BBC News Scotland ICM suggests both have been damaged Only a few days ago I was bemoaning the fact that there did not seem to be any polls of Scottish opinion on the release of Megrahi – the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing and murder of 270 people. Well this evening we have a second with strong suggestions that there might be another one this weekend. The survey is by ICM for the BBC and is of 1,005 people…
BBC IPlayer Michael Crick’s programme is a must listen I’ve just picked up on BBC IPlayer this great Radio 4 investigation by Michael Crick on the funding of political parties and the rise of what he calls “The Political Club”. The programme blurb goes: “Michael Crick reveals how politicians are increasingly becoming a professionalised and separate class, who use their status to channel taxpayers’ money into the coffers of their parties. The recent scandal over MPs’ expenses has revealed how…
Could the tactical switchers of ’97 now go straight to the Tories? One of aspects of the electorate that both the YouGov Scottish poll and this week’s GB survey from Angus-Reid have shown is the very distinctive approach to the Lockerbie bomber release by Lib Dem voters. This is symptomatic I believe of their approach to politics generally and why what they think and do at elections can have a disproportionate impact at general elections. We saw that in 1997…
Could the polls be as wrong now as they were then? If there is one precedent that could provide some hope for Brown Central it is John Major’s surprise victory in the general election of April 9th 1992. In the year or so beforehand the Tory government’s by-election performance was even worse than Labour’s at the moment and with the exception of one or two polls all the pollsters were pointing to a dead heat in vote numbers as the…
Survey finds SNP Holyrood support down 5 points Opinion polls confined to just Scotland are rare things indeed and according to UKPollingReport there have only been two this year – one by YouGov for the Sunday Times last January. UPDATE – the last Scottish YouGov poll was in June. This morning the Daily Mail is carrying details of a new YouGov Scottish poll it commissioned following last week’s controversial release of Megrahi – the man convicted for the Lockerbie bombing….
Has Labour’s time run out? Nick Sparrow, boss of ICM, has sent me an email in response to recent comments suggesting that August polling is somehow unreliable. He makes a strong case that this isn’t correct by looking at his polls in the August ahead of the past three general elections and what actually happened. Nick notes that comparing Guardian ICM polls for the August before a general election with the result you get:- August 1996 poll suggested that Labour…
What’s the politics if the UK lost its AAA credit rating? While the Lockerbie release story has been dominating the news a more bread and butter issue has received scant coverage yet has the potential to have an even bigger impact on the election campaign. The government’s borrowing figures for July were much worse than expected – and needless to say, expectations weren’t healthy to start with. The scale of the battering that the public finances have taken in the…
Guardian online Is there anything that Brown Central can do? The August ICM poll for the Guardian is out and like all other polls reporting this month it is simply more of the same. Labour in the doldrums in the 20s with the Tories in the 40s. The changes in the Guardian’s graphic, above, are with the last poll in the paper in July. Compared with the Sunday Mirror ICM poll the weekend before last the changes were CON -2…