3 days before he lost GE2010 voters in the marginals rated Gordon Brown as best person to lead Britain through economic crisis

3 days before he lost GE2010 voters in the marginals rated Gordon Brown as best person to lead Britain through economic crisis

Another contradictory “It’s the Economy” finding?

I came across the above from the final Ipsos-MORI marginals poll of the GE2010 campaign while researching the broader question of how such surveys compare with normal national polls when its comes to predicting elections.

This is one finding that I missed at the time which, of course, came in the final heady week of the last election.

Seeing it now has come as a bit of a shock because my recall was that at the last election Cameron had the edge on leader ratings and the Tories were “winning” on the economy.

    Maybe the lesson for today is the fact that Brown went on to lose in Labour’s second worst ever defeat suggests that the impact of these findings can be overstated

On voting intention this poll had CON and LAB level-pegging on 36% – which represented a 7% LAB>CON swing since GE2005 and would have meant an overall CON majority which, of course, didn’t happen.

The sample was restricted to those living in a group of marginal seats.

Mike Smithson

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