More detail from Populus adds to the gloom It was almost exactly three years ago, while Tony Blair was still Labour leader, that I did a thread – “Why can’t Gordon do the “sincerity thingâ€? – on Brown’s inability to sound convincing when it is clear that he is telling porkies. I suggested that this was his greatest weakness. That observed that for much of the time, of course, politics is about organised hypocrisy and that “a key quality in…
Woodnewton Associates Even when things are going well their supporters are less certain Just look at the chart above which takes one series of numbers from the monthly Ipsos-MORI political monitors – the proportion of those saying they will support Labour and the Conservatives at the next election who are “100% certain to vote”. The period covered is the past fifteen months and includes times when Labour has been doing badly, like at the moment, and times when they are…
Politics Home poll Could this be one of the big election themes? Over the past week I’ve been surprised by the public reaction to the compulsory vetting regime planned for those who have contact with children who are not their own. If I’d been asked to venture a view before this blew up I’d have said that virtually anything that helped clamp down on paedophiles would have been applauded by the Great British Public. Maybe it’s the way the initial…
Times Online Can the former student rebel turn it round for Gord? Inevitability as we edge towards the final party conference season before the general election the Sundays are full of political stories relating to the coming battle. Two of items are linked – but only indirectly. Simon Walters in the Mail on Sunday is reporting on the problems that Brown is having building up a team for the general election and notes three figures who played key roles in…
CON 41 (+1) LAB 27 (nc) LD 17 (-1) Tories up one – LDs down one The striking consistency of national Westminster voting intention polls that we’ve seen all summer has continued with the latest YouGov survey for the Sunday Times. Tories up one the Lib Dems down one is the sum total of the movement – all within the margin of error. The online pollster has been showing the biggest Labour shares of all the firms during the past…
Is this a foretaste of what the rest of the UK will be like? The embargo on tonight’s MORI poll on voting intentions has been broken elsewhere and is in the public domain. Accordingly I feel that we ought to report it here as well. The big news is contained in the Westminster voting figures in the panel above and point to a LAB>SNP swing of just under 14% – a movement which if replicated on polling day would see…
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…
When mentioning his name might get better results? All the discussion over leading over allege leading questions in he ComRes poll have provided a peg fo me to highlight one of my favourite polls ever. In the build-up in 2005 to the resolution London’s big for the 2012 Olympics a poll was commissioned to try to show that people in the capital backed the idea. This was the series of questions in the order that they were put:- “Are you…