Good and bad news for Dave from the ICM detail
August 13th, 2007
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Could Brown risk an October election based on this data?
The full detail from yesterday’s ICM poll for the Sunday Mirror is now on the ICM website and, as I usually do, have clipped the voting intention the above voting intention data categories by what respondents said they did last time.
My rationale is that the views of declared actual voters and how their allegiances are churning give a different picture compared with the headline figures - which include the choices of a large number of respondents who said they did not vote in 2005. With only three out of every five voters bothering to turn out in general elections then it is the known voters that we should focus on first.
The bad news for Cameron is that The Tories are only retaining 87% of those who said they voted for Howard’s party last time. This compares with 88% for Labour which is the first time, I believe, that Brown’s party has been ahead.
The good news for Cameron is that enough 2005 Labour and Lib Dem voters say they have switched that their net position is slightly better than Labour. Also, I would guess, in a general election situation there would be a polarisation of views and that 87% retention number might increase.
Labour are still the worthy favourites but if I was Gordon I would like to see some better figures than these.
Mike Smithson
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Brown is a chicken if he does not call an election with a 10% lead!
Why don’t the figures include any who didn’t vote in 2005 but are inclined to do so next time or vice versa?
Surely with 40% or so of the electorate not voting last time, there will be both leakage to and gains from that group and how the net figure works out for each party will be as important as how they do against each other.
I think Brown is letting the tories off the hook, surely Brown should be crystalising his lead in an early election or is he too chicken?
Shame we don’t thave chicken faces for smiles etc!!! 
:lol: 
re 2. Of course that’s right David. But I’m putting the focus here on the voters who, I would argue, are much more likely to vote than non-voters in 2005.
It’s time for an election - it’s time for Brown to go to the palace!
2 David , ICM do have those figures , Nick Sparrow partially quoted them in his post on here last month . I agree it is a pity they are not published in the tables though those who did not vote last time or rather more likely to not vote next time too than those who voted in 2005 . Also a pity that the table Mike shows is incomplete in that it shows switchers from the main parties to Others but not vice versa .
1 and 3 Don’t be so pathetic Martin , it is the summer recess at the moment , I suffest you go back and look at the polls when Blair was still PM and they said that GB’s leadership accession would lead to a big increase in the then Conservative lead .
Mike do you mean that 18 people who said they didn’t vote Labour in 2005 say they now will versus 22 for the Tories? I don’t think a difference of 4 people is statistically significant is it?
Maybe the Tory 87% retention will go up during the camapaign but so might the 88% Labour retention. I don’t understand your point here?
Also a fair number of people who normally vote and vote Labour didn’t do so in 2005 because of TB and Iraq. If GB can tempt them out again he can advance and this won’t be captured by a reliance on looking at 2005 voting turnout. Local election turnout is even more unreliable; we can be sure that Labour will benefit signifcantly from the increased turnout of a GE.
A 6-7 average lead is IMHO as good as it’s going to get for GB. If he waits for a 10 point average lead, he’ll be waiting a long time. I only hope he’s silly enough to listen to those arguing the contrary.
7 Are you a Labour man?
6. Yes, I should have mentioned Others as well - good point.
4. I agree that non-voters in 2005 are much more likely to be non-voters next time as well, than those who did turn out, but even if there’s a relatively small difference in net movement between the parties and non-voters, that will be multiplied in the effect on the polls.
For example, if 3% of the total electorate go from not intending to vote to supporting Labour with expected turnout increasing from 60% to 63%, then Labour’s share would get about a 5% boost.
Tories order Chicken suits for operatives to persue Brown:
http://www.unitedmaskandparty.com/Mascots/images/chicken_suit.jpg
Mike,
I wonder if that’s as significant a number as you think, given the large number of lifelong Labour supporters last time who abstained out of principle over Iraq. (It could be argued they might still blame Brown for being part of the decision/ not withdrawing, but there is a real sense of a line having been drawn with the departure of Blair.)
Also, a question, if I may- you were very warm in your praise of Osbourne and his handling of Brown when Brown was Chancellor- have you changed your mind? Or do you think Osbourne has more up his sleeve?
10 David , I forget the actual figures Nick Sparrow quoted in his post last week , I expect you can find them but IIRC there was a substantial lead for Labour over the Conservatives in this group but the key as you say how many will actually vote in the next GE . As Nick pointed out part of this group did not intend to not vote in 2005 but failed for 1 reason or another but these will be balanced ( and their voting intentions should match ) those who say they will vote at the next GE but for 1 reason or another do not .
12. I wonder if all the hordes of Labour voters who aupposedly stayed at home in 2005 but will return to the fold when needed will prove as elusive as the hordes of Tory voters who supposedly stayed at home in 1997 but Tebbit et al. believe are ready to storm back to the ballot box as soon as the ‘right’ policies are adopted…
12. I wonder if all the hordes of Labour voters who aupposedly stayed at home in 2005 but will return to the fold when needed will prove as elusive as the hordes of Tory voters who supposedly stayed at home in 1997 but Tebbit et al. believe are ready to storm back to the ballot box as soon as the ‘right’ policies are adopted…
ICM crosstabs also show that voters are divided on prefered TIMING of next general election. Note that 30% say they want Gordon Brown to hold the GE this year, 40% say next year, 16% say 2009 or beyond, and 14% don’t know.
Which leads me to believe that few voters really care that much about the timing one way or another, giving GB maximum latitude for his own (perhaps more rigorous) calculations.
Also note that Conservatives are much more anxious to have the next GE this year (45%) than Labour (24%) or Lib Dem (25%) voters. Believe the differential is mainly due to Tory eagerness for regime change. But still is an interesting factoid.
http://www.johnredwoodsdiary.com/?p=413
Redwood hits back….
13. Fair enough. I’ve missed out on a week of pbc so didn’t see Nick Sparrow’s quote if it was last week. I know it must be difficult to model (and may have been part of the reason for the big errors in the 1992 pre-election polls - there was a huge turnout that year), but with Iraq protesters returning to Labour, Cameron aiming to attract more centrist Tories and the possibility of a closer election (if the markets are correct), turnout is likely to go up; if so, how these new or returning voters behave will be one of the most critical factors in determining the result.
Who knows what the turnout will be like next time but if you take the South East it plummeted in 2005 compared to 2001. Labour lost 650,000 Labour voters compared to 2001, the Tories 350,000. If these people voted in 2001 they could perfectly well do so next time.
Of course it may be swings and roundabouts but in many constituencies Labour lost because, not because of increase in the Tory vote share but because of small increases in the LD vote share and abstentions both to a large extent because of Iraq. If these two factors unwind Labour could hold onto their marginals in the south and elsewhere without any reduction in the Tory share at all( which in my view is very unlikely.)
To counter this the Tories need to mount their own squeeze on the LD vote in the two Party marginals, win over Labour switchers in some numbers and recapture Tory abstainers.
If the polls mean anything they are suggesting that Labour are sqeezing the LDs much more efficiently, are holding on well to their 2005 vote and winning back a fair number of Iraq refuseniks. TB’s departure seems to have been the equivalent of a giant fur ball taking with it a good bit of the anger at new labour.
Given time I don’t doubt that the conjuring trick of pretending that this is in any meaningful sense a ‘new ‘ Government would unravel. The longer GB waits the greater the chance that this will happen IMHO and the GB bounce will then be gone for good with it.
Tory eagerness for regime change - So Tory activists are keen to pound the streets and kick out Labour MP’s in other words?
Personally and i do not suffer fools gladly - i think the opinion polls are way ahead of peoples motivation and likelyhood to vote. I am a very sensitive political watcher and i just don’t see a mass enthusasim for Labour on the ground. People say that Brown has not been completely crap is one thing - whether they would vote for Labour on that alone is another.
I would say much of the Brown bounce has been motivated by good or positive media - It is hard to get critiscm if you are flip flopping away from dispised policies or stances. I actually think Brown’s problem will be the very thing his supporters claim he brings - substance. The Tories will not leave Brown alone in a campaign about his record and i think even Ming may work up a bit of energy to sink his ‘false’ teeth into Brown’s bottom.
I think Labour may well have to put a bit of distance in time between Brown’s government and Blair’s. Brown has a bit of a paradox though, once an election is called his honeymoon will be over, people will ask searching questions and expect a good reply. Labour will be standing not just on Brown’s record but Blairs too as PM.
This looks good for the Tories in their Labour-Tory super-marginals doesn’t it?
BEST thing that could happen to Gordon Brown right now, would be organized pursuit by squad of Tory apparatchiks in chicken suits! Talk about a bunch of clucks . . .
And why not add to the fun - and copy one of Mike Huckabee’s secrets of sucess from this weekend’s Iowa GOP straw poll - by having Boris Johnson give away a 150-pound watermelon?
This level of assessment/obsession led many to conclude that a Gordon Brown Labour Party would poll about 28/29% back in winter and the early spring. Woods and Tree’s comes to mind.
What we are saying is a cautious, step by step movement away from Dave to Gord. That’s the real headline, the direction of the footfall. I always said Gord would crush Dave. The Tories have picked a lightweight and everyone can see it, hence the hesitant movement back to a partially discredited Labour Party.
My prediction is Brown will have enough ammo (of the type is firing now) to sink the Tories by May next year. It will be steady and constant. Cameron’s tactic of ‘any flag up any mast will do’ to seize the agenda is backfiring and he can’t go into mud slinging because he announced his hallmark as ‘a new kind of ‘constructive’ politics’. So mud slinging would damage Dave irreparably.
I expect Labour 40, Tories 33 till next summer and the underlying figures strengthening.
Poor old Dave.
17. Redwood speaks - (and no, he won’t be advocating sending children up chimneys)
‘I am all for interviewers asking tough quesitons, putting Ministers and MPs on the spot, and trying to make them think. Some of the current vogue of aggressive interviewing based on juvenile spin doctoring from Labour does the opposite of that. It is predictable, silly, and prevents the public from hearing sensible discussion about genuinely difficult issues like how an enterprise economy can deliver more jobs, how the north-south gap could be narrowed, and how more people might come to own and run businesses of their own.
No wonder so many people do not like politics, when all they see and hear is name calling, savaging the person rather than discussing the policy.
We have punch and judy media trotting out routines that any competent politician knows by heart and can refute in his sleep.’
Stirring stuff.
Certainly Brown should go in October, why not? Perhaps Trevor Kavanagh is right, when asked who will win, ‘Brown and he’ll win big’ well it’ll be interesting to see if he’s right.
Fascinating though how disciplined the left wing media have been in pursuing their agenda over the last 18 months. Firstly they ran lots of anti-government stories (with the criticism always from the left of course) and gave Cameron an easy ride - in the hope that a credible looking Tory leader would ensure that the ‘traitor’ Blair (never to be forgiven for Iraq and Lebanon) would be forced out.
This worked very well, but having achieved that goal, a rapid turnaround in approach had to be executed to head off the risk that the Tories’ momentum would prove strong enough to propel them into office. This too has worked very well so far. The Tories made a huge mistake in naively assuming that the likes of the Guardian and the BBC were in any way changing their spots.
26. Oh I see, it’s a conspiracy. Of course.
26
Oh thats why the Tories have fallen behind in the polls, and there’s me thinking its ‘cos more voters think their crappier than Labour, silly old me!
More obfuscation about timing on the World at One (presumably carefully prepared in advance) with Stephen Ladyman saying GB was very concerned about saving marginal seats like his and it was more likely to be May next year followed by Margaret McDonough saying after a lot of rather confusing waffle May was unlikely. So you have it from Labour spokespeople that the election will be on…er?
23 - Store that post under ‘Hubris’, right next to the polls you reference.
The first post today by ‘red flag’ was indicative of the real problem with current political discourse, he/she thought automatically of a negative approach, attacking the ‘others’ with no thought whatsoever of how a positive might be used. When are parties actually going to give people something to vote *for*? Cameron has few firm policies, Brown has coasted for a month with no policies, how are we supposed to vote for vagueness?
My regular trips up north (I’m back in Guildford now) are very useful in reminding me about what real people are thinking about, not the middle class chatterati as represented here; there has been one major change over the last year or so, and as much as I hate to say it, it’s all about immigration. In 2005 it was barely mentioned in terms of importance but now it appears as though they feel over-run by Eastern Europeans. I’m from a ‘decent working class’ background and they are despairing of two things, the aforementioned immigrants being the major one*. They see the health service as being over-run and themselves as abandoned by the party that they believed represented them.
This has been the tragedy of new labour, electable, managerial, ideologically dead and having cut those who once were their beating heart adrift.
Come the next election don’t be surprised to see, as in Sedgefield, a high quasi-fascist vote, unless another party starts to address their concerns.
* The feckless working class or ‘chavs’ being the other.
Remarkable info here..
http://dizzythinks.net/2007/08/why-trail-report-five-days-in-advance.html
..as to how Redwood’s report was leaked in advance without official conservative party approval - methinks Mr Vulcan is trying to grab the agenda away from his leadership.
So what will Dave do about it? Could this be an even bigger split than on grammar schools?
30
agree 100%. its the same in norfolk. the place is swamped by migrant workers, taking the casual work usually done by locals (the feckless youth see it as a further reason not to bother even trying to get one of these low paid jobs) and depressing wages. people feel betrayed and abandoned by a government that deliberately hides the scale of immigration/economic migration.
These are not racists or anything similar just ordinary working people.
19 “Labour lost 650,000 Labour voters compared to 2001, the Tories 350,000. If these people voted in 2001 they could perfectly well do so next time.”
No - many of these are dead. Even in NI turnout among the dead is low.
Like cigarette companies having to find young blood to take up smoking to replace those who have died, political parties need to find young voters. At present, they can’t manage it.
31
Bet Redwood is all ready putting in the phone lines, in that new office he’s opened just round the corner from the HofP: ‘Cometh the hour, cometh the man’
Dave hire a food taster quick!
32 - To put this in context, I was arguing for the *benefits* of such immigration. I was taken aback by the ferocity of the response and I was nowhere near making even a slight dent in their position.
uk paul on benefits of immigration;
Elano, Garrido, Corluka,Geovanni,Bojinov,Petrov,Fernandes,Petrov.
I rest my case.
35
i am surprised by the completely unexpected comments from quiet types who suddenly spout something about ‘poles, portugese or rumanians’. comments from these types suggest these views are widely held not just the comments of nutters
re 5. I don’t think there’s ever been a general election in September.
Sorry two Petrovs and left out Bianchi! How could I?
39 - Looking good so far! I was at Morecambe for their first match but got the City score over the tannoy.
31. That’s one theory. Another is that Redwood’s policy release was held back and launched in secret from CCHQ to avoid prior leakage….and yet Sunday AM must have had an inkling.
Whichever way it happened, the shock of Redwood being released at last, set the media off like a lot of scalded cats in a most reassuring manner, making them look demented, which they are. It provided a most satisfactory exhibition of cultural Marxism at work in the hopelessly brain-washed media machine - a collector’s classic. Talk of slave labour was rampant all day, children being sent up chimneys and old ladies having their bus passes removed. I ask you. Which planet are these people on?
Redwood should be proud of himself making this lot who’ve never met the other side of the argument in their lives, look as if they’d just met their first Martian.
With respect I think the figures here are on such small subsamples that it’s hard to interpret them in any direction. We’re almost down to analysing the intentions of a single bloke!
Immigration: there’s not much doubt that there’s widespread concern - around 40% in the last poll IIRC thought it an important issue. People mostly aren’t too bothered by the Poles individually but are unhappy at the reported size of the sudden influx. It’s not shifting many votes since people realise it’s not possible to block it under EU rules, and they note that none of the main parties propose to. So those who are most upset drift into apathy or a fringe party, and everyone else decides how to vote on other issues. A bit like the…
EU: tjm/seanT, to wrap up the previous thread: I do favour referenda as a democratic tool. If we were considering a constitution, I’d be pleased if we had a referendum on it. But in my view it’s not. We shan’t persuade each other here, but no doubt it’ll be argued to death elsewhere.
Just found this in the Standard, GB is back in his constituency, spending the rest of his hols there, why? hmmmm could be a pointer to an early GE; couldn’t it? on the other not?
http://tinyurl.com/363sl9
38. The general election in 1900 was held in late September to mid October. It was the last one not to have a single polling day in the modern sense (although with postal voting as it is, it could be argued that we don’t these days either).
[EU]. 42. Nick Palmer. No doubt it will be argued to death here!
Nick
I have always respected your intelligent posts here but to say this isnt a constitution is a disgrace in my eyes. nyou know it is, we know it is and so does everyone else.
The referendum will be argued not to death, Nick but into life. There’s no way your lot will get away with this gross deception.
34. The fact that Vulcan virtually killed a good announcement from Damian Green about forced marriages [borrowing largely from the Government’s pioneering work with the Forced Marriages Unit, but that doesn't matter] must make Dave even more pissed off.
41. This is what one might call a brave interpretation.
32. “These are not racists or anything similar just ordinary working people”. There’s nothing to say that ‘ordinary working people’ can’t be racists; indeed, in my experience, that’s what racists usually are.
43. Oh I think Gordon will be busy getting *wee* Wendy installed as the replacement to Jack McConnell with the minimum of fuss, disruption and certainly debate.
Just saw a thing on the news about some public school toffs hunting chavs with hounds and shooting them with shotguns. Then it just turned out to be a spoof video - shame.
47. Why not? they did with Iraq.
51. Sure it wasn’t some rushes from the next Labour PPB?
52. Getting the policy through and not sustaining any political damage are two different things. Blair never recovered from the moment that people began to realise the deception over Iraq.
That said, the EU constitution is on a much lower level of political intensity and Brown could just about get away with not holding a referendum, which will only upset a few who really care about the UK’s relations with the EU (few of whom vote Labour anyway), though it will test his relations with those running The Mail and The Sun to the limit, and he’ll only manage it if there’s both an otherwise benign political backdrop and an opposition that doesn’t look ready for government. Neither can be assumed at the moment.
52. There are 40+ Labour MPs who will not pass the Constitution through Westminster. Brown will not have a majority.
As a little Anecdote I was out to lunch with a friend who has never voted anything but Tory and at the end of the lunch he said, well Nick `I’m a Brownite’ I was totally gobsmacked. He then went on to explain the usual stuff about how Cameron was a light weight PR man and Brown was hard working and had the right ideas. OK, so its not ICM but I think Brown may have more reach in to the Tory heartlands than people originally assumed.
One major question for Brown is how the Lib Dems would fare during an election campaign. I suspect their poll rating would rise because they have suffered from invisibility lately - although of course nothing is guaranteed.
But would any improvement come from the Conservatives or Labour? I suspect it is more likely to come from the Conservatives because Ming has a lot to offer soft Conservatives who are suspicious of Cameron and might be less appealing to soft Labour. But it is a question I would be looking into if I were Brown.
56. nick, we should not be surprised. there are two principal strands to british Conservatism; (a) steady as she goes, I don’t like change and (b) I don’t like my money being wasted on those ****s(*insert group/class who are thought to be less deserving). This is why it is quite correct to talk of ‘conservatives’ even where there are communist administrations. It is a matter of fear rather than political judgement which would have the same people voting for (or backing if they didn’t have a vote0 saddam Hussein or Ho Chi Minh once they’d been running things for long enough.
At the moment, with hug-a-hoodie Dave negating the Tory party’s power to pull much support on (b), then Gordon is the best ‘conservative’ prime minister around.
Just watched Commander Plodder on C4 News, flapping around trying to justify the quasi-fascist ‘anti-terrorist’ legislation being used against peaceful protesters at Heathrow exercising their right to free speech. Absolutely disgraceful. I’m on the verge of going their myself so I can give the cops a load of grief when they arrest me.
56. Tory europhiles might well be tempted to abandon Cameron now he’s putting up a fight with the EUSR Constitution. All the ‘i’m the next Blair’ talk might have persuaded many to expect token resistance only. The media were certainly confident they had pushed the eurosceptics down to the basement when they blocked Liam Fox’s attempt to be leader. They are now furious with Cameron because they feel like idiots having been taken in. Hence all the barmy right-winger tory, went to eton, bullingdon, slave labour nonsense they are drivelling out now. They kept quiet about all this for the previous 18 months, when they thought he was the next one to betray Britain.
Tapestry ‘the next one to betray Britain’. Just like Hague, Duncan-Smith and Howard. Lucky we have you to warn us.
48. Can anyone tell me how officially making someone register before they leave the country for a marriage will make a blind bit of difference to ‘forced marriages’? The policy would be largely ignored among both those who did register and the (far larger) number who didn’t. We are not in a position to ignore Indian or Pakistani marriages after they have happened.
‘Like cigarette companies having to find young blood to take up smoking to replace those who have died, political parties need to find young voters. At present, they can’t manage it.’
Did anyone notice that 70% of 18-25- year olds describe themselves as happy with the job GB is doing as PM? Kind of interesting, I thought…
no 61 like Major (mostly got it wrong), Blair (got it totally wrong) and Brown (outright skallywag).
Cameron has shocked them all by turning out solid against the EUSR Constitution. SR - subservient regions. There are a few more Quentin Davies’ to quit the Party yet, but potentially a lot more support arriving the closer the moment comes for the EUSR showdown.
63. 70% of 18-25 year olds are p***ed
63 - Yes, it is interesting for university seats particularly. I think young people are actually somewhat less apathetic than when I was a student ten years ago. In my area, students and non-student young people voted in quite good numbers in 2005 (they didn’t in local elections but that is hardly a surprise when few expect to stay in the area for very long).
42. NickP, you said: “EU: tjm/seanT, to wrap up the previous thread: I do favour referenda as a democratic tool. If we were considering a constitution, I’d be pleased if we had a referendum on it. But in my view it’s not. We shan’t persuade each other here, but no doubt it’ll be argued to death elsewhere.”
I’ve no doubt you do want to “wrap up the previous thread” as it was so embarrasing for you.
But you don’t get off that easy! Your comments here suggest, despite your remarks on the previous thread, that you actually DO believe in referendums, and you wanted one on the Constitution! You then trot out the laughable line that this New Treaty is so different, however, we suddenly don’t need a vote.
How then, do you explain the fact that on 30th March 2004 you voted AGAINST a referendum on the Constitution, along with your Labour chums. This is the same Constitution you say we do need a referendum for. Yet you voted against?
Then suddenly in 2005 you decided that the Constitution WAS so important we should, Yes, have a referendum, because you “believe in referenda” on democratic grounds. I’m confused.
Now in 2007 you have changed your mind yet AGAIN, and suddenly this isn’t even a Constitution it’s changed so dramatically, but if it were one you would still want a referendum. Er, but hold on - you voted AGAINST a referendum in 2004. For exactly the same constitution.
What a pitiful mess. A cruel observer might suggest that instead of principles you have mere ambitions, and will happily toe whatever line your leaders trot out, even if it directly contradicts your own previously stated opinions, and makes you look a total muppet.
This Will Not Do.
64 I thought Hague and Murdoch were in league with the ‘European Union of Subservient Regions’? You’ve got me confused now.
Murdoch under Blair - yes. Under Brown, there’s a new game being played - details emerging. Supporting Brown but strongly anti the EUSR Constitution (American influence strengthening on Murdoch over European influence possibly - he’s just been handed some nice sweeties over there like the Wall Street Journal). YUM.
Hague seems sounder these days, and has fallen fully in with Cameron, I am assured by Iain Dale. Though he has dallied with the Bildeberg in the past.
Cameron is the real surprise. Very few expected him to be so strongly anti-EUSR Constitution. Even Blair in the Commons said he didn’t expect more than token resistance to EUSR from Cameron. He and Campbell gave Cameron the media during his bid for the leadership, imagining he would be tradeable. WRONG.
I mean Alas Taircampbell.
Nick, I’m gonna watch a DVD in a minute, but I just wanted some clarification on this.
In March 2004 you voted against a referendum on the Constitution, presumably because you felt one was not needed (what other reason could there be?).
Then suddenly in 2005 you decided that: “I believe in referenda as a democratic instrument and I’m glad we will collectively have the right to decide.”
Yet in 2004 you clearly didn’t believe in referenda “as a democratic instrument”. Weird. What happened in the intervening months? Did you see a burning tree on the way to Broxtowe?
And what happened, suddenly, between 2005 and 2007 to change your mind yet again? Was it the same tree?
It’s interesting to hear of someone who can change their fundamental beliefs about democracy so briskly.
Now I shall stop tormenting you, you son of a silly person, and I shall go and watch The Sands of Iwo Jima.
Banzai!
I’ll pass on to DC the good news that Hague has been ‘turned’ and that Barroso can no longer rely on him as one of his agents. Phew!
73.
That makes the Tories turkeys - or are they turning turtle?
Martin Day. Please stop being so silly.
re 73. Using names for political slogs is something that I do not like. Please don’t do it again
72. When it comes to commenting on Barroso, I defer to Roger Helmer MEP (Conservative East Midlands) - the undoubted British expert.
http://www.rogerhelmer.com/censure.asp
Reading this thread I see we have in Captain Spaulding the left’s response to Will L!
71
Today is a great example of the disgraceful behaviour of this government on the EU question. A decent and respected MP is humiliated amongst friends (those who read this site generally value Nicks contribution) and has absolutely no comeback. Do politicians really think the public do not understand this?
I only hope Nick will vote against the government when this odious treaty come before parliament. His constituents will be watching.
77. The EU again revealed as the corrupt edifice it is, nurturer of vested business interests par excellence.
Meanwhile at Heathrow, the loons gather. Rather reminiscent of Quatermass and the planet people which is showing again at the moment.
I see South Africa has come out in support of blaming the UK for what’s happening in Zimbabwe. How long before a British minister comes out and says what he really thinks of Thabo Mbeki?
81 In an opinion piece in the Zimbabwe Independent a week or so ago a correspondent pointed out that when the UK is blamed for “sanctions” and that these are cause of all the ills that have befallen Zimbabwe perhaps people should remember how much better the economy was, how local industry’s flourished during the time Rhodesia had real sanctions.
79 I only hope Nick will vote against the government when this odious treaty come before parliament. His constituents will be watching.
OTT- rather his constituents will be sleeping. seanT is already boring us rigid with this tedious story. Read my lips- nobody cares about the treaty aside from about 3 deranged newspaper mogul meglamaniacs, and a small gaggle of autistic Tories
81. Old commies always stick together.
78-tjm- reading the posts tonight makes one think that many of the contributors are on a day’s pass release- and Captain Spaulding is definitely not one of them.
It would really be a fate worse than death having to associate with a degenerate group of right wing activists. These guys really are the pits.
81. you mean Thabo ’shaking chicken bones before shagging around protects you from HIV’ Mbeki?
The man’s a fecking spoon.
If we take the weighted 2005 figures in the ICM table: Con 150 Lab 173 LD 92, and bung in the Others 8.0% from 2005 it gives 2005 vote shares of Con 33.3 Lab 38.4 LD 20.4%. That is overstating Lab by 2.2 points at the expense of the LDs when compared to the actual results. The transfers suggest a small net Conservative gain compared to 2005 and a small net Labour loss, but weighted to the actual result the situation is reversed. According to this table Labour’s lead among serial voters has fallen from around 5% in 2005 to 4.8% now. But Labour’s lead in 2005 was only 3%.
83. Read my lips- nobody cares about the treaty aside from about 3 deranged newspaper mogul meglamaniacs, and a small gaggle of autistic Tories
I care very much about the proposed EU Treaty/Constitution, because of the obvious reason that it is profoundly undemocratic, dictatorial, and totalitarian, and is designed to entrench the power of the unelected, unaccountable, incompetent, despotic, wasteful, corrupt EU institutions.
I am an autistic Loony, not an “autistic Tory”, and nor am I a “deranged newspaper mogul megalomaniac”.
84. One does not have to be a commie to be an anti-imperialist.
87-Kevin L- that post is like reading a translation of serbo croat in sanskrit.
I am sure it makes sense to some folk but not me. There again I do not understand what the heck Mike is talking about in his leader- all those tables, and numbers. Cannot make head nor tail.
I see that Lord Paul has promised to dig deep in his pockets and give Brown the funds to fight a GE whenever one is called. Paul, by the way, is that great socialist notable who sends his kids to Harrow. The guy’s an Indian. Why is he interfering in British politics? I’m going to find out which political party he supports in India and give a large donation to its opponents. How might I do that?
91. Is he domiciled in the UK?
87 Che?
88 johnloony- as soon as one starts deconstructing any institution you could get mad. You do not have to go very far- Crown Court, House of Lords, school governors etc, etc, etc. The EU as an institution is no worse than many other groups of people who want to wield power in one way, shape or another.
83
Your statement is a great example of why NuLab will go down as the most duplicitous and corrupt government of modern times. I hope you feel good about that.
A fascinating, if lengthy, analysis of the straw poll in Ames, Iowa written by the Conservative commentator Michael Barone. He publishes an excellent biennial almanac of US politics by the way.
One important point; the turn-out was way down. One excuse was the extreme heat but he also suggests low GOP morale as another factor.
Conclusion on performances; Romney ok, Huckabee quite good but probably not good enough, Brownback ditto, Thompson ( Tommy that is) very bad. He has subsequently dropped out in fact.
http://www.usnews.com/blogs/barone/2007/8/13/the-iowa-gop-straw-poll.html
81.
Gordon will if Dacres running it on the front page tomorrow
94. Apart from the fact that it is unaccountable, undemocratic, corrupt etc.
I’ve just been looking deeper at some of these polling numbers and what they’d correspond to (seat/majority-wise).
I’m an advocate of looking for the change in one poll from another (e.g. what’s the ICM-poll to ICM-poll swing?) and I like to apply that to the last pre-election polls (e.g. ICMs eve-of-election poll in 2005 was Con 32, Lab 38, LD 22, so the swing from eve-of-election 2005 to last Sunday was, with ICM, Con +1, Lab +1, LD -4). Unfortunately, YouGov seem to have changed their methodology (different weighting), which I’ve only just learned (I already knew about the CR methodology change so haven’t been applying this principle to them).
Looking at this, we have:
ICM: Con +1, Lab +1, LD -4
Populus: Con +1, Lab +1, LD -6
Mori*: Con +1, Lab -1, LD -8
YouGov**: Con +/-0, Lab +5, LD -10
YouGov do seem to fairly spring out as the outlier - but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they are wrong. Harris were a real outlier in 1992, because everyone else was wrong. ICM’s methodology change in the run-up to the 1997 election made them an outlier, but it drastically improved their accuracy. However, I’m always sightly worried when one data point juts out that badly … so I’ll concentrate on the other three.
So - the Lab lead in the three “apples-to-apples” polls is either unchanged from that of the eve-of-election polls in 2005 (ICM, Populus) or down (Mori). The LDs are universally well down - but that isn’t a real shock considering that the media attention is almost exclusively on Brown (positive narrative) and Cameron (negative narrative). It would be foolish to expect that the Lib Dems would poll this low in a true General Election; not impossible, but highly unlikely. (In their shoes, I’d try to avoid the “execute the Leader for attention” tendency that still can be found in the Tory Party in some areas
). I do wonder who’d lose out as the Lib Dems increased on their run-up to the election, however - Tories, Labour or Others. And if I’m wondering that, I’ll bet that Gordon is wondering that as well.
For what it’s worth, using poll-to-poll swings and a probabilistic “Curtice-style” swingometer, I get (from these polls, with seat values of +/- 1 standard deviation from expectation value):
ICM: Con 221-229, Lab 343-351, LD 45-51 (Lab majority of 36-52)
Populus: Con 224-233, Lab 345-352, LD 40-45 (Lab majority of 40-54)
Mori: Con 245-253, Lab 333-342, LD 36-41 (Lab majority of 16-34)
YouGov**: Con 206-215, Lab 375-384, LD 27-32 (Lab majority of 100-118)
Looking at the ICM/Populus/Mori data (as coherent methodologies over time), a figure of Con seats around 233, Lab seats around 344, LD seats around 43 would seem quite consistent with all three (that’s pretty much the mean of the expectation values of the seats from each pollster on poll-to-poll swing).
Sorry if I’ve bored everyone
My personal guess is therefore that if the election were tomorrow, and each of the latest polls were eve-of-election polls, this would correspond to a Labour majority of about 20. If the Labour vote does suffer due to a Lib Dem election campaign increase, that 20-odd projected majority might not hold on polling day.
And, of course, the media narrative - very favourable to Brown and hostile to Cameron at the moment - may well change before polling day - the longer Brown leaves it, the more likely that is. He may well be banking on it moving yet more in his favour, of course - I personally don’t think that it will, but I fully recognise that that is totally personal opinion.
* Mori reference taken from removing the “newspaper readership” adjustment to their final eve-of-election poll, as they don’t apply that adjustment in their running polling (in order to make it an “apples-to-apples” comparison.
** YouGov listed despite the methodology change already noted, because I’d started this analysis already.
(For majority “about 20″, please read, “about 38″. Sorry)
re several. No doubt Nick P would say the EU constitution wasn’t a constitution because it doesn’t say so in the text. It these dissemblings which do much to turn the ordinary punter off politics - they were promised a referendum by Blair and no amount of sophistry now will make them feel that they’re not being cheated.
I don’t agree with them and Blair was wrong to promise a referendum, we live in a parliamentary democracy and parliament should decide but if only more MPs had the balls to stick two fingers up at the whips and decide for themselves. You’d wonder that most MPs are lobotomized the moment they step through the door because they never think for themselves at all, it’s all yes whip, no whip, three bags full whip.
101. Most people aren’t even aware that they were offered a referendum by Blair, some of those that are aware will say ‘well, that was Blair, this is Brown’, others will say ‘but that was the Constitution, this isn’t', still others will (accurately) say ‘the treaty is still under negotiation; why promise a referendum on a treaty whose contents we don’t yet know?’.
The number who actually feel cheated will probably be pretty small. Of these, many will be the type of people who invariably feel cheated irrespective of what the government does. I doubt it will have much impact.
As it happens, I agree with you on the point about parliamentary independence. A few more rebels / independent thinkers wouldn’t be a bad thing at all.
Perhaps Nick P meant that only 100% Constitutions need a referendum, mere 98% ones don’t.
Sorry Nick, I really like and respect you for posting on here under your real name even though I’m of the Dark Side, but this is a disappointment. I doubt this’ll lose you any sleep of course, but it’s a pity to see good men saying something they must surely know is not right.
(does this make me an autistic Tory, or a deranged megalomaniac newspaper mogul? Please advise, Tyson)
Andy
Thanks for an interesting piece of work. What you’re forecasting is pretty much a ‘no change ‘election’ taking into account of boundary changes. In a way the slight overstating of Labour in the final polls suggests a Palmer’s paradox at work. Everyone was forecasting a comfortable victory so a fair number of Labour voters couldn’t be bothered to vote.
If GB’s election can motivate them more he could do better than your figures suggest. I’d be surprised if the polls aren’t capturing a tendency for more Labour supporters to say they’ll actually vote. However, I think that factor will diminish with time which is why, like you, I think he should go as early as possible. Obviously I hope he listens to almost everyone else on this site and decides not to!
andy cooke. i tried to follow your logic. your numbers show a majority to Labur of 70 (odd) but you say you think a 20 seats majority in your conclusion. I cannot see how the 70 magically becomes 20 in your sums. can you explain?
Andy @ 99.
Thanks for a vert interesting piece of analysis.
2 points:
a) Does your conclusion of a Lab majority of c38 take account of boundary changes, which are commonly held to hand a number of seats to the Conservatives?
b) Where does this leave poor old Ming?
Tapestry, the 20 was a mistyping, corrected to 38 in the next post. It comes from:
“ICM: Con 221-229, Lab 343-351, LD 45-51 (Lab majority of 36-52)
Populus: Con 224-233, Lab 345-352, LD 40-45 (Lab majority of 40-54)
Mori: Con 245-253, Lab 333-342, LD 36-41 (Lab majority of 16-34)”
Taking these three as valid for the “poll-to-poll” swing to be used (ie, no change in methodology), the average of the expectations for these three (that is, for ICM, the “Expectation” is about 224.9 with a standard deviation of about 4.8, thus 221-229, rounded off) gives Con 233, Lab 344, LD 43. Lab majority of 38.
106, Robin,
a) Yes, it does. I used Anthony Wells’ constituency data.
b) Well, to be fair to Ming, he suffers from the perennial Lib Dem problem of falling out of the limelight away from elections. Kennedy was good at grabbing it back, occasionally, but I don’t think that Ming can be made the scapegoat for Lib Dem misfortune in the polls at the moment - the media narrative were always going to squeeze the Lib Dems for a while. “No knee-jerk reactions” should be the policy of both Opposition Parties - weather the storm, because it almost certainly will pass.
104, Blue Moon,
Yep, pretty much. I had a look because of all of the speculation on an increased Labour majority. It doesn’t look that way (unless YouGov are right and everyone else is wrong - which is, as I have mentioned, possible).
One other factor is the ability to outperform the swing due to performing better in marginals - Blair had that ability and, from memory, the Labour results tended to outperform the swing (even taking tactical voting into account) by about one or two percent, due to mobilising “Middle-England” rather than the traditional Labour core vote. Brown has to manage this as well in order to “tread water” - which he doubtless knows, and I’d bet a lot of his pronouncements are aimed squarely at this particular sector.
101. Believe it or not, it saddens me also to see NickP embarrassed in this fashion. He and I have fallen out many times - but he has the courage to come on here and post in his own name, and take a lot of criticism, not all of it justified. I admire him for that: he seems, ultimately, a decent bloke.
But on this issue he has been humiliated. Despite his desperate denials and obfuscations, we now know that he voted against a Constitution referendum, then he suddenly decided referendums are good things, and wanted one; then suddenly his principles changed again - and he didn’t think it a good idea after all.
Weirdly enough, all of these changes in his fundamental political beliefs miraculously coincided with maximum political convenience for Labour.
Oh dear. And it’s not as if this is some trivial issue - foxhunting say. This is about the basic governance and destiny of the country.
Maybe there is a fault in our system that it makes good men lie. Perhaps there is. Either way, now is the time for them to STOP LYING.
Andy
The most difficult things to measure are LD MPs, probably understated in your analysis( incumbency factor suggests a few more, I would have thought) and Labour turnout.
The latter frankly is the $64,000 question. You’re asssuming that the last polls failed to capture a lower than expected turn out and that they’re making exactly the same mistake now. Otherwise with poll leads of an average 6% the majority you came up with would be significantly higher.
I make that 46. not 38?
too late at night. try again tomorrow!
Sort of back to the thread. Something that has been bothering me for a month or two now, is why the mass of people on political betting were unable to predict that the ditching Blair was going to have such a dramatic effect on the polls. Was it that Mike Smithson’s personal dislike / underestimation of Brown warped opinion on the site. But that does not entirely explain the widespread view outside the site that Brown was going to be a flop.
I was convinced otherwise, and was one of the few who thought that Labour would get a significant bounce in Brown’s first months (one of the few ‘political predictions’ I probably got more right than others (I think I was 2 or 3 points short, but many even went the other way).
There are two reasons for me bringing this up (other than self congratulation
) and that is 1. interpreting polls. and 2. analysing both opposition parties’ problems at the moment.
WRT point 1. I think that the polls in the early part of the year show the limit that polls have in predicting future behaviour. I argued constantly at the time that people were putting too greater stall in the GB figures at that time. It was Blair and Blair alone that we should have been looking at as the reason for Labour’s slump in the polls. The Brown figures were irrelevant, because they were based on asking people something they could not actually answer. i.e. Do you prefer chocolate cake or this cake I am inventing with raspberries in it, but you haven’t tasted yet?
It shows that reading data is not easy - i.e. picking out what is relevant and what isn’t. And it also shows that there are limits to what polls are good at and what they are not so good at. And so, without being rude to our marvellous host, I would be wary about looking too far into this ICM data. Much of it is merely the anomolies behind the topline statistics.
Which leads me sort of to point 2. Which is what are the crop of polls really telling us. Well from my point of view it is not really worth looking any deeper than the topline. Labour are doing well, will probably win a general election unless something really dramatic happens between now and whenever that is, the Tories have made little inroads into the hearts of voters, even if they have a slightly less unelectable leader, and the Lib Dems did really blow their feet off with a shotgun after the last election, when they had their first opportunity for 3 generations to start moving out of their peripheral position in British politics.
The real worry for both the Tories and the Lib Dems is where they look for opposition to Labour. The figures tell the story of a political debate that has no coherent antithesis and whilst there is so little political difference between the offerings of the parties, then it becomes more about the leaders. And whilst Brown remains seemingly calm and authoritative he trumps the other two because of their equal and opposite failings in ‘beauty contest’ politics.
102 David Herdson. “The number who actually feel cheated will probably be pretty small. ”
Correct. But that is not the same thing as saying that the small number of people who feel cheated are wrong.
I am broadly pro-Europe, but the way that some of the other pro-EU commentators on this site belittle those who get wound up by the EU constitution issue is disturbing. It runs along the lines of “You are getting worked up over nothing - and anyway, most of the voters don’t care about it anyway”
It recalls to mind the quote of Neville Chamberlain:
“How horrible, fantastic, incredible, it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas-masks here because of a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing.”
101-103: I wasn’t going to comment further, but as there are several serious points here (unlike you-know-who’s) let me give a more serious answer.
As a matter of general principle, I liked the Swiss referendum system when I lived there and think it’s one reason why Switzerland has a harmonious society. I tried to introduce a private members’ bill putting a watered-down version forward some years ago; it foundered because of zero support among other MPs who I asked from all sides.
However, what we’ve got instead is an informal convention that any life-changing alteration to the structure of Britain should be put to a referendum, while lesser matters, even if controversial, normally are not. The case for a referendum on the EU package rests on two assertions: (1) Labour promised a vote on the original “Constitution” (true) and (2) this is almost the same as that “Constitution”.
There’s obviously a case for this, but it’s not the whole story. The problem is that the original package was not so much a constitution as a rag-bag of measures to sort out issues that have been a nuisance since enlargement (e.g. frequent rotation, numbe rof commissioners), plus various things tha toccur to people as desirable but aren’t really constitutional (e.g. a ban on human cloning), prettied up with some constitutional language and optional content so the integrationist countries would feel they’d got something out of it. Critics said as much at the time, pointing out the relative simplicity of the US Constitution and the wordy detail of this one. Britain opted out of the optional stuff that we didn’t like (either originally or in the final TB negotiating round) and the constitutional language was then stripped off.
The reality, therefore, is that I like referenda in general and went along happily with the decision to call one (hence the quote on my website), but I actually didn’t think it was a real constitution actually requiring a referendum before, and it’s even less of one now. It seems to me inevitable that a referendum on what’s left would not be about the package at all, but a surrogate for ‘do you like the EU?’, and since no major parties favour withdrawal, that’s a pointless exercise.
I’m entirely convinced that if the Conservatives were in power, they wouldn’t be calling one either, any more than they did for the much more far-reaching Nice agreement, so I’m pretty immune to the arguments advanced by Tory politicians. There are a few constituents who have said they’d like one (five including vino and Cookie), and a smaller few who have said they wouldn’t (three). No constituent has yet raised an objection to any specific proposal in the package. Perhaps that will change - we’ll see!
While I doubt if this lengthy reply will change any minds, I hope it’s helpful, but it’s thoroughly off-topic, so I’ll leave others to have the last word on it.
I know this point has been made before in different ways. But I was looking today at the post 2nd World War General Election results. And I made a rough homemade graph. Horizontal axis the year. Vertical axis, positive, size of Labour majority at GE and negative, size of Tory majority.
What the graph shows is that when an incumbent government turns the corner and starts to lose votes, compared with its previous election result, there is only one subsequent direction and it’s downward.
Sorry if I am teaching political “We are a grandmothers” to suck eggs but I found it striking.
David Miliband has said that Labour needs to defy political gravity to win the next election. I agree. A reduced majority ought to be the best outcome if my homemade graph has any substance.
111, Blue Moon,
Maybe - it could well have been that the 6% Labour lead predicted by ICM and Populus last time turned into a sub-4% lead when the votes were counted for that reason. But the polls have consistently overstated the Labour lead since 1992 at least.
Using the polls as a direct forecast of swing (last-election-to-current-poll swing), if you plotted the errors in all pre-election polls versus reality (in terms of Labour lead), you’d expect a Bell curve centred on zero error. Instead, the centre is about 2.5% in favour of Labour (The error seems to be almost universally towards overstating the Labour lead, by an average of 2.5%). If, however, you did poll-to-poll swing (on pollsters without major methodological changes) over the same era, the centre is about 0.1% in favour of Labour (the error doesn’t tend to be perceptibly biased in either direction - 0.1% is pretty much spot-on).
Essentially, those who tell pollsters that they’re going to vote Labour seem to turn out less in any case, and this has been consistent over several elections, not just 2005 - my personal remedy is to use poll-to-poll swing in order to estimate the change.
Tapestry, after the Boundary Changes, there will be 650 MPs; thus the majority is double the amount that a Party has over 325 (i.e. (Seats - 325) x 2).
So 344 translates to 19 seats past the 325 “finish line”, equals 19 x 2 = 38 majority (that is, Labour would have 19 MPs more than 325 and the combined opposition numbers would therefore be 19 less than 325, so Labour would have 38 more than the combined Opposition)
114. Very good post - and well done on your prediction.
I’m happy to give you the credit because I have no self-congratulations on that score - I predicted a two-point bounce that would repidly peter out. To answer your question: why so? Mainly it was down to the polls. Yes, we hadn’t seen Brown in office as PM, but he was a far from unknown quantity. He’d been in a hugely powerful position for 10 years (13 if you count his time in opposition after Blair took over) and that was a distinct contrast to the Major-Thatcher changeover. On policy terms, little was going to change - as indeed it hasn’t (casinos? big deal); presentationally, Blair was seen as a master, Brown less so; there was the ‘dour Scot’ thing. All in all, the ’soft’ evidence and feeling seemed to back up the polls.
What those of us who predicted that outcome missed was that despite Brown’s presence at the heart of Labour’s activity (domestically anyway), there’s been a great sense of release with Blair going. Whether that will be maintained with Brown successfully portraying his government as ‘new’ or whether the country will recognise the degree of continuinty and sameness - and so associate Brown with all the things they didn’t like before - is the biggest question in terms of where things go from here.
I disagree with you on the Lib Dems. Kennedy blew it before the last election. The main (and only) chance was 2005: he had the opportunity to outflank Labour on the left, use Iraq, taxes, whatever and ruthlessly target Labour. Instead, he developed lefty policies but in opposition to the Conservatives. He should never have talked about replacing the Conservatives as ‘the real opposition’ but talked of replacing Labour as ‘the real centre-left’. It would have given him big problems with his MPs, but it was a once in a lifetime chance and worth the gamble.
Where do the Tories go? Continue to develop policy, releasing new ones often enough to keep the momentum up but not too quickly to give Labour the chance to nick them, maintain opposition to the EU treaty, keep as much policy / PR focus as possible on the NHS, education and social issues, and call for troops out of Iraq now.
110:
Agreed seanT. I must confess that I too experienced the zing of schadenfreude when you clunked Mr Palmer so comprehensively on the previous thread - the quotation he loftily denied making that you then hilariously unearthed on his website. Great stuff. But now, like you, I feel a sense of sadness, pity almost. Mr Palmer seems like a good man forced to twist and turn against his better judgement simply because it is demanded by the cynical, shallow, devious rulers of New Labour - people for whom political escape routes are everything while robust and consistent policies are nothing; people who put a favourable editorial in The Mail above a hundred heart-felt principles. It makes me feel so sad.
Nick, the Nice Treaty was not The Last Treaty, in which there will not be any need for any more as the government of the regions(country will end) will go to Brussels.
There was a referendum on the EEC - the supposed free trading area - but never one for the EU created at Maastricht. That was a disgrace.
If you deprive the country of a vote on the EUSR Constitution, having promised one in an election manifesto, you don’t have even a quarter of a leg to stand on. You sound a nice guy and so on, but you’re a blatant traitor.
117. You can extend the time-axis back about another 100 years from WWII and it still holds. It gets a bit difficult because of the way parties rise, fall and form coalitions but basically, once a government starts to lose seats at one election compared with the previous one, it will continue to do so until in opposition. It’s one of the strongest rules in British politics (though as with all such trends, not completely infallible).
115. I was commenting more on the political impact than the ethics of the matter. Even so, comparing - even implicitly - the EU with Hitlerite Germany debases the point. Whether or not there’s a referendum, parliament will still have to scrutinise and pass the legislation.
thanks Andy. 38.
114. Paul Lloyd. Well done for getting it right. My own view at the time was that there wouldn’t be much of a bounce and also that the Tories would have most seats at the next GE. Alwys seem to be swimming the wrong way recently!
So I posted here asking Mike’s advice. He advised buying Labour seats @ the prevailing 271 to take advantage of his prediction that there would be a Brown bounce. I followed his advice and sold, too soon at 281, netting a quick 10 point profit. So it’s not accurate to say that Mike failed to predict a Brown bounce. He did and made money for me and himself on the rebound.
Thanks David at 119. And let me return the complement. A very interesting point about the Lib Dems not saying that they were going to replace Labour as the centre-left party.
As a Lib Dem who opposed the deposing of Kennedy, I would argue that the Lib Dems were held back on that front by the ‘Orange Bookers’ who felt that the Liberal Democrat’s future lay in ‘old school liberalism’. The right of this group essentially hamstrung Kennedy before the last election, and there was no way that the party could take the bold step into the ground that Labour had deserted. The same group were instrumental in bringing him down (and installing Campbell). They were arrogant and there has been a significant rewriting of history amongst many Lib Dems to prove that all things were the fault of Kennedy. But the reality is that the Lib Dems scored 22.6% just 2 years ago under Kennedy. And if YouGov are right, they have lost over 1.5 million votes since Campbell took over.
122. Thanks David. I wondered if previous years showed the same pattern.
stjohn. I hope you made a few quid anyway
Tapestry
Why can’t you disagree with someone without an insult like that? Nick is no more a ‘traitor’ than you are. You really shouldn’t attack fellow posters in that offensive way. I hope you will apologise and that if you don’t Mike will have words with you. If you can’t be civil to fellow posters find somewhere else to post.
122. David Herdson. Forgive me if I somehow gave you the wrong impression. I am not suggesting that the EU and Nazi Germany are comparable, of course.
It has frequently been observed in posts to PB.com that the EU is far down people’s list of priorities behind the usual themes of Education, Health, Immigration etcetera.
The point that I was trying to make (and obviously not very well), was that an important issue is STILL important, even if not of people recognize that it is.
Re the seat losing axis - before 2001 Labour never won a second term - or at least not straight away. And that was an iron law of British politics as well.
Does the rule work in the 18th Century, when all governments and opposition were Whigs, but accused each other of being Tories?
127. Paul Lloyd. Yep, happily.
Fortunately I don’t rely solely on my own errors of judgment to guide my betting decisions. Despite being hopelessly wrong most of the time I am managing to nudge my political betting account slowly but relentlessly upwards!
122:David Herdson, have you ever considered standing for parliament? I think you would make an outstanding MP.
“I’m entirely convinced that if the Conservatives were in power, they wouldn’t be calling one either, any more than they did for the much more far-reaching Nice agreement, so I’m pretty immune to the arguments advanced by Tory politicians.”
Having been promised one, I would like a referendum on this new treaty. I think that the Westminster/Holyrood/Welsh Assembley parliaments need to have a wee chat with the voters about what it actually contains with the arguments for and against signing it being clearly and robustly put. I think that this needs to be dealt separately from a GE, a lot of people did not read the small print in 97′ and it has caused a lot of unnecessary angst about the WLQ.
The reason that Labour are in this present mess is because they tried to play politics with the EU constitution by bouncing themselves into a promise of a referendum for no other reason than to wrong foot the Conservatives and hang on to the odd vote.
So what if some people aren’t interested, I am, and I bother to turn out and vote at all levels.
118. I think this fits well with the analysis that Labour actually won the last election by 5% (not the usually quoted 3%) if you ignore differential turnout. This is a calculation which assumes turnout was the same in every constituency.
This calculation is done by grossing up (or down) votes in each constituency in line with the average turnout throughout the UK.
ie UK average turnout was 61%
If a constituency had 50% turnout, multiply all votes in that constituency by 61/50.
If a constituency had 70% turnout, multiply all votes in that constituency by 61/70.
Do this for all 650 constituencies, add up all the votes and you get the “true position” ignoring differential turnout.
I have often thought that it is this “true position” that opinion polls are actually measuring. Opinion polls are based on a representative sample of the whole popuation but the whole population do not vote.
“Opinion polls are based on a representative sample of the whole popuation but the whole population do not vote.”
Not the headline voting figures though, which are derived variously from ‘those certain to vote’ or a scale of ‘certainty to vote’. What should be noted about this, is not that the voting figures are not taken from the correct population, but that the stated margin of error (usually +/-3%) is wrong, and is more like +/-4% (assuming a 50/50 split).
119 - The one thing that is really nonsensical and cocked up my prediction is that people waited until Brown was PM before changing their response - they knew for ages that he was going to be PM so why did they go on pretending that this wasn’t going to happen?!?
Did they suddenly wake up and think ‘ah, Brown’s PM now, that’s a turn up for the books, I thought that Blair might have stayed on even though they were having a leadership election’?
136. My own theory ukpaul is that we failed to recognise how fed up we had all become of Blair and his spinning machine.
I was a fan of Blair’s and other than the huge misjudgment of Iraq, I supported his premiership. But I’m glad to see the back of him. He was past his political sell by date. His hanging on too long has ironically been a gift for Brown, whose contrasting character and style is benefitting by comparison.
At least for the present.
137 - I actually admired Blair and said as much at the time, not to say that I liked what he’d done, particularly with regard to foreign policy, but you knew that he was a consummate politician and communicator.
Your last comment is the crux of the matter, people like shiny, new things and Brown has to capitalise on being seen as such before it’s too late.
Last post from me tonight. I enjoy Sean T immensely, when he is humorous and not ranting at length on one of his usual themes. And I would acknowledge that he has got Nick Palmer on the back foot over the EU referendum issue.
But I would like to add a further word of support in favour of Nick P, which Sean himself has ackowledged. Nick is brave enough to engage in a range of political discussions under his own name. He is a great asset to this site and on Labour party matters is invariably on the money. Whenever I or other posters direct a query in his direction, elephant trap or otherwise, he usually has the courtesy to reply and assists us in forming our betting positions.
Thanks Nick.
Anyone notice that KARL ROVE has left the building . . .
132. Thank you, that’s very kind. I did put my name forward for selection for a number of constituencies before the 2001 election, but none would have me. I’m not sure I’d necessarily want to be an MP anyway, even if I could persuade a local party and electorate to back me. I’d love much of the job, but hate the lifestyle and press scrutiny / intrusion.
I have stood in local elections since and will do again next year, but that is now the limit of my ambition.