Could the City Hall outcome be a marker for Downing Street? If London ITV is following its normal pattern then either today or tomorrow we should see a new opinion poll of voters in the capital on the London mayoralty. The organisation commissioned a YouGov survey at the end of every month since December and let us hope that it is following the normal pattern. I took last week’s news, which wasn’t as far as I know denied, that Downing…
Look at the “Dismayed – Delighted” figures There’s now the full detail from this morning’s YouGov poll and I have extracted the above responses which I find interesting. Thus on the forced choice question Cameron now has a comfortable lead and the Lib Dem supporters questioned are almost neck and neck. The next question “Suppose a Conservative Government were formed under David Cameron which of these three statements would come nearest your own reaction?” provides a note of warning to…
New poll suggests that Cameron is heading for a 100 seat majority The above graphic, reproduced from the seat calculator on Anthony Wells’s UK Polling Report site, shows what happens when you key in the projected vote shares from today’s March YouGov survey for the Daily Telegraph. The survey paints the same broad picture that we’ve seen in all the post-budget polls – very bad news for Labour. When nearly a fortnight ago poll by the firm for the Sunday…
The Tories get eight seats nearer a majority on the spreads Welcome again to the high-risk high-reward world of Commons seat spread betting where serious political gamblers trade the number of seats that the parties will get at the general election as though they were stocks and shares. When we last looked at this on March 7th the Tory spreads were 299-305 seats; Labour was at 269-275 and the Lib Dems at 47-50. so the Tories have moved up eight…
Why the poll slump when the budget measures were popular? A day on from the dramatic polling news in the Sunday newspapers there’s a must read article in the Independent today by John Curtice, professor of politics at Strathclyde University, and one of the UK’s leading psephologists. In it he attempts to explain how the fact many of the measures in last week’s budget proved popular squares with Labour’s downward poll movement. One of the surveys, from YouGov had Labour…
Should appealing to this group be Priority Number One? Earlier in the year it was estimated that the average age of those who would probably vote at the next general election was 58 and commentators like Jackie Ashley in the Guardian were suggesting that Labour ought to do much more with the older age groups which are now being joined by the baby boomers. And there are three key factors about this group: People are living longer so the proportion…
Results of a “quickie” Populus poll of 586 people on yesterday’s budget are just out on the Times website and shows broad public backing for the measures on drinking and motoring. The survey did not include a voting intention question and was almost certainly not past vote weighted. This is likely to have produced a smallish but significant nevertheless pro-Labour sample. This factor is important when judging findings like the one that “most voters do not think the Budget would…
Will his “So what” to higher taxes heckle come to haunt him? The most electorally significant moment of the 2008 budget might come to be seen as a heckle by the School Secretary and the man who is said to be Brown’s chosen successor, Ed Balls, when the leader of the opposition was making his formal response. It came after Cameron had told the house that Britain had the highest tax burden in its history when Balls blurted out in…