 2003 in that ward
114. Re Muslim voters. The SNP councillor in Govan is Muslim (Bashir Ahmad). He’ll be number 2 in the SNP regional list for Holyrood next year. So I assume pretty sure to get elected.
115. Elderslie is in Paisley South. It’s considerably (20%) more Labour and (13%) less SNP than the average for the seat, based on local results in 2003. Perversely, in view of my earlier post, I wouldn’t be surprised if the SNP were able to win the council by-election, but I still think they’d be hard pressed to win the Holyrood seat.
118 Ming accepts Tory policy of English votes on English laws?
I am very pleased, seriously. Perhaps we can work with the LibDems.
124.”Labour had a 36% majority over 2006 in 2003″
it should be over SNP…not sure why I wrote 2006
124 commentator- please read my post at 116. An electoral pact combining an English Parliament with PR could well drive the LD’s and the Tories together- both simply have too much to gain through such an enterprise, but would be the end of 1 part government in the UK, forever. Perhaps not such a bad thing.
Mike, out of interest: re the post of mine that was moderated and removed last night - was it the ellipsis wot dunnit, or had I written something more incendiary? Just wondering..
Ming has always accepted the WLQ needs to be addressed, although not necessarily by English Votes For English Laws (there are a few issues that need to be addressed that one for at start.) Sometime in the next couple of years the party should offically plump for a policy.
118 Jamie You mean the Ming finally uttered that word he so often seems to avoid: England?
126: we could be hearing much more of this in the run up to the next election with polls like these.
One of the key arguments against PR is that it would encourage hung parliaments, which would create weak Governments. However, compared to the current lot, would a coalition Government with agreed priorities and compromises between the parties really be a problem? In many ways, a situation where 2 out of the 3 main parties had to agree on an issue to get it through parliament would be a real improvement.
104, Commentator - the difference between Populus figures and those of ICM and YouGov is quite small really. Over the last year we have Labour averaging 34.3%, ICM have 34.0% and YouGov have 33.9%; Conservatives we have averaging 36.3%, ICM 36.8% and YouGov 37.5%; Lib Dems we have averaging 19.1%, ICM 20.5%, YouGov 17.3%. As these figures show, the main variation of view between the three companies is on the Lib Dems, not Labour or Conservative.And if you look at the variance overall, YouGov (because of the relatively big difference on Lib Dems) differs from ICM figures by nearly twice as much as Populus does. But you are right to point out that, however small the difference, we do consistently tend to find Labour a little higher and Conservatives a little lower than ICM and YouGov. The only real methodological difference I can point to between ICM and Populus is that, as explained above, we weight by past vote to the mid-point between recall and result and ICM weight rather closer to the actual result than that (though still not too the actual result). This won’t always make much of a difference to the end result, but the chances are that it will, crudely, take one off Labour and add one to the Tories. Given the degree of modelling that all this involves I don’t believe any pollster should - or can with any confidence - criticise another’s approach to past vote & turnout weighting and I would never, even privately, question Nick Sparrow’s methods: he pioneered the modernisation of polling techniques. All I can say in respect of the difference between how Populus weights for past vote and how ICM does it, is that we can only work on the basis of our own data and the other evidence we have access to - these weightings clearly involve informed judgement, but they aren’t arbitrary. I have no doubt that Nick Sparrow, similarly drawing on data at his disposal has come to a slightly different conclusion about how to weight for past vote. I keep these things constantly under review and if new information emerges we will respond to it. I can’t really comment on the comparison with YouGov who obviously have a rather different approach (which has proved its validity by result).
106, blue moon - more often than not we do indeed find that there are ’shy Labour’ voters showing up in our samples, it just happened to be the case that this didn’t happen in our most recent Times poll. The clearest measure of spirals of silence is to look at the past votes of the respondents who won’t say how they’d vote in an election now. Broadly speaking these should be roughly in proportion to the past vote profile of the overall sample; if there are no spirals of silence, the past supporters of no party should be markedly more likely than those of another to be unwilling to say how they’d vote now. Throughout the 1990s there were heavily disproportionate numbers of past Tory voters unable or unwilling to disclose a current party preference. About 2 or 3 years ago this phenomenon disappeared and it started to be past Labour voters showing a greater tendency to be current don’t knows - though there have never (yet) been nearly as many shy Labour voters as there used to be shy Tories. The adjustment we make to take account of possible spirals of silence is party neutral: we simply take everyone in the sample who will say how they voted last time but not how they’d vote now and reallocate them at a depreciated value to the party they voted for at the last election. The depreciation factors are derived from our own recall poll (in the 3 days following the election we re-polled 5,000 people who we’d previously polled in the months leading up to the election to find out what they ended up doing and why) and from panel studies - all of which produces a remarkably consistent picture: there is a 50% probability that someone who voted Labour in 2001 but was a don’t know thereafter ended up voting Labour again. The same probability applies to past Conservatives. For the Lib Dems it is more like a 35% probability. So those are the values at which we reallocate don’t knows.
106, you also ask why we don’t just keep on polling until we have a representative sample. The answer isn’t really to do with cost. There are certain types of voter who are harder to get hold of and relatively more reluctant to be interviewed - or to give their views if they are interviewed. The interviewing process is structured to take account of these patterns, in so far as we can address them.There is no reason to think that a second sample of 1,500, or a third, or a fourth, augmenting the original one, would be more successful at capturing these voters than the first sample of 1,500. Past vote weighting is a (so far pretty successful) methodological response to this sampling problem - based upon the realisation post-1992 that a demographically representative sample could not any longer be presumed to be politically representative as well.
108, Fred - you are absolutely right, there is a lot of ’smoothing’ in the adjustment of the poll data. It is easy to understand why traditionalists like Bob Worcester did not want to step over the line from the pure and simple statistics of sampling into the uncertainties and modelling of past vote weights etc. But unfortunately for at least 15 years it has been the case that polls conducted the old way produce results that are both prone to extreme volatility and innately biased to Labour. The methods we now apply are intended to strike a balance between ’smoothing’ random blips and allowing in actual changes of climate. It is certainly true that a change in the political weather resulting in a sudden step-like difference in the pattern of past vote recall would be ’smoothed’ down in our data & would emerge only gradually. But the political polling companies all do a sufficient number of public and private polls that the lag isn’t large - the time period covered by the previous polls into which we put the latest one to calculate the average past vote recall, is not terribly long.
Andrew, thank you. Great post and in the absence of a proper poll from one of the big three it is encouraging to have you on the site.
Thanks for taking the time to answer questions so fully.
130. One problem would be the electorate having to put up with a pre election year of spats between the coalition partners as they distanced themselves from each other.
Maybe I am being cynical though, we don’t see anything like that in Scotland.
131 Yes, thank you Andrew. That is extremely helpful.
130 tpfkar- I agree with you entirely- I would say rather than weak government, stable and moderate government- good governance;
and we must bring in 4 year fixed election cycles to boot- it is not right that the governing party can call the shots over when elections are held- fixed cycles would also ensure that parties cannot simply pull down a government when they please a la Italia.
111 - Mark if you look at the breakdown of the YouGov data that is now available they ask a couple of questions along those lines. IRC marginally more approve than disaprove.
131. Andrew - many thanks for that. May I ask how many periods are used in calculating the moving average values for the weights you use? And in a GE situation, where you would poll with increasing frequency, would your approach to calculating the moving averages change at all?
I agree with Tyson (cross party harmony at last!), the benefits of PR, in what is a mature democracy, far outweigh the disadvantages. As I also would like a looser, more federal UK this, in each parliament would also serve to ameliorate the large schisms that could occur if each parliament was controlled by one party alone.
Good to see that Ming is also starting to address the latter question too.
o/t but i have ranted about the £10′000 per year communication budget for Mps to leaflet their constituencies with before. as a double whammy to potential challengers at may appear that the next elections are pushed even more in favour of the sitting Mps cos of this. http://politics.guardian.co.uk/funding/story/0,,1958626,00.html
its a sham
Re 10, Jon and party funding. Interesting article. I have had a look around.
I wonder what sort of a stink Labour going it alone on party funding will cause with the electorate? I suppose it depends on how much it looks like them playing for party advantage.
I suspect that if they don’t get some form of concensus then there will also be a bust up in the Lords. Again!
(links etc on my blog)
OT. An update from the NY Times on the outstanding Congressional races :
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Ohio-House-Race.html?hp&ex=1164690000&en=279e6a19f18cd4a&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Hmm, I don’t defer from the main critique of CR’s methodology.
However, I do have this quibble. CR poll showing Tory lead…on PB written up as headline and lead paragraphs Tories ahead….way down the article…but we’re not sure about the method. CR poll showing Labour lead…on PB written up as headline we don’t trust this poll….way down the article….the poll shows a Labour lead.
This site is great for articles and debate quantifying and predicting political fortunes. It could be better though. Sometimes the articles come over as just a little bit too desperate and too keen to find something bad to say about Brown or Labour to count as dispassionate analysis.
On the issue of party funding it is important that challengers are allowed the resources to tackle incumbent MP’s head on. I do not favour any caps on general spending limits. IMHO the only things that the review on party funding should come out with are a ban on loans to political parties and a cap on individual/company/trade union donations of perhaps £100,000. If a party can then raise £20,000,000 through that system then it should be allowed to spend £20 million.
The problem with loans are that political parties are not profit-making institutions and so eventually will end up having to rely on normal donations or selling assets/reducing employees to pay them off. They also act as a form of political blackmail with the lender only prepared to transfer it into a gift in return for certain favours e.g. peerages or commitments on party policy. As for large loans they discourage parties from seeking a wide source of funding and also act as a form of blackmail as discussed above.
143
The inequity with capping individual donations at some medium level is that there are a lot more Tories able to afford to give that figure, whether it be £500, £5,000 or £50,000, than there are supporters of other parties. Though I’m not a Labour supporter either, I can see no justification for saying that political levy payers must make new arrangements for very small individual payments direct to the Labour Party rather than channelling them through TU subscriptions that are being paid anyway. It seems to me that the Tory campaign is in this respect self-serving sophistry.
As for us Liberal Democrats, we’ll just have to rely on spending more efficiently than the other two. No change there then.
138,
I also agree,
Wish it would have happened in the last dominant conservative century.
At least this last few years a movement towards that goal has started in term of PR at euro elections and Scotish parliament elections, welsh assembly etc.
Would be intresting to see if you would even concede that, since your anti Labour views on about everything.
Andrew A very informative post; many thanks. I was particularly interested to see that the Labour/Tory differences between you and ICM are pretty minimal. I don’t know why You/Gov put the LDs lower but any pollster which doesn’t mention all three Parties up front ( I can’t remember whether You Gov does or not) plus the Nats where appropriate needs to justify itself. After all it’s likely that in an election people will be made aware that the third/fourth party choice exists. The other difficulty is the vexed question of ‘Others’ which are making up a larger and larger portion of the electorate. Should one add in to the initial question Greens/Respect/UKIP/BNP? The trouble is that they won’t be standing in anywhere near all the constituencies. On the other hand pollsters seem to end up with widely different numbers for others and that is bound to skew the figures for the major Parties presumably.
Fred (137), we base the moving average for past vote recall on the most recent 12 polls, or 3 months, whichever is the greater (it would be rare, though by no means unheard of, for us to do 12 voting intention polls in a 3 month period). We were not weighting in quite this way at the last general election (which was our first), but (though we’ll keep it under continuing review) other things being equal I think we’d probably follow the same approach during the next election campaign.
147. Quite a long moving average then, hence the relative stability of the weights. Thanks very much Andrew.
re 142. Just check the way the last ICM poll was reported here and, unlike the Guardian, I was leading on Labour’s deficit being slashed. The Guardian story was all about Brown.
http://politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2006/11/22/labours-icm-deficit-slashed-to-5/
This morning I wanted to do something that went a bit deeper on CR’s methodlogy and the story came out the way it did. Quite often it’s the picture and the headline that do it.
I do put much more emphasis on what I consider to be the mainstream pollsters with what I consider to be better methodology - ICM, Populus and YouGov
Bluemoon 146: YouGov prompt by party name, including for the SNP and PC. Remember the polls are conducted online by people “ticking boxes”. They’d have a bloody difficult time ticking the boxes if we didn’t label them
(Before anyone points it out, you obviously could do unprompted questions by asking people to write in the party of their choice if you wanted to. We don’t.)
I seem to remember that ICM actually gave the punter a voting slip and a box, simulating an actual election shortly after ‘92. Did they continue with that particular system or was it soon superseded.
Coldstone @ 151: IIRC they continued with it until they moved from face-to-face interviewing and replaced it with telephone interviews (when, obviously, they couldn’t do it anymore).
144.
You could always just rely on illegal donations from jailed criminals.
153 Or fugitives from justice hiding out in Cyprus .
151. I think it was ICM who did the polling right after the 1992 election whereby they gave voters actual ballot papers for a range of different electoral systems and then asked them to vote as they would have on election day had the voting system been different.
154: One of the diary columns this week had a rather snide comment about whether Tory MPs would be getting Michael Mates a retirement present as he is standing down at the next election. A nice engraved watch or something…
154.
Remind me what was Asil convicted of????
157 As you very well know he was not convicted of anything as he decamped to Cyprus to avoid his trial .
RE 150, Anthony you preempted my smart alec remark. I’ll sulk in the corner now!
Many thanks for being on hand the answer queries.
Re 157, Azar, to be fair Mark chose his words very carefuly. It is my understanding that the police would like to ask him a couple of questions. Some may even argue that he is where he is because he would rather not answer.
I of course, couldn’t possibly coment.
One point that hasn’t been made in the very interesting discussion (well, far more interesting to me than the minutiae of polling design
) about possible heads of agreement for Tory-LD co-operation after the next election is that such a deal would in fact mean that Blair had achieved his overarching political goal of preventing there ever again being a majority Tory government.
The quid-pro-quo of “English votes on English matters” and PR seems obvious when you think about it…
Presumably if STV were introduced for Westminster elections, much of England would see the end of the Boundaries Commission as the historic counties would provide natural electorates. London (and the metropolitan areas) would present interesting issues - no one arrangement of London boroughs (particularly) would seem to be more logical than any other.
After losing the selection ballot for Thirsk and Malton, John Greenway announced he’ll stand down
http://www.maltontoday.co.uk/ViewArticle2.aspx?SectionID=806&ArticleID=1901875
161. ‘The quid-pro-quo of “English votes on English matters” and PR seems obvious when you think about it’
I have to say that doesn’t seem like a great deal from a Conservative point of view, although it would be an excellent one from a Lib Dem perspective. The real losers in any ‘English votes for English laws’ setup would be Labour.
[163] Well, it depends on which you think more important, doesn’t it?
One implication of such a deal, of course, is that a General Election almost has to follow on pretty quickly after its implementation since it thoroughly undermines the legitimacy of the Parliament in which it takes place. That may make it hard for Cameron to sell to his back-benchers, who may suddenly become a lot less “little Englanders” if the price is their seats!
Who was the MP pictured with John Major in the picture above? (the chap under his outstretched arm).
89. intersting link that Jack W:
“The figures show the Tories owe £35.3m,”
My,my, that’s SOME to$$er within!!
Re 166, Zebidee, that should be a plural, and I think there has been a clear out since the debt was run up, so they may not even be there anymore.
167 - Smith Square is apparently being sold for about £30m so debts will be reduced somewhat - it’s particularly galling that £5.5m was wasted by Lord Saatchi as a result of move from Smith Square to Victoria Street as otherwise debts would be that much lower. Still if Cameron & Marland can bring debts down significantly perhaps then the t***** comments will rebound
168. Money to burn, apparently:
“The Tories squandered £5.5 million on their move from Conservative Central Office to rented offices in Westminster, increasing the party’s reliance on secret commercial loans from rich benefactors… Lord Saatchi, the then party chairman, took the decision in 2003 to make the move when Michael Howard became leader to make a symbolic break with the party’s past. But when they left Smith Square, the Tories’ headquarters for more than 50 years, no tenant or buyer was in place. The building, the party’s only substantial commercial asset, has been empty since.”
- The Telegraph
166. The one with the microphone near his face?
The picture was taken in Luton in March 1997, btw
168. Its also better than having registered on two seperate polls with two different names and then claiming when found out that you always used the shortened yet can’t explain why the proper name was used in your real home registrar and not registrar of the constituency you are standing in.
166: Looks like David Senior, he’s a past candidate, not an MP.
161. STV wouldn’t see the end of the Boundary Commission as they would still have to monitor population change to ensure that each multi-member constituency had the appropriate number of MPs.
For anyone sad enough to be interested in what the spat about the ballot papers in Scotland is about, you can see them here. AFAIU Labour wants version 4, where they are grouped by party (the version preferred by the sample of voters), whereas the other parties prefer them arranged alphabetically by candidate.
173. I think your right deputy chair of candidatges department if memory serves me right
173. you can be right considering they were in Luton and David Senior stood in Luton North in 1997
161. STV wouldn’t see the end of the Boundary Commission as they would still have to monitor population change to ensure that each multi-member constituency had the appropriate number of MPs.
For anyone sad enough to be interested in what the spat about the ballot papers in Scotland is about, you can see them here. AFAIU Labour wants version 4, where they are grouped by party (the version preferred by the sample of voters), whereas the other parties prefer them arranged alphabetically by candidate.
The link should work this time.
re 171. It certainly is Luton but it was 1992 - March 30th to be exact. There’s more here - http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/march/30/newsid_3739000/3739176.stm
178. I took the 1997 date from here:
http://www.bedfordtoday.co.uk/mk4custompages/CustomPage.aspx?PageID=34783§ionID=5645
177 - Note Scotland has its own site:
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/
but there is no corresponding site for England:
http://www.england.gov.uk/
180. That would be because England does not have a devolved government and is governed from Westminster: http://www.gov.uk
It’s hardly an argument for constitutional reform - “Scotland has its own website.”
re 179. Well they certainly are pictures of the same event but the 1997 suggestion also has the March 30th date. The General Election that year was on May 1st and Major would not have been out campaigning nearly five weeks beforehand. In 1992 I was Lib Dem candidate in Bedford - 18 miles up the road.
Anthony Wells Thanks pretty obvious really. Do you have boxes that include UKIP, Respect and the Greens? Am I right that the pollsters do have widely different figures for ‘Others’. I seem to remember Sean Fear being quite strong on this point. If so what could be the reason? Finally do you have any reason why You Gov have lower figures for the LDs than others? I notice the same thing applies in Scottish polls. I have seem some widely differing figures for the LDs in recent days.
179. Now that I think about it, Mike, Bedford Today should be your local paper…you should complain to them if they can’t get the photo caps right!
182. yes, it must be 1992.
Here’s an interesting idea if we introduced STV. Fix the boundaries for the constituencies. Scrap the boundary commission entirely and have a fixed quota for an MP… 50k sounds about right.
That would give people a pretty good incentive to vote since if they didn’t it would directly lower the number of MPs representing them. No need to change boundaries ever again since as an area’s population grows so will its representation.
186. I’m not entirely convinced that the prospect of having members fewer of the second least trusted profession is going to encourage people to come out and vote…
*fewer members*
Considering it seems it’s 1992, why was David Senior (if it’s him as Anthony suggested) there?
He was the PPC in Barnsley Central that year
I think that might happen first time out but I think people would quickly come to the conclusion that is was in their interest to have as many MPs as possible.
Bluemoon - there is an Other box, if you tick that you get an extra question which gives you a list of other parties to chose from. If you prompt with the minor parties in the main question you end up with too high levels of support for them (hence the YouGov overestimation of UKIP support at the last European elections, for those elections UKIP had been included in the main question options).
My own view on the different levels of minor party support is that it is almost entirely due to the BNP. I think that people are unwilling to admit to pollsters they support the BNP. The effect of this will be lower on an impersonal online poll than it would be if you are telling your voting intentions to another human being on the other end of a phone line.
The Lib Dem support is very complicated. The short version is that a large chunk of the Lib Dem vote in 2005 was made up of people whose natural party would be Labour, but who “lent” their vote to the Lib Dems over the issue of Iraq or general opposition to Tony Blair. If you ask those people (people who identify with the Labour party, but who voted Lib Dem) today how they voted in 2005, they are far more likely to forget they voted Lib Dem than those people who actually identify with the Liberal Democrats. Because YouGov uses a panel, they can use the data from May 2005 to create and weight samples rather than rely on data collected now, and can take better account of the make up of those who actually voted Lib Dem in 2005. I suspect this results in the 2005 Lib Dem supporters in YouGov polls being “flakier” than the 2005 Lib Dem supporters in the phone pollsters samples.
OT. This seems like absolute bloggers … and my we would have fun !! :
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6191988.stm
189: Here’s a picture of David Senior http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/vote2001/candidates/candidates/3/38605.stm
193. yes, I would say it’s him.
Mike, I think I agree with 55.
This poll DOES use some kind of weighting. It weights according to socio-ecomonic class etc. and some kind of liklihood to vote.
Presumably what you’re saying is that this kind of weighting is not sufficient. Past vote weighting must applied on top of this to clear out the “excess” labour support?
Please could you (or someone else) clarify this. Thanks.
190. It might cause problems in areas where the population is more transient (e.g. large cities) as electoral rolls tend to get outdated more quickly. (In theory rolling registers should get around that problem, but in practice it’s another matter.)
RE 178, Thank you Mike. That inspired another article on my blog. It also shows why people have become disengaged from the political process if they can’t go and hear politicians speak and question them for organised fascist heckling.
186. Lower turnout is postively correlated with higher levels of deprivation. Under this system, the most deprived would be least represented.
but they did hide it on p 8 or thereabouts so maybe they’re ashamed of it as well/ I was amazed by the 13% they say are voting for Others - just exactly which parties are these 2m+ people voting for?
191 I don’t think I can agree with your assessment of LibDem support fully Anthony . If you look at all the various recent polls the total of combined LibDem and Other support is pretty constant at 28-32% but there is a wide variation between the split which goes way beyond margin of error see for eaxample Oct Communicate 14% LibDem 16% Others Yougov October LibDem 16% Others 13% latest Populus 20% LibDem 11% Others latest ICM 22% LibDem 9% Others . Hardly any variation in the combined figures but a massive variation in the split .
192 - Jack W - regulators don’t seem to get that free speech = right to offend. I cannot think that any form of “voluntary code” can work applied to hundreds of thousands of blogs, Stamp on the regulators now.
dez, fairness (as I see it) is more important to me than any view that I hold on a specific party. Yes, there would be a bigger role for lib dems with PR but that’s not the only reason I support it.
I also have a very different view of different parts of labour (I was once a labour member you may recall) and the typical ‘new labour’ managerial type is someone who really does annoy me. They have moved the labour party away from being one with a consistent viewpoint and from its roots towards a sort of limp and compromised social democracy. The other type who annoy me is the authoritarian labour strand, often the ex-communists, who play on the fears of the C2s and speak the language of the right. There are quite a few on this site (you are one I think, as with Tyson) who are not these at all but more old labour and I have no problem at all with that strand, as with the Guardianistas who can trace their roots wight back to the start of the labour movement well (roger is one of those yes?).
I don’t think I am anti-any party in totality, a lot of the current labour leadership yes, most of the previous conservative leadership yes, but nothing is ever fixed and when they change, my view of that party changes. I hope that Snowflake realises that what she perceives as anti-labour anything is merely anti-labour as it stands now (and it just so happens it appears to be where she stands) but I’m not holding my breath.
In a way I can understand the foaming right wingers who are ready to lynch Cameron, they see him as doing the same to the tories that I think has emasculated labour. That it might be the precursor to a realignment giving rise to a greater place for liberalism is something that I wait for with anticipation however.
Re picture. It is David Senior (I worked quite closely with him in Shipley in 2001) and it was 1997.
John Major called that election early - he went to the Palace on 17 March - which accounts for the date. To quote from his autobiography: “I wanted a drawn out battle. I was sure the Labour strategy would be to duck policy discussions and highlight Tory weaknesses - this had, after all, been their policy since John Smith became leader, and it had proved very successful.” Not much new in politics.
Should read -
“who can trace their roots right back to the start of the labour movement (roger is one of those yes?).”
Thanks for the thoughtful post, ukpaul - I’ve often seen you annoyed (but always civil to me!) and wasn’t quite sure where it was coming from.
The aspect that I think non-professional politicians don’t fully confront is what you do if you go into politics for idealistic reasons and come up against some combination of (a) issues that are harder to solve than you thought (b) rivals who are more unscrupulous than you and/or (c) voters who seem impervious to your arguments. When you say:
“They have moved the labour party away from being one with a consistent viewpoint and from its roots towards a sort of limp and compromised social democracy.”
you are implicitly rejecting the dilemma faced by Labour in 1992 when it appeared that our traditional views were looking less convincing in a globalised world, our opponents were successfully dishing us at every election, and some our most cherished views simply seemed impossible to win majority acceptance for. (That wasn’t very grammmatical, no time to fix it.) The charms of being consistent and always losing are limited, especially if you believe, as we did, that vulnerable people were suffering terribly by a succession of consergvative governments. To be consistent and dogged came to seem self-indulgent.
I’ve made two major political compromises in my life. I joined Labour rather than the Communists not because I felt that it was wrong to want ‘to each according to his need’ but because I saw no prospect of achieving it in Britain. And I supported the change to New Labour with all the compromises with the electorate that it involved (including those which still resonate today, such as not scrapping nuclear weapons), because I felt that otherwise we’d go on losing forever, and the victims wouldn’t be me in my comfortable IT managerial job but the people who were suffering under the Tories.
The 1992 exercise was about deciding what bits of our beliefs were crucial to us and we wanted to fight for, and what bits we were willing to compromise on. Essentially we settled on a commitment to decent health, education and employment, and we went out to argue the case for giving these absolute priority over tax cuts or any of the other enticing options. That argument has now been won (though it could be reopened in the future), and I don’t think you’d see Cameron embracing it if the Tories hadn’t found that we could beat them again and again if they didn’t. Tony Blair had a lot to do with it, and so have lots of us fighting our corners around Britain. I’m proud of it.
Nick - I was fully onboard with the pre-97 labour positioning change (also probably why I am quite happy for Cameron to be doing similar). It is since then that I became disillusioned, in 97 who would have imagined the way that wars would be entered and fought, the way that, what I believed was an illiberal tory government, would be outpaced by the labour government that replaced it, and so on? It is since the millennium that I have been turned off (turned away?), this is through what I consider to be poor decisions which did not fit into the pre-97 position.
So in essence I had no problem with what was promised (tough on the causes of crime, education x3, etc) but I do consider that those promises have not been addressed with success.
I actually cant recall how I voted in 97, I was in St Albans at the time and either lib dem or labour candidate were well placed to beat the tory and I voted for one or the other, I was very happy that labour were elected in 97, now I feel as though that has all been wasted and that I was conned.
But isn’t it the case, Nick, that the great triumph has been that of Thatcherism. You say Cameron accepted Blair; I prefer to argue that Blair accepted Thatcher, in many respects. The triumph of market economics and deregulated labour, defanged unions, etc, has been a Conservative revolution. People suffered in fact far more under Labour, that crippled our economy, had corpses piling in the streets and had us taking loans from the IMF like some third world nation. To think that was only thirty years ago.
New Labour in some respects is more right-wing than I would ever wish to be. On civil liberties, abolishing jury trials, double jeopardy, three months’ detention without trial etc. In many other respects it is of course far more left wing than I would ever be; high taxation, surrender of the rebate to Europe with nothing in return, regulation etc.
But where we share ground, it is Thatcherite ground. The basic principles she established are now the center of British politics. That is the triumph of Conservatism. In many respects “New Labour” is to the right of Heathite Conservatism. For that we can thank the Lady.
I don’t doubt the goodwill of Labour politicians such as yourself. I have no reason to believe other than that they passionately care for the NHS, education, and employment. So do the Tories, and we happen to think that Labour has wrecked them. The battleground in the center now is not what matters but how best to approach what matters. Clearly Labour has poured vast amounts of public money into the NHS and equally clearly wards and hospitals are being closed and downgraded across the country.
You would argue Cameron accepts Blair; I remember very clearly Blair being quite respectful of Mrs. Thatcher.
163 Why are so few Tory members taking part in selection votes?
The report suggests that only 300 out of a 1000 voted, despite what appears to have been a hotly contested selection.
I also saw a report that a measly 136 people voted in the Oxford West selection, even though it was one of these new fangled ‘open selections’.
You would think that the members of a party ‘on the up’ would show more interest.
205 Nick Palmer A very good and thoughtful post. I am sure you are right.
It is that change and holding that confederacy together while selling it to the voters that makes Blair such a notable and outstanding politician. But I have me doubts he ever meant it in any more meaningful way than as an acceptable personal road to power. He changes tack too easily, saw himself as too central to the changes the country appeared to need.
Seeing through the intimate mirror of the past, that is why Labour think the lightweight attack will be successful with Cameron.
But your own back story with Blair shows that voters make up their own mind on these things and spin can only work absolutely when it has a monopoly. Sadly we gave you a monopoly for far too long and the road back is, and will continue to be, hard work.
But parties need that struggle to entrench the lessons of unity and discipline. Nulab did and it still holds remarkably well. But its very longevity shows the risks of being too successful. It stultifies and makes the up-ladder too restricted to develop the talent and ideas that a second decade in power would need. It is as damaging in party terms as the poor legislation enacted when the whips are too powerful is in national terms.
205 Nick Palmer - in post 28 you dropped in mention of the PSA Mori Poll that the Indie also had an article on (“A poll by Ipsos MORI among members of the Political Studies Association shows that 49 per cent regard Mr Brown as the most capable next Prime Minister while only 14 per cent opt for Mr Cameron. Mr Brown is rated the most successful post-war chancellor and is regarded as the most capable chancellor by 68 per cent. Only 4 per cent back George Osborne, his Tory shadow.”) Note from CHome that poll also revealed 55% had personal preference for a Labour Govt as against 16% wanting a Conservative one.
So after the misleading Harriet Harman story yesterday, the CR poll today, the Independent splash a story that basically says Labour supporting academiics think Gordon better than Cameron. Doh!
It would have been a news story if they didn’t.
..but Ted 210 - those Labour supporting academiics have just named Cameron politician of the year.
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/conservatives/story/0,,1959008,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=19
Very significant news that Labour is now in default on 2 loans and that the lenders are demanding repayment.
Channel 4 says that Labour has 90 days to pay £1m.
208. The voting clashed with a couple of wine & cheese parties. These things happen…..
207. You are probably right, Thatctherism had a huge impact on Labour but the lesson when it comes to the ballot box is perhaps rather more mundane.
Think of it from the minds of the average swing voter, the direct Labour to Tory switchers and vice versa. The 70’s Labour government was a mess and not surprisingly the people booted them out for Thatcher who was fairly cautious operator at first and didnt exactly go to the country with a hugely radical manifesto and no real inducation of the whirlwind to come. 83..Falklands war and way too left a Labour party. 87 Labour perhaps still considered too left wing (the whiff of the lunatic fringe), everything going ok anyway. 92…Kinnock (I really believe the public ultimately couldnt stomach him and had my first political betting success) and a residual suspicion that they were still too left wing.
Mirror that with Labours successes. 97, Tories considered a mess, arrogant, out of touch, in power too long and rapidly losing comptence, people want a change. Labour provide a centerist alternative. 2001, Labour ok, things steady. Tories considered messed up and still too right wing. 2005, Iraq apart, well ok really, Tories just not considered ready yet and internally not looking great (multiple leaders etc)
What we may have seen is a mix of two things:
1. Short of a total screw up, people are more inclined to stick with the government they know. After a whilem, however, they just get really cheesed off as the incumbents make more mistakes, get arrogant and possibly lazy and there is a credible (sorry Lib Dems) broadly centerist alternative. Tories in 97..Labour very possibly come the next election.
2. People by and large dont want anything too radical in reality. Blair may have talked about being radical but in fact he was firmly occupying the centre ground. I assume Cameron is trying to go down the same track but I think is screwing it up at this moment and time and needs to harden up and get clear.
We could go down the line of battles of philosophy (Thactherism, Blairism) but it could be as simple as people get broadly fed up and want a change combined with a general desire for fairly centerist political parties.
It’s this very mundane underlying pattern that has me fairly sure there will be a Tory government come next election time bar something totally unseen cropping up.
Just a thought.
210.
I remember way back in the early 80’s being taught by many left leaning teacher’s, still convinced that many of us voted conservative back then because of that!
“people get broadly fed up”
Which is as concise an explanation as to why governments fall as you can find!
By harden up with Cameron I mean both harden up, literally, and secondly be clear in communicating what the Tories are about.
In 1987, Labour still had far too many weak points. My first memory of a political poster (apart from Harriet Harman’s election posters, which my parents displayed - they, unlike me, are broadly Old Labour) is the Conservative one attacking Kinnock’s alternative to nuclear war of guerrilla warfare under Soviet occupation.
215. I’m a simple man, of simple words Paul…..(says me having a cup of tea and an old fashioned, biscuit style jam bun)
217…Was her picture on the posters and if so, what was her hairdo like?
It was. I can’t remember the details of her pic though.
220. Damn, I reckon a quick release of those might finish her Deputy Leadership pitch. The 80s had some interesting hairdos..
221. Yokel… Harriet in 1984:
http://cache.gettyimages.com/xc/3356216.jpg?v=1&c=MS_GINS&k=2&d=0629904139C22E589175153C2033E4EF
215, 213
221 - Yes, but give it another decade and those same photos could help her.
Anything from 30 years ago is good, anything from happened 20 years ago is bad - it’s always been the way…
224 Well that one isnt looking good!
In 10 years, Harriet Harman’s likely to be in roughly the same position Gwyneth Dunwoody (say) is now. She’d be too old for ministerial office, at least given current standards.
213. Not always. I think there are uncanny parallels between here and Canada. Long time charismatic leader departing under storm clouds who hates his deputy, who has yearned for years to be PM but has nothing of his Boss’s voter Appeal. A new opposition leader who does have charm but needs to convince the public about his Party. Canada wasn’t Britain in the 70’s but people had had enough. But can Ming Campbell do what Jack Layton did and prevent that shiny new opposition leader obtaining as majority, we shall have to see.
220 and all Lib Dems. Is Teather shrewd or mad. Still can’t make my mind up whether sdhe is worth a few quid in Brent Central.
BTW App Clarke thinks boundary changes make him invulnerable in Norwich South. Do they.
226. Don’t forget Beckett is still around!
But in terms of look, Gwyneth is almost in the same position of 20 years ago (apart the very 80’s glasses):
http://cache.gettyimages.com/xc/3262388.jpg?v=1&c=MS_GINS&k=2&d=10276273D480F6D8A30E848AD2B5067F
I think Teather ultimately won’t make it, although she’ll probably be the market favourite right into the campaign on name recognition alone.
227 As always punter it depends what odds you can get .
228. He’s vulnarable even without boundary changes.
220. Punter, are you a fan of Teather?! You seem obsessed by her political future!
(did the Libdems put a good amount of work in Stonebridge, Kensal Green and Harlesden last may? If they did and that’s all what they managed to get, I think ST is in trouble)
232. Not at all I just want to make money. Don’t care about her personally, instinct says she would not turn down a sure thing elsewhere for this but but I’m hesitating with so many people saying she’s no chance. Perhaps the Lib Dems can say how hard they worked that patch. Discretion maybe the better part of valour and there are other better value races. BTW I think you misunderstand Clarke thinks the changes mean the Lib Dem task becomes much harder not easier. Wanted to know if he was correct.
233. Ah, yes, I misread you re Clarke
233 Anthony Wells notionals after the boundary changes knocks about 600 - 700 off Clarke’s majority .
235. And there’s a considerable Tory vote in Norwich South. I suppose someone like Clarke can generate tactical voting more than a little known backbencher
207: Commentator, I do see parallels. We had to accept quite a few of the things we opposed in the Thatcher era. Some were concessions to the electorate (such as not raising income tax), others I think we simply came to accept were right. It seems bizarre in retrospect that we ever thought it acceptable that one should *both* be required to belong to a particular union *and* that the union could then call one out on strike without a vote.
Conversely the Tories are having to accept the importance of collective goods, notably the NHS: some Tories are going along with this as a route to re-election, others genuinely now reject the idea that everything is best addressed at an individual level. If one wants to be philosophical, isn’t this how democracy settles arguments in the end?
B2W: it’s always seemed to me that people underestimated Tony Blair’s sense of political direction, seeing him as an opportunist who would follow the shifts of public opinion. It’s never been true at all; his experience of life is that if you favour a reasonable position (he has never thought in recent years at least that the old Clause 4 or unilateral disarmament were reasonable) and argue the case you will win a majority for it. Moreover, he’s always succeeded in doing so, first inside the party, then in Parliament during rebellions, and then in General Elections: he’s about to retire undefeated, to the intense irritation of many. The difference from Cameron seems to me to be that Cameron first asks “What do people want to hear from politicians?” and then says, “How do we adjust to that?” while TB first asks, “What do we need to do to achieve what we want to do?” and then sets about persuading people. But it’s still early days with Cameron and I might be misreading him. As with many other things, it will be a lot clearer 12 months from now.
[202 et seq] One point that’s been left out of this very interesting debate is the name of John Smith. His death was what gave Tony Blair his opportunity (over Brown - at the time it was known as the “two Scots” problem). I suspect that I might still have voted Labour in 1997 had Smith lived to lead the Party into that election - but the evidence of Blair’s character defects was in the public domain in the 1990s and whilst I doubt that a different leader would have done much different in terms of domestic policy I do think that foreign affairs would have been handled in a more rational way (I doubt that even Nick Palmer or Snowdrop in their hearts regard it as this government’s main achievement).
All that said, it’s clear that socialism (even of the milk-and-water Herbert Morrison variety) is no more on the agenda than, say, a return to the feudal system - which being so, I do wonder what, philosophically, separates the mainstream Labour MP - like Nick Palmer - from his Liberal Democrat counterpart. To put it another way - in what sense did those seats which last time replaced a Labour MP with a Lib Dem one move to the right politically?
Well, there’s the Trade Union link of course, but I’m struck by how little the Tories here attack Labour for being the Unions’ poodle - which was pretty much the first stick they picked up when they wanted to beat Labour in the 1980s and before. I suspect that as & when Labour do go out of office, the link will come under a lot of strain from within the T.U. movement, with no shortage of voices raised to say that they could get better value from their political funds by taking a more pragmatic attitude - focussing on issue-based campaigns and supporting individual MPs on the basis of their track record as much as their party label.
237 - Nick, In the spirit of this civilised discourse, I think your pushing the argument a little too far in asserting that the Tories have to accept the NHS. Every Conservative leader, and specifically Mrs Thatcher - “the NHS is safe in our hands” - has professed and I believe genuine fealty to the NHS. Of course, there is certainly a legitimate argument between the parties on all matter of health issues, including the levels of spending, but this really shouldn’t detract from the principle.
And would you say that “Hug a Hoodie” (your own depiction in a recent PMQs) is a message that the voters wish to hear? I don’t think you can have that argument both ways.
213. Yokel - very good post.
One of the things about this site is that many posters think that most people follow politics far more closely than they actually do. Posters get excited about the latest speech or policy announcement when in reality the vast majority of the public will be totally unware of it and the impact on voting intentions will be miniscule.
Your post is spot on - most people form a very general view of the overall state of the country and the broad approach likely to be taken by each Party if it were in government.
238 -Oh, and before pedant jumps, I meant ‘you’re’ in the first line
237, I agree. There are some extremists in both parties - still some Labour MPs who would like unilateral nuclear disarmament and there are doubtless some Tories who think the market has the answer to everything and would go for a US style health insurance system. Whereas centrists accept the welfare state and differ on how best to render services within that broad construct. In government I believe we as a party need to look at how Wandsworth Council, our flagship council, is combining low taxation and top-class services.
237 While what you say re Blair is true on a number of issues, there are others where he has not won his argument; he would have liked to take us into the Euro; to have forced Gibraltarians to accept joint Spanish citizenship; and to have achieved a compromise on hunting. I am sure there are other examples but those spring to mind.
235&236. Really. The local press must be spinning like a bottle top then. They were saying Clarke thinks he’s safer after not more vulnerable. Does anyone, Baxter say different.
236. Lot may depend on if there’s a new Tory candidate. If there is it will be that much more likely. It will occur anyway I’d guess but be bigger in scale I would think.
[242] Well, Commentator, all the other Tory councils in the land have had over twenty years to examine what Wandsworth’s doing that they’re not - care to enlighten us?
243. Baxter gives him a 7.97% majority and Wells a 7.7% majority. So pretty much the same figures
Has Mr Matlock been on? I was wondering how many of his properties he was going to turn over to Dave’s crusade to reduce relative poverty
243 - Kenneth Clarke?
202,
Ukpaul,
Sorry I did not get back to you earlier been out for the evening.
I have always been a supporter of PR for fairness to, not for party alliegence.
The right for each vote to count, and not to leave rotten boroughs.
In my opinion, the legacy of this government in one respect is the changes to the constitution, and in this regard, some progress has been made, in relation to scotland, wales, euro elections.
However I note, you refrain to mention this.
Nevertheless, the hope which ended with massive Labour majorities, was the re allignment, of the social reformism tradition I espouse, and Liberalism, to take on the forces of conservative tradition of thought, from which ever party it comes from.
243 The Baxter notional forecast is sh**e He has the Conservatives in 2nd and LibDems in 3rd . There is no way the relatively small boundary changes can have that effect . The local elections in May were better for the LibDems than the 2005 CC though Greens really hold the key . Totals in the wards making up the new Norwich South were Con 4736 Lab 5908 LibDem 8007 Green 6967 . Cannot figure anyway the Conservatives could be put in 2nd place .
249 - possibly because Baxter is a Tory front passing off as psephology?
The changes in Norwich Souht are the following:
- they lose 1,979 voters from Crome (solid Labour ward…so it should be a net loss for Labour in NS)
- they get 1,178 voters from Thorpe Hamlet (LD ward at local level)
- they lose 1,894 voters from Cringleford (Con ward in 2003 locals…Labour didn’t stand in 2003 local in that ward)
- they gain 723 voters from New Costessey (LD ward at local level…no Lab candidates in 2003 locals)
Maybe Anthony Little knows it…how does Thorpe Hamlet vote in GE?
249. Mark, Baxter has Lab 38, LD 30, Con 21.3
In line with Wells figures.
181 “180. That would be because England does not have a devolved government and is governed from Westminster: http://www.gov.uk”
England does not have a devolved Government - it is governed by Scots at Westminster.
Thanks for reminding everyone.
There are plenty that are, Yokel. Tory councils on average do better than those of other parties.
Maybe why we are now so dominant in local govt, and I expect that to continue in May.
249/52. Mark, I think you misread. The second place for the Con is just the prediction using the uniform swing according to the average of October polls.
His notionals for Norwich South are in line with Wells’ one.
255 OOPS Yes I was looking at his predictions .
YouGov, are you there my pretty?
256. So Baxter isn’t a Tory conspiracy after all?
Never said it was though many of his notionals are strange .
258. One of your more excitable (si c’est possible) compatriots did further up the thread.
131. contradicts itself: the fact that PR encourages hung parliaments, coalitions and weak governments is a key argument *for* PR, not against it.
259. I think the majority of them are now in line with Wells’ one, even if some are still different (but a couple of differences are in Cornwall which is difficult to work out and London where they used different elections to produce them IIRC)
248 - Sorry Dez I thought the implication was clear, as a supporter of PR its introduction by the government in various elections is to be warmly welcomed.
262 Leeds North West is an odd one tho Andrea with Baxter making it notionally Labour .
Anyway I find difficult to see how boundary changes can help Clarke in Norwich South.
I suppose that the 2 South Norfolk wards didn’t vote Labour in 2005. The net loss of voters there is around 1,000 and it should help Labour.
But Crome surely voted Labour and NS is losing around 2,000 voters there. So they’re already in negative territory.
Thorpe Hamlet voted LD by 12% in 2005 County Elections. Even if Labour did better in the GE (held in the same day), I doubt it would have been enough.
Not sure if it makes sense…I get a bit lost into all those figures…
264. Some weeks ago, in an old thread, Kevin L listed some of the seats with significantly different results between Wells and Baxter
Sky news reporting that the Telegraph is leading with a story on council tax, no sign of the Yougov poll?
251. Thorpe Hamlet votes Lib Dem at General Elections. it has solidly Elected Lib Dems evey elections since the very early 1980’s and despite recent setbacks elsewhere in the City, remains solidly Lib Dem.
268. Thanks. How can Clarke see boundary changes helping him?
Even if he should gain from losing voters to South Norfolk (Cringleford), the arrival of 1,000 voters in Thorpe Hamlet and the loss of 2,000 voters in Crome should be negative for him.
IMHO boundary changes will help Clarke in the future.
Cringleford & Colney - few thousands votes but very few Labour indeed. Splits almost 50:50 Con and LibDem here - it’ll be the main bit that pulls back both opposition parties.
Crome, or the bit that is being lost, is pretty strongly Labour but LibDems had a traditionally strong vote here (when it was in another ward)
Thorpe Hamlet - the west of the ward votes pretty much Tory but the east (where the gains are made) are a mixture of Lab and LibDem.
The key to Norwich South is if the greens can harness local votes into general votes. If they can then the race is wide open between pretty much all parties, but particularly the main three.
Nich - right and wrong. The Tories are clearly ahead in the polling district that covers Cathedral Close et al. The bit that is geographically Thorpe Hamlet does vote LibDem although Labour has a pretty big core there too. The Greens are tragetting this like mad - expect a shock come May 07 … if not an outright gain then pushing all parties much closer together.
sorry, got cut off … but yes, it is considered to be a safe LibDem seat with pockets of Tory and Labour support. Everyone will be unsurprised to know I was a local govt candidate there once!
Be wary of the greens though … they are going the spade work there.
270. Anthony, so do you think the notionals should show a bigger Lab majority than 2005? If so, how much bigger? Some hundreds voters or more?
Actually, I suppose it’s likely that voting pattern can change when a ward is moved in a new constituency. For ex I wouldn’t be surprised if some LD voters in Thorpe Hamlet who were in Norwich North voted Lab in 2005 when the fight it was between Gibbo and a Tory, but then they would vote Libdems now that they’re in a Lab/LD seat.
Pardon my ignorance;can it be confirmed thay yesterady’s poll slowed a 2pt lead for the Tories,and today’s You Guv poll has been reported as a 1 pont advantage for the Conservatives?
Not according to the top of the thread which had today’s CR shares which are: CON 34%(-4), LAB 36%(+4), LD17%(+3). Not heard any mention of a YouGov poll tonight.
272 - With respect (no, not really) I would take it all more seriously if it wasn’t from somebody who claimed until the end that he was on course for victory rather than third in Norwich South in 2005.
277. James, pretty harsh…considering that the Libdems usually spend the whole times claiming they’re going to win everything, even if they’re miles behind (Moray was the best recent example with some posters here claiming it was close the night before)
Well said Andrea - although I fear James is rather known for his negative views. If you are interested in my record on predictions at local level, I got absolutely EVERY seat right in 06, even predicting the big swing gains from the LibDems. So there.
279. Anthony I would have been suspicious if you were forecasting Tory gains (I always take positive views about someone own party more carefully), but you were talking about the Greens, so a third party.
Thanks Andrea - some people believe that because you are involved in politics that you cannot predict with accuracy. I believe that because I am involved in politics I CAN predict with accuracy. The Greens will either gain Thorpe Hamlet outright or run the LibDems very close with the subsequent drop in votes bringing all 4 parties very close together. I’ll stand by that come May 4th next year. Unlike some others (no names, James) who predict big gains for their party and go very, very quiet when they fail to materialise - Moray is just one example!
281. Now this prediction will follow you for rest of your life!
I stake my reputation on it! Though reserve the right to change or ammend as necessary!