Could they be in for a tricky conference season? Stan James has an interesting market on which of the three main party leaders will be the first to leave before. The exits have to take place before the next general election and there’s an option that all three will be in place. Clegg is 7/4 Miliband is 2/1 Cameron is 12/1 None of them 5/4 Politicians are a remarkably resilient lot and it takes a lot to shift someone who has got…
.or is Cameron vulnerable on the DNA rape issue? One of Ed Miliband’s lines of attack at today’s PMQs was on the plan to delete the DNA records of those “arrested but not charged with rape”. He argued that some of those involved went on offend with the clear implication that if the police had the records then their task would be easier. A tricky question with the broader objective of making the coalition appear weak on crime. The trouble…
Or are we seeing a core votes strategy? The chart shows the party splits in today’s YouGov “Issues facing you/your family findings and shows a vast difference in the view of what’s important between supporters of the three parties in four key areas. Thus on immigration Tory voters are seven times more likely to be concerned than Lib Dem ones who registered just three percent. Today’s results on the environment are almost exactly a mirror image with LD being seven…
Are the unions losing the war of words? A ComRes/ ITV News poll on the public sector strikes has found that the public is negative about both the prospects of success and reveals a warning to strikers that they will win little sympathy for strike action in the present financial climate. More than half (54%) say that the public sector strikes ultimately stand no chance of succeeding in changing government policy spending cuts. To another question 63% warn that ‘public…
Is the colourful old-Etonian heading for a second term? There’s a new YouGov London poll out that has Boris on 48% and Ken on 41%. What’s interesting is that amongst those saying that they’ll vote Labour at the general election 21% say they will be supporting Boris for Mayor. This compares with 4% of Tory voters going for Ken. YouGov had something of a triumph in the 2008 race with a final poll that was right to within 1%
Can the blues get a big enough lead over the reds? For a whole series of reasons I regard the ICM poll each month as the most definitive pointer to the current state of opinion. Unlike YouGov and some ComRes polls their fieldwork is carried out over the phone; the firm does not have the sampling problems caused by newspaper readership weightings; and unlike all the other pollsters ICM has a unique weighting structure that puts a premium on the…
But EdM’s personal ratings are worse than Clegg’s The first ICM political poll to be published for seven weeks is just out in the Guardian and puts the Lib Dems on just 12% – the lowest from the firm for fourteen years. The Tories are on 37% with Labour on 39%. This will come as a bitter blow the Clegg and his team because ICM is traditionally the pollster that has given them the highest ratings. It very much mirrors…
A guest slot by CycleFree According to the weekend’s papers, Ed Milliband is going to argue that his “Promise for Britain†means that “bankers and those on welfare need to have a sense of responsibility to their communities.†All fine – as far as it goes – but the feebleness of what is expected is striking. At a time when we are living through one of the worst crises in capitalism in decades (not yet over and which may indeed…