Are punters being over-optimistic about Cameron’s chances?

Are punters being over-optimistic about Cameron’s chances?

Introducing the PBC Average of Weighted Polls With David Cameron set to celebrate his first year as Tory leader on Wednesday we thought it would be a good time to launch PBC’s new measure of polling performance – the average of weighted polls. The numbers featured in the chart are from those firms which employ some system to ensure that their samples are not skewed by their methodology and are also members of the British Polling Council. The latest Average,…

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Sean Fear’s Friday slot

Sean Fear’s Friday slot

Are Labour’s southern Problems getting worse? Some weeks ago, I wrote about the return of “Labour’s Southern Discomfort”, the instinctive rejection of Labour by Southern voters, in the 1980s. This showed up markedly in May’s local election results, and is now even more pronounced in recent local by-election results. Labour support, in local by-elections, has generally held up better in the North than in the South, particularly in the North West, where the party has actually gained four seats since…

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Tory YouGov lead cut to 5%

Tory YouGov lead cut to 5%

The internet pollster follows the trend of the other firms With David Cameron due to celebrate his first year as Tory leader in five days time the latest survey by YouGov for the Daily Telegraph reinforces the trends in all the other polls in November bar Mori showing a decline in his party position in relation to Labour. The figures for today’s poll with comparisons on the October survey are: CON 37 (-2): LAB 32 (nc): LD 16 (nc). So…

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Labour lead Tories by 54-15% amongst politics dons

Labour lead Tories by 54-15% amongst politics dons

And 53% predict that Labour will win a fourth term Full details are now out on the Ipsos Mori site of the poll of members of the Political Studies Association which was prepared for their annual conference this week. Although no voting intention was asked the 283 respondents responded were questioned about what outcome they personally were hoping for at the General Election. These were the shares – LAB maj 54%: HUNG 21%: CON maj 15% so it is reasonable…

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Will Gordon get seats like Withington back?

Will Gordon get seats like Withington back?

Who’ll win battles between Labour and the Lib Dems? While most of the focus has been on the Tories and Labour we should not forget the other major battle-ground at the next General Election – those seats where Labour and the Lib Dems are slugging it out. And for me nowhere is more interesting than Manchester Withington – where in May 2005 John Leech for the Lib Dems turned round a Labour majority of 11,500 votes increasing the party’s share…

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The Indy’s CR poll methodology under “constant review”

The Indy’s CR poll methodology under “constant review”

Encouraging response to PBC’s observations Following yesterday’s article and thread on the methodology being used for the new month Communicate Research poll in the Independent I have had an encouraging response from both the pollster and the newspaper. I wrote to both making the same point: “What convinces me about the need for past vote weighting is the sheer consistency of the figures that both Populus and ICM get when they ask how people voted last time. I’ve been monitoring…

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Did Blair get value from the controversial election loans?

Did Blair get value from the controversial election loans?

How much did the bill-boards help Labour to victory? There is something rather ironic about the fact that a big part of the money Labour borrowed in the run-up to the 2005 General Election was spent on bill-boards like the one above promoting the Government’s successes with the economy and interest rate policy. This was a key theme in the huge advertising blitz in the run-up to May 5th and on which a large part of the borrowed money was…

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Communicate Research: polling in the old fashioned way

Communicate Research: polling in the old fashioned way

Labour ahead in the paper that brought you the Harman poll cock-up Back in 1992 they used to run polls like the one by Communicate Research that appears in the Independent this morning. That was the year of what Nick Sparrow of ICM calls “the great polling debacle” The final opinion polls gave the Conservatives between 38% and 39% of the vote, about 1% behind. On the day itself exit polls were carried out and everything was pointing to a…

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