Populus May 2005 A reminder of this shocker from 2005? At a big polling conference before the 2010 general election the boss of ICM, Martin Boon, touched on the challenges of carrying out surveys over bank holiday weekends and referred to the above famous Populus poll from 2005. For fieldwork took place over the Saturday, Sunday and Monday before the May 5 2005 general election day and came out with a 14 point Labour lead – three days later Blair’s…
Can anything stop Salmond’s party now? Just a week and a half to go before the general election for the Scottish Parliament a new YouGov poll for Scotland on Sunday reports very similar trends to those we saw on Thursday from Ipsos-MORI. There appears to have been a sharp collapse in the Scottish Labour position over the past week with the SNP now touching vote shares in both sections which could leave the party only a few seats short of…
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…
Time to be getting your money on – methinks The first YouGov poll in April on the May 5th devolved general election in Scotland is out and shows a continuation in the trend away from Labour and to the SNP. CONSTITUENCY VOTE SNP: 40% (n/c) Lab: 37% (-2) Con: 11% (n/c) Lib Dem: 8% (+3) Other: 4% The big move, and that featured in the chart, has been in the regional vote where the SNP is up three and Labour…
Could the real argument start AFTER May 5th? With one poll after another showing the referendum race as neck and neck there becomes a real possibility that we could see the overall UK result being a YES but with England going NO. The reasons have been discussed here before. The referendum coincides with general elections to the devolved parliaments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland with turnout, perhaps into the 60s. In England there are either local council elections or,…
Is it possible to make it a British not a Scottish election? At a briefing session this week organised by the Political Studies Association Professor James Mitchell of Strathclyde University made this cogent point about the elections to the devolved Scottish parliament at Holyrood:- “Evidence suggests that if this election becomes a referendum on the coalition in London, then Labour is likely to be the largest party but if it focuses on which party is most competent to govern Scotland…
But how important is the recognition factor? There’s a new Scottish poll out in the Sunday Times by PanelBase – a pollster that I have not heard of before. The voting intention figures are in the revised Scottish voting table below and show an SNP lead of five points in the regional section while level-pegging with Labour in the constituency one. An interesting variant is that poll participants were shown pictures of the party leaders and were asked whether they…
Will Murdoch’s paper once again say don’t vote SNP? Almost whenever you talk to someone with a close interest in Scottish politics the above front page from the Scottish Sun on the day of the last election to the Holyrood parliament in 2007 will come up. This was powerful because adapting the SNP logo into a hangman’s noose sent a clear message to voters of what it wanted to happen. As it turned the result was much tighter than many…