Remember that even Tony Blair with all his magic was never able to lead New Labour to victory in the Euro elections
The closed list PR system has never worked for the red team The Westminster polling above is from May 1999 when Tony Blair’s New Labour was riding high and William Hague’s Tories were struggling to make an impact. At the time those sorts of 20%+ poll leads were common place and, as we all know, two years later New Labour went on to win a second huge landslide victory only a few seats down on 1997. Yet success in the…
The Tories take the lead in ICM Euros poll and my 56-1 bet is starting to look good
The LDs slump to fifth place behind the Greens Just a year ago I placed a bet at 10/1 that the Tories would win most votes in next week’s Euro elections – a position that has found little support on PB or elsewhere. I’ve stuck with my guns and last week I extended my position even further and got on at a 56/1 on Betfair. Tonight the Guardian ICM poll on the Euros had the Tories in the lead with…
ICM also has the Tories with a 2% lead to add to a terrible day for LAB
LAB just 1% up on their GE2010 share Two terrible polls in the past few hours for Labour. After going through a period of 27 months without a CON lead we now have two polls showing the blues ahead. This must be seriously worrying for the EdM camp. Tonight’s 31% LAB share from ICM is the lowest from any poll since GE2010 and means that Labour has just put on 1% since Gordon Brown lost that election. Earlier in the…
The first of Lord Ashcroft’s weekly phone polls has CON 2% ahead
Athough ahead on votes te Tories would trail on seats Unfortunately I was tied up in a meeting when Lord Ashcroft’s first weekly phone poll came out and am only now just catching up. Looking at the methodology this seems to be following ICM or how Populus used to do it when they were pollster for the Times. The sample is past vote weighted and there is a spiral of silence adjustment. It looks sound. The only caveat I’ve got…
YouGov Euros poll has Ukip moving up – Opinium moving down
The big polling news is that Lord Ashcroft has announced that starting this week he’ll be doing a weekly phone poll right through until the general election. He’ll also be doing regular battleground surveys. This is a great development because so much of current polling is online and phone surveys have now been reduced to just three a month – ComRes, ICM and Ipsos-MORI. They are a lot more costly but, as we saw in 2010 and at he AV…
The ten seats most likely to be affected by immigration
Which ones would you put on the list? Tomorrow I’m taking part in an event at the House of Commons on the electoral impact of immigration at the next general election. My intention is to highlight the very big gap between responses to polling questions on what are the big issues facing the country and what issues impact most on you and your family. Thus the last time that YouGov asked this 52% included it in their top three responses…
Key LAB policy moves are polling well but including EdM’s name in questions appears to be a negative
Just 23% think EdM is “up to the job of being PM” Above are four key policy areas tested in the latest YouGov poll and as can be seen the responses have been quite positive. For three of the four areas even CON voters give them their backing. For the other, renationalising the railways, Tory voters split 42-42. The rest of the poll is not so good for the red team. To all questions that have Ed Miliband’s name in…