On the previous thread Beverley raised an issue that I have been pondering over – is the ballot form itself confusing and does it favour YES? She wrote:” I voted NO to AV yesterday, but I very nearly voted YES instead. I got the ballot paper and read the pre-amble that said (paraphrasing) “this is about whether to retain the FPTP systemâ€. Below was the actual referndum question and the YES and NO boxes. After reading the pre-amble I nearly…
What happened to the unpopularity Cameron predicted? It’s been an expectation of many pundits and politicians that introducing government cuts will make the government unpopular. Two months ago, David Cameron himself repeated that sentiment. It’s certainly true that for the Lib Dems, government has brought unpopularity but the Tory share has remained just about unchanged. Even the Lib Dems may not be suffering from the cuts in general. The tuition fees issue and trust issue generally has been corrosive and…
Salmond’s party becomes favourite after new MORI poll There’s been a lot of betting activity overnight with the publication of a new Ipsos-MORI Scotland poll that suggests that the SNP is heading for a big victory in the devolved parliament elections on May 5th. In both parts of the survey – the constituency and the list – Ipsos-MORI found that the SNP have soared ahead opening up ten and eleven point gaps on Labour. As can be seen from the…
The Ipsos-MORI Monitor for April is just out and has the Tories on 40% – three up on the general election last May and at their highest level with the pollster since then. The blues are now level-legging with Labour and this is the first poll from the firm since October with Labour not in the lead. As can be seen from the chart the firm has the yellows continuing to decline amongst those “certain to vote”. MORI headline figures…
There’s the latest YouGov AV tracker out for the Sun which shows a sharp move to NO compared with the internet firm’s last survey on the subject just three days ago. Then it had a one point NO lead – this evening the gap is 16 points. The margins is exactly the same as we saw in last night telephone poll from ICM for the Guardian. The next big AV poll should be a phone survey from Ipsos-MORI. That’ll be…
Was it a mistake to push for the vote on May 5th? A big debate while the legislation was going through parliament was whether it was right to hold the referendum on the same day as other elections. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have their devolved general elections alongside the referendum on May 5th while in England there are local and mayoral elections in many areas but not all. As part of their poll ICM sought to distinguish between the…
Now will blue critics stop sniping at him? If the AV referendum does end up with an outcome close to last night’s ICM’s 58-42 to NO it will be a massive victory for David Cameron and an overwhelming vindication of his strategy of creating the coalition so he could take power last May. Ever since that event on May 11th 2010 the Tory right has been muttering against him and increasingly they’ve tried to dub him “an election loser” with…
But will it favour YES or NO? The Guardian’s polling specialist, Julian Glover, has posted two intriguing tweets on tonight’s ICM poll for his paper which, extraordinarily will be the first non-online survey for two months on the referendum. It’s clear from the Glover Tweets that the ICM poll is going to be news though I can’t even guess which side will be benefiting. The poll will also be the first to incorporate Northern Ireland voters in its sample –…