Are the silver voters behind the Tory surge? The weekend ICM poll for the Sunday Express poll was so exceptional that it is worth looking in some detail at the data which is now available. And the striking feature for me is the split amongst those aged 65 years and above – the pensioner group. For the 61% Tory score against 24% for Labour and just 7% for the Lib Dems is really quite amazing. Normally the older you are…
How the numbers show that he has a lot to smile about Judging by the latest round of press comment and the reaction to the polls you would have thought that Brown had brought his party to the point of electoral disaster with an inglorious election defeat being the only possible outcome. Yet are these perceptions correct? For the numbers suggest that under Gordon Labour’s polling position has been transformed with the number of people telling pollsters they would vote…
Cameron’s party now ahead on commons seats spread markets The main polling news overnight is a new ICM survey for the Sunday Express which has the following shares compared with the last poll by the firm nearly two weeks ago – CON 43% (+3): LAB 35% (nc): LD 15% (-3) So the main change is that three point shift from the Lib Dems to Cameron’s party reflecting, I would suggest, news coverage during the week following the Queen’s Speech. All…
Are English towns more sensitive to extra motoring taxation? One of the most original and thought-provoking guest articles that we’ve had on the site was the one by Blair Freebairn in October on the nature of the marginal constituencies where the next general election will be decided. He observed that the 201 key marginals “….don’t concentrate in Wales, Scotland, London, the major cities or the truly rural areas. They aren’t really regional. They are heavily concentrated in Medium English Towns…
Has the Guardian columnist got the right approach for Labour? There’s an interesting critique of the government’s legislative programme in the Guardian this morning from the writer who used to be one of Brown’s greatest cheer-leaders – Polly Toynbee. Her argument is that Labour needs to develop a rhetoric that goes well beyond the term “aspire” that seems to have been the guiding force behind the Queen’s Speech. Polly suggests that insteads the notion on “fairness to all” could be…
Or could more flexible working just alienate the childless? Generally the most reliable guide to what the Brown political machine is up to is in The Mole column in the First Post online magazine. And yesterday while everybody was talking about how the leaders performed “The Mole” was reporting that the plans to extend flexible working for people with children was what would “grab the headlines in the morning.” Certainly the idea has caught the attention of the Times and…
Party funding proposals “put on hold? I don’t know whether anybody at Number 10 read yesterday’s thread on the Ashcroft money but one of the big surprises in the Queen’s Speech was the absence of a plan to bring in immediate legislation on party funding. This is contrary to all the reports over the weekend that suggested the Government would include legislative plans to deal with Ashcroft’s support for Tory marginals between elections. In fact all we got was a…
Big boost for the Lib Dems Populus, the only pollster which recorded solid Labour leads since June, has continued to report a Labour margin in its latest survey for the Times. The figures are with changes on a month ago – CON 36%(-2): LAB 37%(-3): LD 16%(+4) This will bring a lot of comfort to the Brown camp after the polls from ICM, ComRes and Ipsos-MORI had Tory leads of 5-7%. Of all the phone pollsters using past vote weighting…