How voting splits according to newspaper type

How voting splits according to newspaper type


YouGov

Will those Sun shares change as we get to polling day?

In the aftermath of the Sun’s switch from Labour there was quite a bit of focus on how influential newspapers were on their readers – but little of it was backed by hard evidence.

In the data from the latest YouGov tracker the pollster featured the above set of cross-tabs which I do not recall seeing before – linking newspaper type to voting intention.

As can be seen the Sun’s audience was, by yesterday at least, pretty strongly pro-Tory which contrasts with it being pro-Labour in research carried out before the last election.

To my mind the importance of what happened at Brighton was the way the announcement undermined Labour during a critical 24 hour period when they must have been looking to gather some traction again. They were hoping to change the media narrative – and that’s not happened.

In fact I believe that the response of the party, from Mr. Brown downwards, made things a lot worse. They were completely thrown off their stride and looked to be floundering – reinforcing all the existing negative perceptions.

So instead of the Conservative conference starting with their poll lead narrowing, which could have put some pressure on, Cameron arrives in Manchester with victory looking to be almost in the bag. He’s never been more powerful.

One little tit-bit from the poll that I liked was that 61% in the poll thought that newspaper endorsements and recommendations were important elements in determining how people vote. But only 13% said that this would be important to them personally.

I expect lots of polling news over the weekend. On top of that we’ve also got the Irish Lisbon referendum results – out tomorrow and Double Carpet will be running an election special.

Mike Smithson

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