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Category: Polls

How changing poll methodology is adding to Gord’s problems

How changing poll methodology is adding to Gord’s problems

Was “public sector weighting” behind MORI’s Tory 52%? One of the biggest polling changes that we’ve seen in years was introduced by Ipsos-MORI in the summer following a review after the London Mayoral elections. For in trying to work out why its surveys seemed to be over-stating Labour the firm discovered that people working in the public sector were being over-sampled. So a new calculation has been created and this has been one of the reasons why the firm is…

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Frank Luntz on the Labour leadership: September 2006

Frank Luntz on the Labour leadership: September 2006

Would the outcome be the same today? If you’ve got a quarter of an hour to spare check out this Frank Luntz focus group that was produced for Newnight in September 2006 – nine months before Blair stepped down. The picture shows the response of the group when they were asked if Gordon Brown should lead Labour into the next election. Just one person responded. Click the panel to watch the programme. At the time it was so controversial that…

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Would they have been on 12% with Vince?

Would they have been on 12% with Vince?

Why oh why is this man not the Lib Dem leader? The screen shot is of Vince Cable smiling during yesterday’s leader’s speech by Nick Clegg at the end of the Lib Dem conference in Bournemouth. He got a great ovation from the audience when Clegg singled him out for special praise. But shouldn’t it have been the party’s shadow chancellor who was on the stage not the young ex-MEP who screwed up his whole conference by suggesting that the…

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Has the pendulum swung back to Obama?

Has the pendulum swung back to Obama?

Can McCain-Palin win back the initiative again? The latest polls in the White House race show that there’s been a sharp swing-back to Obama and he now has leads in almost all of them for the first time since McCain turned the election on its head with his choice of V-P. Within the past hour the CBC/New York Times poll had McCain’s 43% to Obama’s 49%. Earlier we had:- Gallup: Obama 47%, McCain 45% Diageo/Hotline: Obama 45%, McCain 42% Research…

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Should your money be following the Populus focus group?

Should your money be following the Populus focus group?

If there’s going to be a contest could one of these win? With all the focus over the past 24 hours being the growing number of Labour figures calling for a leadership contest the finding of today’s Populus leadership focus group have not merited the attention they perhaps deserve. For the pollster put together a group of 20 Labour voters from 2005 and showed them clips of Brown and six possible replacements. As they watched they registered their reaction by…

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Are we seeing the ending of the Tory voters’ strike?

Are we seeing the ending of the Tory voters’ strike?

Why understanding 1997 is the key to the 2010 result? There’s a widespread perception that in 1997 Tony Blair got his massive landslide victory because huge numbers of Tories switched. This is wrong and does not fit with the voting numbers – for Labour won even though it got fewer votes than Neil Kinnock secured five years earlier. In 1992 Labour chalked up 11,559,735 votes. Five years later Tony Blair got in with his party getting a smaller number 11,348,623….

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YouGov marginals poll points to a Tory majority of 110+

YouGov marginals poll points to a Tory majority of 110+

There’s a new poll out this afternoon from YouGov which was commissioned by Channel 4 news and which suggests that David Cameron is heading for a three-figure majority. The poll has been done on a format that I have never seen before – those questioned were limited to 60 key constituencies where Labour is defending majorities of between 6 per cent and 14 per cent. So it’s unlike the standard marginal polls that we have seen in the past where…

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Is McCain betting too much on Palin?

Is McCain betting too much on Palin?

What if “Troopergate” gets out of hand? So the White House race has come alive and promises to be an absorbing contest which will grip us for seven weeks or so and maybe even beyond. “Lipstickgate” has been the issue of the day and the way it has developed reflects the changing media narrative – Obama is under fire as the focus goes on Sarah Palin. On the polling front the Gallup daily tracking poll is now showing a 5%…

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