If Ed Miliband wasn’t polling so badly then what’ll happen on May 7th would be a lot clearer
Confused? So is everyone it appears
Headline points from @LordAshcroft poll for Sun on Sunday
http://t.co/hSHlMNLqaH pic.twitter.com/5GlgwI3ogd
— Mike Smithson (@MSmithsonPB) October 12, 2014
The question is how much of a liability is the LAB leader
Last night more polls were published than on any day since GE10. We had surveys of all sorts from YouGov, ICM, Opinium, Survation and Lord Ashcroft and it is hard to draw any conclusions.
In the voting polls LAB was ahead in all but Survation which recorded the biggest share for UKIP ever and had the two main parties level. The cross sub samples (all the usual caveats apply) had UKIP the top party on 37% in southern England leading to a projection by John Curtice that UKIP could take 128 seats.
Like in all cases when numbers seem to be out of line the best advice is to wait to see if other polls have the same trend. Tomorrow we should have the October ICM phone poll as well as the regular Populus and the Ashcroft weekly phone survey.
Given the electoral geography any LAB lead or even level pegging would normally point to the party coming out with most seats and most likely a majority.
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But it is the ongoing poor figures for Ed Miliband that make me cautious. Will at the end of the day people vote for a party if they view the leader in such a negative light?
YouGov found by 9 to 1 that those sampled think the party would be better off without him. LAB voters by 46% to 13% also think it would be better off if he quits. But how come LAB leads continue in the voting figures? You’d have thought this would be priced in.
On top of all of that we have some very negative views of Cameron from the biggest group of swing voters – those now supporting UKIP. Just 10% of them, according to the latest large sample Ashcroft poll, are satisfied with Dave.
But killer point for the Tories from Ashcroft is that 92% of UKIP voters say they aren’t feeling the effects of the recovery. That suggests that its going to be hard squeezing the UKIP share into single figures.
Confused? I am.