Do the Tories do best if more people are voting? The chart above shows the actual number of votes cast for all parties from 1979 to 2005 and also the total of votes not cast (the paler blue line) from within the overall electorate each year. For 2010 I have assumed the current state of the polls CON 40%: LAN 28%: LD 19%: OTH 13% (at 75% turnout). Two shapes leap out: 1.The blue Tory and Did Not Vote (DNV)…
Brighton Pavilion Poll: CON 27% (+4) LAB 25% (-13) LD 11% (-5) GRN 35% (+14) Is it about who is best placed to impede the Tories? I’ve now got the full dataset from the ICM poll of the Brighton Pavillion constituency which suggests that the party could win its first ever Westminster MP at the general election – the headline figures, with comparisons on the 2005 general election in the seat. But it’s the detail of the poll that could…
Iain Dale’s end of year elections:- Pollster of the Year 1. YouGov 2. Angus Reid 3. ICM How could they support an untested firm? I’m sure that my friends at PB’s pollster, Angus Reid, won’t be too upset to learn that I did not vote for them as “pollster of the year” in Iain Dale’s annual elections. The Vancouver-based firm only started publishing UK voting intention surveys in October and clearly have yet to go through the process of having…
Latest Ipsos-MORI issues index Is Sunny Hundal misreading the data? There’s a fascinating debate going on amongst Labour/left bloggers over whether the party’s apparent “class war” strategy is the right way to go. The Scottish Labour MP, Tom Harris, is very much against arguing that “.the only strategy Labour should even consider is one which aims to see us re-elected with a working overall majority in the Commons. Setting our sights anywhere lower than that would be a betrayal of…
Why I’m still not betting on the general election outcome? Another morning and the speculation over Brown’s leadership continues in the papers. So how will those “leading cabinet ministers” who are said to want Brown out view this polling data? For after yesterday morning’s examination of the long-term leader approval rating trends today I’m looking further at the Ipsos-MORI leader approval data but from another angle – what those who told the pollster they are voting Labour think of Mr….
Leicester Mercury Will Labour want to avoid the by election? My apologies for immediately thinking of the political implications of the death yesterday of Leicester NW, MP, David Taylor, but that is the way politics is especially during a febrile period like that we are going through at the moment. Fo the last thing that Labour needs just now is a by election in a marginal where the Tories are the main challengers – and this could become a consideration…
Ipsos-MORI Is survival from this position nigh on impossible? One of my best Christmas presents was a personal copy of the invaluable reference source – David Butler’s Twentieth-century British Political Facts, 1900-2000. This contains polling data going back every month to February 1945 – and until now I’ve had to go to the library to look this up. As well as the outcomes of voting intention question the book also lists the PM and opposition leaders’ approval ratings which have…
Is it more ammunition for the class war strategy? According to ConHome, at the time of July’s Norwich North by election the above was an official Labour flyer used in the failed defence of that seat. The approach was also used in the Eddisbury by election in 1999 when the climate was much more clement for NuLab. Well according to the Indy this morning there are, indeed, Labour plans to make an apparent commitment by David Cameron to repeal the…