Will the PBR make the media narrative a reality? It’s a measure of how completely potty the media has become in recent weeks that on the eve of the the PBR and all the talk of an early general election that there’s been an almost total news black-out on yesterday’s ICM showing the Tories on 42%, Labour on 31% with the Lib Dems scoring 19%. You would have thought that every little bit of polling data would have been devoured,…
CONSERVATIVES 42% (-1) LABOUR 31% (+1) LIB DEMS 19% (+1) ICM reports an 11% Tory lead After all the election speculation following the non-past voted weighted MORI poll on Tuesday reports are coming in of a new ICM poll which puts the Tories 11% ahead. The main difference between ICM and MORI is that the former takes measures to ensure a politically balanced sample through past vote weighting. MORI doesn’t and as I was arguing on Wednesday the latest survey…
Will Gord get thanked for all the bargains? If there’s one place where the recession will be most apparent in the coming months it’s going to be the High Street. Yesterday one major retail chain changed hands for just £1 and others are reported to be struggling particularly in the non-essentials sector of the market. Tomorrow I expect to be buying a new computer and my first thought was to go to a big national chain where there are some…
Will opinion harden behind Gord or Dave? On the thread the other day the question was posed as to whether in the build up to any other general election had there been so many turns. My recall is that while there have been shock results, most notably 1970 and 1992, we haven’t quite had the twists that we have seen in the period from May 2005. It’s perhaps worth repeating that on only one occasion since 1945 has a party…
Is the Mirror’s Maguire right – Cameron panicked? The big political shift in the past 24 hours has been the abandonment by the Tories of their commitment to match Labour spending plans and, instead, start talking about tax cuts. This is Kevin Maguire’s take on it on the Mirror website: “..Every nurse, teacher, care worker, soldier and their families now has a vested interested in voting Labour at the General Election. No wonder the Prime Minister’s struggling to keep a…
Were there enough 2005 Lib Dems in the MORI sample? My apologies for the third post in succession on the Ipsos-MORI poll but it produced numbers that were so startling that it deserves further scrutiny. Yesterday it was all doom and gloom for the Lib Dems over the MORI 12% yet a close study of the data raises the question of whether were there enough 2005 Lib Dem supporters in the sample? It will be recalled that on May 5th…
Why so much variation over the Lib Dem number? Whenever I go anywhere, like yesterday during a very enjoyable visit to Westminster, virtually everybody I speak to asks me the same question – “Which pollster do you think is best?”. My answer, as always, is ICM because the record since the mid-90s shows that the firm’s methodology is more likely to pick up the most accurate Lib Dem share. This matters because it has a big impact on the Labour…
Some words of comfort from Michael White With George Osborne continuing to make the news there’s a good analysis of his position from Michael White of the Guardian in which he suggests that the Shadow Chancellor’s biggest problems are on his own side – not the attacks from Labour. White writes: “..Much more important to my mind than Labour attacks is that the people pushing hardest to get Osborne out are on his own side. And most of them are…