CON 42(nc) LAB 30(nc) LD 20(+2) Will this ease the Tory jitters? After a couple of quite disappointing polls for the Tories there’s the monthly Guardian survey by ICM and the only change is a two point jump in the Lib Dem share. This latest survey means that every single poll during 2009 has had the Tories in 40s and the fact that ICM, regarded by many in the Labour party as the “gold standard”, is not showing any movement…
Ipsos-MORI Is it because Cameron has been out of the news? When the MORI poll came out this morning my initial reaction was that what had driven the decline in the Tory share and increase in the Labour one was a big increase in the number of the latter’s supporters saying they were “100% certain to vote”. We have now just got the detailed data and I was wrong. The level of overall Tory support in the poll was not…
CONSERVATIVES 42% (-6) LABOUR 32% (+4) LIB DEMS 14% (-3) How close are we to a hung parliament? After the YouGov poll at the weekend reported a Conservative lead of just ten points the Ipsos-MORI Political Monitor for March, just out, has numbers in almost exactly the same region. This comes after a period when the spotlight has been off the Tory leader, David Cameron, following his bereavement leave. It should be said that MORI only include in their headline…
Mail Online Or will it just keep the story going? The Brown apology story moves on a step this morning with comments by the PM in a Guardian interview in which he admits that that he could have taken tougher action to curb the financial markets during he period as Chancellor. I think the Mail story above has got the sense right – yes there are words of apology there but it’s arguable whether he’s gone far enough. Whatever it’s…
Betting odds link David Herdson’s slant on the Tory leadership (This is a comment that David posted a few days ago which I thought was worthy of greater prominence – MS) The next Tory leader is one market I wouldn’t be going near at the moment. For one thing, Tory leaders are rarely the obvious candidates. For another, goodness knows when the next election will be. If Cameron loses the next general election, he may stand down straight away in…
ICM Is the idea that “governments always recover” a myth? We are hearing it all the time at the moment from journalists, politicos and pundits who should at least have the basic ability to check some simple facts before publishing wild statements – the idea that governments “always” recover in the polls as we get close to the general election. One of the problems, as discussed on the previous thread, is that many recall the unreformed polls of the 1990s…
When can you make valid historical poll comparisons? Almost everyday, it seems, someone on a thread or a journalist will seek to make polling comparisons with the 1990s and each time it happens myself and others will try to explain which this is not as easy as it appears. For there has been such a revolution in the UK polling industry since the aftermath of the 1992 general election that you have to be very careful when you point to…
Is this why the LD priority should be attacking Brown? Well done to the Sunday Times for making the detail from today’s YouGov poll available immediately. I wish all newspapers would do the same instead of us, in most cases, having to wait two or three days. You can download the spreadsheet from the link here. In view of the discussion on Lib Dem strategy I’ve clipped the above numbers showing the party splits on the Cameron and Brown approval…