Q. “How important is it to you personally who wins the General Election?”

Q. “How important is it to you personally who wins the General Election?”

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Ipsos-MORI What does this say about potential turnout? Two of the great things about Ipsos-MORI is that it has been political polling in the UK for longer than any other firm with a website that has a mine of information going back decades. Another good thing is that the firm’s non-voting intention questions are generally very well drawn up and they use the same form time and time again. Take this table reproduced above with responses over nearly a quarter…

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Cameron hit most as all the leader ratings drop

Cameron hit most as all the leader ratings drop

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“Is Brown/Cameron/Clegg doing well-badly as PM/CON leader/LD leader ..” “Well” “Badly“ +/- Brown 36% (36) 60% (58) -2% Cameron 48% (50) 44% (39) -7% Clegg 43% (42) 31% (28) -2% Are the Tories right to make Brown the issue? This is the second of my planned weekly threads on what many pundits believe are the best guide to forecasting general elections – the leader approval ratings. The comparisons above are the net change as compared with last week. These are…

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How do hung parliament advocates deal with this?

How do hung parliament advocates deal with this?

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Times online What do these say about hung parliaments and the LDs? Reproduced above are a couple of findings from today’s Sunday Times YouGov poll which I think might have signficance. The first is a form of forced choice question where the responses are Lib Dem supporters are the most interesting. Just comparing their answers then support for Labour is just ahead of the Tories – even though more of the would prefer a Tory outright win than a Labour…

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Andy Cooke on the UNS – Part 2

Andy Cooke on the UNS – Part 2

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Uniform National Swing – the track record I’ve put together a short series on UNS – what it is, what’s its track record, and what levels of distortion have occurred in recent elections. This is part two of three. When did UNS break? It can’t simply be one of those myths that it’s fairly accurate – it must have been a useful forecasting tool once. I’m going to show tables for the 1987, 1992, 1997, 2001 and 2005 General Elections,…

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Will you be betting on the YouGov family or ICM?

Will you be betting on the YouGov family or ICM?

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CON 36% (33.2) LAB 34% (36.2) LD 18% (22.7) Comparisons are with the 2005 result LAB>CON swing on 2005: 2.5% Second YouGov family poll has it down to 2 points There was another poll from the YouGov family overnight – this time from the firm that trades under the name of BPIX. It’s the first from them this year so I’m following recent PB practice where there’s not been a similar poll for a couple of months and showing comparisons…

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ICM has the blues back in the 40s

ICM has the blues back in the 40s

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CON 40% (37) LAB 31% (30) LD 18% (20) LAB>CON swing on 2005: 6% Has the move to Labour run out of steam? A new ICM poll for the News of the World goes very much against the trend of the past few weeks and has the Tories increasing their lead over Labour to the psychologically key level of 40%. The comparisons are with the last ICM in the Guardian nearly a fortnight ago. There’s little doubt that this will…

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How much can we read into this?

How much can we read into this?

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British Election Study But could Labour activists now be more motivated? In the next few weeks we’ll be seeing a lot of data about difference aspects of the campaign from the British Election Study – a big academic programme involving a number of universities and quite a lot of polling. In this posting Professor Paul Whiteley writes: “The survey shows that about a quarter of the electorate have been contacted since July 2009, and the chart shows the percentages contacted…

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Will there be a pre-election Budget?

Will there be a pre-election Budget?

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Is there no date because they can’t agree the contents? Last year’s budget was delivered on 22 April, the latest ‘regular’ budget since they reverted to their traditional Spring slot. That date was announced on 12 February. More than three weeks beyond the equivalent date this year, there has been no announcement as to when the budget will be delivered. What’s going on? The timing of the budget is intimately connected to the timing of the General Election: as parliament…

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