YouGov What does he do now in the face of these numbers? Thanks to Andrew Sparrow in the Guardian for spotting the above numbers in the latest YouGov poll for they seem to blow a big hole in Brown’s core general election strategy – to reduce the argument down to a choice between “Labour investment” and “Tory cuts”. The key premise of the Brown approach is that voters will believe that by curtailing budgets to key services then inevitably those…
What if an “independent” Tory fought Bercow? One feature of the week that I’ve found shocking and unexpected has been the venom from many parts of the Tory party over the man who was elected speaker of the commons on Monday, John Bercow. I was no fan of the Buckingham MP but I made damn sure in my betting that I was covered on a Bercow victory even getting 4/1 on him while the first round votes were being counted….
CON 38 (-2) LAB 25(+1) LD 18 (nc) But “others” continue to impact on the numbers The Telegraph’s YouGov poll for June is out and shows modest changes on the last survey from the firm a fortnight ago. Labour will be pleased to have clawed back the deficit to what appears a modest 13 points. The Tories will be disappointed to be down in the 30s again while it’s no change for the Lib Dems. The changes are modest and…
Could he have the winning formula after all? The largely settled view of commentators and punters alike is that Labour will lose the next general election. No pundit has predicted that Labour (still less Brown) will be running government after polling day for some time, and the betting markets make the Conservatives heavily odds-on to win an outright majority, never mind most seats. Labour’s implied percentage chances of keeping a majority are stuck in single figures. However, a slim chance…
Will the “dignified exit” then come in September? Ever since his survival after the June 4th elections disaster there’s been talk that a deal was done with Mandelson during those critical few days for Brown to be allowed to stay so he could have a “dignified exit” at a less frenetic time. This, I believe, is the sub-text of much of what is going on at the moment with Simon Carr putting it clearly in the Indy this morning. “And…
BBC Online Will voters get bored by the details? Yet again today’s PMQ was dominated by the Tory leader trying to get the PM to admit that his answers a week ago and other public statements on cuts were not accurate. He was, in fact, being called a liar. The Tory strategy seems to be two-fold – to portray Brown as untrustworthy through his use of “dodgy” numbers and to get over that Labour is having to make cuts as…
Could a pre-election public grilling hurt Labour? The main lead in the Guardian this morning is the news that both Blair and Brown are likely to face public questioning about their Iraq war role by the Chilcot inquiry. Last week Brown announced that this would be in secret but after a wave a protests that has been changed. As the paper puts it “..the move to open up his hearings, which came on the eve of a Commons debate tomorrow…
This is an interesting chart just issued by MORI showing it’s polling trends since over the past six years. The main thing to note is that the firm’s methodology changed in June 2008 and this might have been the basis of a small part of the Labour decline. Whatever it doesn’t look good this far out from a general election. For those who want more there is a range of polling trend charts here. Mike Smithson