Will opinion harden behind Gord or Dave? On the thread the other day the question was posed as to whether in the build up to any other general election had there been so many turns. My recall is that while there have been shock results, most notably 1970 and 1992, we haven’t quite had the twists that we have seen in the period from May 2005. It’s perhaps worth repeating that on only one occasion since 1945 has a party…
Do we expect further moves to Labour? As expected the latest Ipsos-MORI poll putting Labour just 3% behind has caused movement on the spread betting markets – the political betting arenas where you can win or lose whole piles of cash by trading the number of seats the parties will get at the general elecxtion as though they were stocks and shares. The latest spreads from from PB’s co-sponsor, Sporting Index are: CON 334-340: LAB 242-248: LD 42-45 seats. With…
Is the Mirror’s Maguire right – Cameron panicked? The big political shift in the past 24 hours has been the abandonment by the Tories of their commitment to match Labour spending plans and, instead, start talking about tax cuts. This is Kevin Maguire’s take on it on the Mirror website: “..Every nurse, teacher, care worker, soldier and their families now has a vested interested in voting Labour at the General Election. No wonder the Prime Minister’s struggling to keep a…
Were there enough 2005 Lib Dems in the MORI sample? My apologies for the third post in succession on the Ipsos-MORI poll but it produced numbers that were so startling that it deserves further scrutiny. Yesterday it was all doom and gloom for the Lib Dems over the MORI 12% yet a close study of the data raises the question of whether were there enough 2005 Lib Dem supporters in the sample? It will be recalled that on May 5th…
Last May, it will be recalled, Ipsos-MORI lanuched a major review of its methodology after its performance in the Ken-Boris battle for London. The firm stopped publishing results for a couple of months before it announced big changes and this latest poll embraces measures to stop Labour being over-stated. A major element of the reform was to identify and weight the public sector workers in their samples who have tendency to be much more pro-Labour and anti-Tory than the electorate…
CONSERVATIVES 40% (-5) LABOUR 37% (+7) LIB DEMS 12% (-2) Could this increase the chances of a 2009 election? MORI has just sent me the headline figures which appear above and have confirmed to me that the shares relate to those who are 100% certain to vote. This is a sensational poll for Labour and there can be little doubt that it will step up the pressure for an early election. One thing is clear – MORI is living up…
Why so much variation over the Lib Dem number? Whenever I go anywhere, like yesterday during a very enjoyable visit to Westminster, virtually everybody I speak to asks me the same question – “Which pollster do you think is best?”. My answer, as always, is ICM because the record since the mid-90s shows that the firm’s methodology is more likely to pick up the most accurate Lib Dem share. This matters because it has a big impact on the Labour…
Some words of comfort from Michael White With George Osborne continuing to make the news there’s a good analysis of his position from Michael White of the Guardian in which he suggests that the Shadow Chancellor’s biggest problems are on his own side – not the attacks from Labour. White writes: “..Much more important to my mind than Labour attacks is that the people pushing hardest to get Osborne out are on his own side. And most of them are…