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Category: General Election

Will there be a pre-election Budget?

Will there be a pre-election Budget?

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Is there no date because they can’t agree the contents? Last year’s budget was delivered on 22 April, the latest ‘regular’ budget since they reverted to their traditional Spring slot. That date was announced on 12 February. More than three weeks beyond the equivalent date this year, there has been no announcement as to when the budget will be delivered. What’s going on? The timing of the budget is intimately connected to the timing of the General Election: as parliament…

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Tories take an 8 point lead with TNS-BMRB

Tories take an 8 point lead with TNS-BMRB

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CON 39% (33.2) LAB 31% (36.2) LD 19% (22.7) LAB>CON swing on 2005: 5.7% Yet another pollster enters the fray There’s a new voting intention survey out tonight from the Edinburgh-firm, TNS-BMRB, which has just started doing general election polls for the whole of Britain. The firm is well-established in Scotland and does regular political surveys north of the border. Apparently they had a poll out last week with a four point lead which I missed when I was on…

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YouGov seeks to placate its weightings critics

YouGov seeks to placate its weightings critics

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What do we think of the Anthony Wells explanation? YouGov staffer and operator of UKPollingReport, Anthony Wells, has put up a long post seeking to answer some of the points about the firm’s weightings that have appeared here in recent days. The essence of his article is that there have been adjustments to deal with the new way it is doing the daily poll which do not involve members of its panel being asked to take part in a specific…

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YouGov points to disproportionate swing in Wales

YouGov points to disproportionate swing in Wales

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CON 29% (21.4) LAB 37% (42.7) LD 12% (18.4) PC 14% (12.6) But the Tories are down on January A new YouGov poll of Welsh Westminster voting intentions points to a 6.6% swing to the Tories since the May 2005 general election and the possibility of eight gains. The comparisons above are from the last general election. But in spite of all this the poll shows a significant weakening of the Tory position there since the last such poll in…

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What about the firms that haven’t changed since 2005?

What about the firms that haven’t changed since 2005?

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Will ICM and Populus be going with the flow? One of the difficulties looking at current polling is that YouGov are doing so many surveys that they almost drown out everybody else – and we have not heard for some time from the two firms, ICM and Populus, which will be going into this election using the same broad methodology as in 2005. All the other firms doing monthly surveys – YouGov, ComRes, Angus Reid and Ipsos-MORI – are either…

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So where does the Ashcroft story go from here?

So where does the Ashcroft story go from here?

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BBC News There’s been news within the past half hour that the Electoral Commission is to rule that donations to the Tory party by a company owned the controversial deputy chair, Michael Ashcroft, have been declared to be legal. The body has been examining 173 donations totally more than five million pounds in the five years up to February 2008. This will obviously help him and his party and take some of the sting away from the attacks. If the…

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Did Nick Clegg get his first “debate dividend”?

Did Nick Clegg get his first “debate dividend”?

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What’ll be the consequences in the marginals? Did I miss the glaringly obvious when I wrote that I did not know what had caused the 3% boost for the Lib Dems in the overnight YouGov daily poll for the Sun? For the reason was plain to see as Mike L commented on the previous thread: “Last night’s news was dominated by the announcement of the Leader Debates – Clegg was side by side on split screen with Brown and Cameron…

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The Tory daily poll lead moves up a notch

The Tory daily poll lead moves up a notch

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CON 38% (38) LAB 32% (33) LD 19%(16) And the Lib Dems move up three Apart from that blip at the weekend when the Tory lead slipped to just two points the daily poll has had pretty stable figures and tonight’s numbers are no exception. The Tories stable, Labour down one and the Lib Dems up three. Given that the big political story has continued to be Lord Aschroft’s tax affairs then the Tories will be a tad relieved that…

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