Browsed by
Category: General Election

Lord Ashcroft’s 160+ seat polls are already making it a very different election and could impact on results

Lord Ashcroft’s 160+ seat polls are already making it a very different election and could impact on results

Comments 0 Comment

For potential tactical voters they provide a guide what to do One of the many unique features of May 7th is the polling. We’ve never had so much and we’ve never seen so many studies of individual battlegrounds. Lord Ashcroft alone has produced more than 160 of them and there is hardly a key seat where we haven’t got any information. At GE2010, when there were perhaps half a dozen such polls, the Greens’ victory in Brighton Pavillion showed how…

Read More Read More

The debates stand off: This could have been the afternoon when DC won GE15 or lost it

The debates stand off: This could have been the afternoon when DC won GE15 or lost it

Comments 0 Comment

The debates stand off: This could have been the afternoon when DC won GE15 or lost it http://t.co/PjLT8xY85y pic.twitter.com/iJvgaBbXFP — Mike Smithson (@MSmithsonPB) March 6, 2015 Problem for Cameron is that if he later decides to takes part in the debates it'll look weak because of his earlier stance — Mike Smithson (@MSmithsonPB) March 6, 2015 So now we have it. Number 10 has made its final offer on the TV debates which has been rejected by the broadcasters who say…

Read More Read More

The great methodology divide: All the CON leads are from phone polls – all but one of the LAB leads are from online surveys

The great methodology divide: All the CON leads are from phone polls – all but one of the LAB leads are from online surveys

Comments 0 Comment

Greater certainty to vote amongst CON voters puts the blues back into the lead with Ashcroft The latest Ashcroft weekly phone poll is out and show a move back to CON and a 5% decline in the LAB vote. The figures and trend are in the chart above. The CON lead is almost totally down to turnout weighting. Before that was applied LAB was ahead by a small margin. Problem for them is that its voters are less certain to…

Read More Read More

If the early March polling this year is as good a pointer as March 2010 then the outcome is on a knife-edge

If the early March polling this year is as good a pointer as March 2010 then the outcome is on a knife-edge

Comments 0 Comment

The above chart shows the CON lead in the polls from the first week in March 2010 and compares them with the actual election result nine and a half weeks later. As can be seen the polling at this stage proved to be a reasonably good pointer and in some cases better than the final polls. Of course past performance is no guarantee about what’s going to happen but it’s interest to look at. It is perhaps worth pointing out…

Read More Read More

Operation Save Dave is unlikely to succeed

Operation Save Dave is unlikely to succeed

Comments 0 Comment

Front page of the Sunday Times on Osborne's plans to try & keep Dave as leader if it is Con most votes/Lab most seats pic.twitter.com/x0hA3Y7dFB — TSE (@TSEofPB) March 1, 2015 The Sunday Times reports (££) George Osborne held a dinner with Conservative whips on Monday night to discuss tactics for the days after the vote on May 7. Two senior MPs revealed that Tory high command is preparing to argue that Cameron has won a “moral victory” if he…

Read More Read More

Tonight one poll has a 1% LAB lead – the other has them level-pegging

Tonight one poll has a 1% LAB lead – the other has them level-pegging

Comments 0 Comment

The battle is still on a knife-edge CON & LAB level-pegging in tonight's YouGov CON 34% LAB 34% LDEM 8% UKIP 14% GRN 5% — Mike Smithson (@MSmithsonPB) February 28, 2015 Opinium poll for Observer LAB 35 CON 34 LD 6 UKIP 14 GRN 6 — Mike Smithson (@MSmithsonPB) February 28, 2015 The big message for the Tories as we go into the last two months and a bit is that they need to have emphatic leads across a range of pollsters to be…

Read More Read More

LAB’s just reignited pensions as a battleground

LAB’s just reignited pensions as a battleground

Comments 0 Comment

David Herdson says the tuition fees funding proposals could be skating on thin ice Elections are won on perceptions as much as realities: competence, trustworthiness, whether a person or party is ‘on my side’, and so on. It’s therefore brave of Labour to propose funding a cut in university tuition fees from taxes raised on pensions. In doing so, the unintended consequence of opening up a policy front on what ought to be a relatively strong policy subject for them…

Read More Read More

The biggest source of Farage’s support in Thanet South: non voters at the last election

The biggest source of Farage’s support in Thanet South: non voters at the last election

Comments 0 Comment

There’s little doubt that one of the great successes that UKIP has had has been in engaging within the political process those who have never, or not recently, used their vote. The above breakdown is from the latest Survation South Thanet poll illustrates this well. Because of the way the firm presents its data we are able to quantify the non-voting element. A big question with non-2010 voting support is whether their backing can be relied on as much as…

Read More Read More