Has Kirsty just taken on Britian’s toughest job?

Has Kirsty just taken on Britian’s toughest job?

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Times Online Can the former student rebel turn it round for Gord? Inevitability as we edge towards the final party conference season before the general election the Sundays are full of political stories relating to the coming battle. Two of items are linked – but only indirectly. Simon Walters in the Mail on Sunday is reporting on the problems that Brown is having building up a team for the general election and notes three figures who played key roles in…

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It’s almost no change with YouGov

It’s almost no change with YouGov

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CON 41 (+1) LAB 27 (nc) LD 17 (-1) Tories up one – LDs down one The striking consistency of national Westminster voting intention polls that we’ve seen all summer has continued with the latest YouGov survey for the Sunday Times. Tories up one the Lib Dems down one is the sum total of the movement – all within the margin of error. The online pollster has been showing the biggest Labour shares of all the firms during the past…

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MORI suggests Labour could lose half its Scottish MPs

MORI suggests Labour could lose half its Scottish MPs

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Is this a foretaste of what the rest of the UK will be like? The embargo on tonight’s MORI poll on voting intentions has been broken elsewhere and is in the public domain. Accordingly I feel that we ought to report it here as well. The big news is contained in the Westminster voting figures in the panel above and point to a LAB>SNP swing of just under 14% – a movement which if replicated on polling day would see…

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How long will Friday counting delay the result?

How long will Friday counting delay the result?

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Could this spice up the betting? The Facebook group of the campaign to “Keep General Election Night”has attracted almost 4,000 members in its first week, and those involved have begun surveying which seats might need to wait until Friday afternoon to know the identity of their new MP. I happen to be absolutely on the side of the traditionalists with this one – not least given that my new home is in a time zone where a late finishing Thursday…

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What do Lib Dem voters think of Polly’s plan?

What do Lib Dem voters think of Polly’s plan?

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Why doesn’t she take the trouble to look at the polling? This is a graph that was produced by John Cruddas for his big speech to the Compass conference during the week in an attempt to underline his case that there is a near-permanent progressive consensus in British politics. One of the participants, Guardian writer and former SDP-member, Polly Toynbee was reported as saying that “the graph showed that the Conservative Party had never, in the post-war era, had a…

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Has the SNP discovered the Mandela polling secret?

Has the SNP discovered the Mandela polling secret?

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When mentioning his name might get better results? All the discussion over leading over allege leading questions in he ComRes poll have provided a peg fo me to highlight one of my favourite polls ever. In the build-up in 2005 to the resolution London’s big for the 2012 Olympics a poll was commissioned to try to show that people in the capital backed the idea. This was the series of questions in the order that they were put:- “Are you…

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Should Clegg call for a withdrawal from Afghanistan?

Should Clegg call for a withdrawal from Afghanistan?

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Would this be as popular as their pre-2005 Iraq policy? One of the huge areas of government policy which is increasingly being opposed by voters is the continued deployment of British troops in Afghanistan. A YouGov poll for the Telegraph a week ago found a split of 26% in favour and 62% against to the question “Do you favour or oppose the continued deployment of British troops to Afghanistan?. Surprisingly the party whose voters are most in favour of pulling…

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What does this say about the Brown – Cameron battle?

What does this say about the Brown – Cameron battle?

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Woodnewton Associates How predictive are leader aprroval ratings six months out? The above table has been prepared by pollling analyst Mark Gill and appears on the Gary Gibbon blog on the Channel 4 website. Using Gallup Poll leader approval data for 1959 – 1974 and Ipsos MORI for 1979 – 2009 it seeks to show the extent to which those those numbers were predictive from six months out before the election. Just look at it election by election and then…

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