Looks like the big political news of the day isn’t the Blues taking the lead with the gold standard of UK polling, but the reshuffle David Cameron is currently undertaking. The big news is William Hague standing down as Foreign Secretary. 1/2 I'd like to pay an enormous tribute to @WilliamJHague who is standing down as an MP at the next election. — David Cameron (@David_Cameron) July 14, 2014 2/2 Until then, I'm delighted he'll remain my de facto political…
Tories take lead – Ukip down 7 – in latest ICM/Guardian poll pic.twitter.com/abv7Nah6BT — Mike Smithson (@MSmithsonPB) July 14, 2014 ICM was the most accurate pollster at GE1997, GE2001, GE2010 and in the AV referendum — Mike Smithson (@MSmithsonPB) July 14, 2014 The ICM/Guardian poll is out and the big move is Ukip falling by 7 points on the month. This has helped boost the Tories who are now 1% ahead of LAB. The LDs, meanwhile, are up 2 at…
More details from the @LordAshcroft poll pic.twitter.com/kPSMumpyJ7 — Mike Smithson (@MSmithsonPB) July 14, 2014 Another poll to worry the LD leadership The LD 7% the the lowest recorded since the Ashcroft weekly phone poll began in May. What’s is startling is the size of the fall from 11% to just 7% in just a week. This is greater than the margin of error. Earlier the Populus Monday poll showed no decline in the LD share which it had up 1%…
From the recent @LordAshcroft CON-LAB marginals poll: Miliband's most enthusiastic backers – LD-LAB switchers pic.twitter.com/NJ6f8TaN7W — Mike Smithson (@MSmithsonPB) July 14, 2014 It’s a totally different election with very different dynamics There’s no doubt that Tony Blair’s GE1997 victory, coming as it did after four election defeats over the previous 18 years, was a stunning success. Blair did it by reinventing his party so it would appeal to large swaithes of voters who never before had done anything other than…
What can YES do to reverse the trend? There’s further polling confirmation this morning that support for a YES vote in the Scottish Independence referendum on September 18th is stalling with the July survey of voters north of the border by ICM for Scotland on Sunday. The trend is in line with the recent YouGov, TNS-BMRB and Survation polls which all reported that the gap was remaining or getting wider. In June ICM had, once you’ve excluded the don’t knows,…
Get ready for what’s likely to be the most negative campaign ever It’s become the norm in recent general elections that a large part of the campaign is fought on almost totally negative grounds and we should expect nothing different in the run up to May 7th. Labour believes that the Tory brand remains toxic and a huge turn-off to key segments of voters. In the marginals the message will be that only LAB can stop CON. We saw this…
We should thinking more about the range of possibilities I was struck at the politicalbetting meet in Ilkley on Monday how much consensus there was about the likely result of the next election. The great majority expected Labour as the largest party in another hung parliament. That’s the view of the betting markets too: Labour is best priced at 9/10 with bwin to win most seats (more generally 5/6 or 4/5), while the Tories are odds against only with Ladbrokes…