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Category: General Election

Are Tory poll numbers more robust than Labour ones?

Are Tory poll numbers more robust than Labour ones?

How much credence should we give to polls two years before the day? There’s a great facility on the ICM website for those who want to check back on polling history. Just restricted to those commissioned by the Guardian, which is by far and away the longest media relationship in the UK industry, you can sort results how you like and, of course, check back on each monthly survey and compare it with the following general election. Just before Christmas…

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Are the “lost” Tory voters finally returning?

Are the “lost” Tory voters finally returning?

Is ICM a further indication of a “sea-change” in opinion? It is a sign of the times that when news of the latest ICM poll started to emerge last night the terms used were simply that the Conservatives had “a healthy lead”. I assumed that meant a margin of perhaps 12-13% ahead and just a little bit better for Gord than the previous ICM low – a 14% Labour deficit – that we saw in the May Guardian poll. The…

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Are we heading for a Tory landslide or not?

Are we heading for a Tory landslide or not?

Will the upcoming polling round make us any the wiser? In the two weeks and two days since the Crewe and Nantwich by-election we have had just two national voting intention opinion polls and the fieldwork for both took place during school holiday periods which have, in the past, led to results being skewed. So the upcoming polling round, which hopefully should start with surveys for at least one of the Sunday papers and will certainly see the monthly Populus…

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Will Labour be out of power for as long as last time?

Will Labour be out of power for as long as last time?

Could Dave beat Maggie’s 11 years at Number 10? As we face the real prospect of a change of government it is a sobering thought that these days parties stay in office for quite considerable periods of time. Labour will have been there for 13 years assuming they go on until 2010. Before that, of course, the Tories went on from 1979 right through until 1997 – a total of eighteen years. For once confidence in a party of government…

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Has John Reid left his options open?

Has John Reid left his options open?

Could he still be a contender if the conditions were right? Like many, I guess, I thought that John Reid had decided to step down from the national political scene when he made clear before Gordon’s succession last year that he did not want to continue with a cabinet role. He had ruled himself out of any future involvement. Well things might not be as they seem and I was intrigued by this comment by the Telegraph’s astute Scottish political…

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Is there anything Labour can do to stem the tide?

Is there anything Labour can do to stem the tide?

Will Gordon look more secure after today? Ten days on from the Crewe & Nantwich by-election and MPs return to Westminster today after their long spring break. This will be the first chance many Labour members will have had to talk face to face with parliamentary colleagues about the challenges facing the party and the prospects for the next general election. What will mood be like? Will Gordon feel a tad safer after today? My guess is that he will…

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Could Winchester be the Lib Dems’ Waterloo?

Could Winchester be the Lib Dems’ Waterloo?

Would Clegg’s approach to Labour be the campaign issue? The suggestions that Mark Oaten might quit his Winchester seat before the general election and create a by election creates big challenges for both Nick Clegg and David Cameron. For the newly-energised Tories, flushed with confidence following Crewe and Nantwich, would fancy their chances in a seat that was lost to the Lib Dems by just two votes at the 1997 general election. Then the result was contested in the courts,…

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Do the 212 “at risk” Labour MPs want a new leader?

Do the 212 “at risk” Labour MPs want a new leader?

What will YouGov do for Gord’s survival chances? The above is what happens when you key in the C47-L23-LD18 general election vote shares from today’s Daily Telegraph YouGov poll into the Anthony Wells commons seat calculator. If you do the same with the Martin Baxter calculator at Electoral Calculus you get even worse projections for Labour – CON 452: LAB 138: LD 32 seats. Martin’s website conveniently lists the outcome for every single seat in the country – something that…

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