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Month: June 2008

Are Tory poll numbers more robust than Labour ones?

Are Tory poll numbers more robust than Labour ones?

How much credence should we give to polls two years before the day? There’s a great facility on the ICM website for those who want to check back on polling history. Just restricted to those commissioned by the Guardian, which is by far and away the longest media relationship in the UK industry, you can sort results how you like and, of course, check back on each monthly survey and compare it with the following general election. Just before Christmas…

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Double Carpet on Sunday

Double Carpet on Sunday

Is the Irish vote going down to the wire? With just four days until Ireland votes in the only referendum to be held on the EU’s Lisbon Treaty, recent polls give a contradictory picture. The TNS poll out a few days ago has been the only poll so far to show the No side in the lead, by 35-30, but with a massive 35% of respondents undecided. However, a Red C poll this weekend has shown the Yes camp back…

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Are the “lost” Tory voters finally returning?

Are the “lost” Tory voters finally returning?

Is ICM a further indication of a “sea-change” in opinion? It is a sign of the times that when news of the latest ICM poll started to emerge last night the terms used were simply that the Conservatives had “a healthy lead”. I assumed that meant a margin of perhaps 12-13% ahead and just a little bit better for Gord than the previous ICM low – a 14% Labour deficit – that we saw in the May Guardian poll. The…

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Tories have “healthy” ICM lead – Sunday Telegraph

Tories have “healthy” ICM lead – Sunday Telegraph

According to the Telegraph blog there’s a new ICM poll in the paper tomorrow that shows a “healthy” Tory lead. No figures are available. This is the first survey from the pollster since Crewe and Nantwich and it will be interesting to see if the figures are much different from the last survey by the pollster two and a half weeks ago that had C41-L27-LD22. More follows when the detail is available. Mike Smithson (still on holiday in southern Spain)…

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Are we heading for a Tory landslide or not?

Are we heading for a Tory landslide or not?

Will the upcoming polling round make us any the wiser? In the two weeks and two days since the Crewe and Nantwich by-election we have had just two national voting intention opinion polls and the fieldwork for both took place during school holiday periods which have, in the past, led to results being skewed. So the upcoming polling round, which hopefully should start with surveys for at least one of the Sunday papers and will certainly see the monthly Populus…

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Sean Fear’s Friday slot

Sean Fear’s Friday slot

How a Defeat Can Turn into a Rout One feature of the 2005 election was how well-distributed the Labour vote was, in terms of maximising the number of seats won by the Party. A 3% lead produced an overall majority of 66 (or 46, on the new boundaries). One feature of this was that around a quarter of Labour MPs had majorities in the 10-20% range, over the Conservatives, compared to fewer than a fifth who had majorities of less…

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What my software thought of Nick Clegg’s email

What my software thought of Nick Clegg’s email

How should the Lib Dems handle the Henley campaign? Reproduced above is what happened when my email software, Thunderbird, opened a Henley campaign email sent yesterday from Nick Clegg to thousands of party members, including myself. I’ve included this partly as a bit of fun and to help illustrate a broader question about the by election which has now been set for a fortnight next Thursday – how does Clegg’s party fight in Tory held seats? For in the two…

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