The Sun Could this put the Tories back above 40? On the face of it this afternoon’s news about Samantha Cameron should be good news for the Tories. It’s the sort of thing that people like to know about and seems to give pleasure. This, of course, has the added dimension of the personal tragedy that the couple have undergone in the past thirteen months. So maybe we can expect a baby boost in polling that takes place in the…
Populus (Resolution Foundation) Mar 11 Feb 7 CONSERVATIVES 38% 40% LABOUR 31% 30% LIB DEMS 21% 20% LAB to CON swing from 2005 5% 6.5% Is the swing 1.7% bigger in the key seats? Thanks to Tabman on the previous thread for spotting this one. A standard national voting intention poll that was carried out by Populus the week before last for the Resolution Foundation. The figures above show changes on the most recently published standard national poll from the…
SkyNews What does it do to his 2012 chances? The big overnight news is Obama’s victory by 219 votes to 212 in the House of Representatives for his controversial healthcare reforms after a prolonged and massive battle. There’s little doubt that if this had failed then his chances winning of a second term in 2012 would have suffered a major blow. In the past months his approval ratings have taken a sharp knock and getting this through had become a…
Is Brown/Cameron/Clegg doing well-badly as PM/CON leader/LD leader ..” Well Badly +/- BROWN 33% (36) 61% (60) -4 CAMERON 49% (48) 39% (44) +6 CLEGG 47% (43) 27% (31) +8 YouGov Sunday Times: FW Mar 19 (Mar 5) Are these a better pointer than voting intentions? There is a theory, supported by polling for the 1992 general election, that leader approval ratings are a better indicator of electoral outcomes than the standard voting intention findings. I sort of buy into…
ICM Mar 20 data Voted in 2005 Aged 18 – 24 2010 CON voters 89.9% 3.7% 2010 LAB voters 81.6% 8.9% 2010 Lib Dem voters 88.9% 4.4% Is this a problem with having greater appeal to the young? The table shows two sets of figures from the latest ICM poll: the proportion who voted for one of the main parties in 2005 and the proportion of their overall support now coming from the 18-24 old age-group. This is relevant because…
Will this get the core vote out in the marginals? On the latest Radio 4’s Any Questions the schools secretary, Ed Balls, made a revealing comment on what I took to be part of Labour’s defence strategy in the marginals. When being pressed over UNITE’s financial support for Labour including his own seat on the outskirts of Leeds he replied: ” “Unite members make contributions from their pay packets to help the fight against the BNP…..”. That helped him handle…
What does it tell us about her and Dave? Today’s main political stories on the front pages are features above – but the one I guess the one that will get the most attention is a series of pictures of Samantha Cameron in the Mail on Sunday. You can see it being trailed heavily on the MoS’s front page alongside the “cash for influence” report. Inside we read of how the photo-shoot came to happen a couple of years after…
Sunday Times “….Byers, who held three cabinet portfolios from 1998 to 2002, gave specific examples of how he claimed he had changed government policy by lobbying his cabinet friends. He claimed to have struck a secret deal with Lord Adonis, the transport secretary, last year on behalf of National Express, which he said was seeking to jettison a loss-making East Coast rail franchise without penalties. Byers said: “We agreed with Andrew … he would be publicly very critical of National…