UKPollingReport Could the party of “fair votes” support the vote losers? One of the hardy annuals of Lib Dem conference week is that people start asking which way Clegg’s party would go in the event of a hung parliament and they held the balance of power. But is this totally irrelevant? For the way the electoral mathematics work means that Labour would only need Lib Dem support for a commons majority if it came behind the Tories in terms of…
Why do they sound as though it’s still 1997? My apologies for the vulgar headline but it seemed the most apt phrase to describe what the Lib Dems have been doing in recent days in not directing all their fire-power on the weak declining party in British politics. For the big dynamic only months away from the general election is the collapse of Labour – which is the mirror of 1997 when it was the collapse of the Tories. Then…
CON 43 (+2) LAB 26 (+1) LD 19 (nc) And the “others” total drop to just 12% The September ICM poll for the Guardian is just out and shows the Tories up a couple of points with Labour up one – all within the margin of error. So the September polling is following August and we are seeing very little change. Perhaps the significant move is the decreasing share for “other” parties which has been at a high level since…
Is this result down to the question wording? A ComRes poll of Lib Dem councillors for BBC2’s Daily Politics has produced rather predictable results about attitudes of what they would like to see the party doing if there was, indeed, a hung parliament. It found that 31% would like the party to support Labour against 16% who said the Tories. rather than the Tories (16%) in the event of a hung Parliament. The question, however, left a lot to be…
PoliticsHome But might it help incumbents against the Tories? The above, from a new PoliticsHome survey, is a finding that we see in one form or another ahead of every general election – the readiness of supporters of other parties to consider voting for the LDs if they had a serious chance of winning in their constituency. On the positive side for Clegg’s party as they gather in Bournemouth for their annual conference is the response of Labour supporters with…
Why doesn’t she take the trouble to look at the polling? This is a graph that was produced by John Cruddas for his big speech to the Compass conference during the week in an attempt to underline his case that there is a near-permanent progressive consensus in British politics. One of the participants, Guardian writer and former SDP-member, Polly Toynbee was reported as saying that “the graph showed that the Conservative Party had never, in the post-war era, had a…
Would this be as popular as their pre-2005 Iraq policy? One of the huge areas of government policy which is increasingly being opposed by voters is the continued deployment of British troops in Afghanistan. A YouGov poll for the Telegraph a week ago found a split of 26% in favour and 62% against to the question “Do you favour or oppose the continued deployment of British troops to Afghanistan?. Surprisingly the party whose voters are most in favour of pulling…
UKPollingReport Remember the days when a hung parliament seemed a certainty? With all the talk about Brown being ousted or stepping down I’ve just been asked by a journalist how I thought Labour would do in the polls if there was a different leader. My starting point was the table above – the polls from the five months before Brown became leader and Prime Minister on June 27 2007. Just looking at the actual numbers came as something as a…