Labour lead at 2 points in new ICM poll
The Sunday Mirror apparently has a new ICM poll with headline voting intentions, with changes from the ICM/Guardian poll taken at the end of last week, of CON 35%(nc), LAB 37%(-2), LDEM 17%(-1).
This means Labour’s lead is down two points from last week, apparently (and somewhat bizarrely) to the benefit of others – though I expect it’s far less straightforward than that and is due to churn between parties, won’t votes and falling Labour certainty to vote. More to the point, the two point change isn’t necessarily significant at all.
It shouldn’t be a particular surprise to find Labour down slightly anyway, the last polls were taken in the days immediately following Gordon Brown becoming PM when he was receiving blanket coverage on the television, and that initial publicity burst at least should have begun to subside. It is still difficult to say what the future holds. Still, for what little it is worth it is our first indication of the direction of movement. It does also suggest a continuing squeeze for the Lib Dems – 17% equals the lowest level of support they’ve recorded in an ICM poll since the election, and is from the pollster who normally gives them their highest figures.
Filed under: ICM, Voting Intention
I bet the Tory supporters will be backing off from their calls of unfair voting systems now a poll has shown Labour support down!
On a serious note, I think the Lib support at around 17% is likely to be the sort of figure they will achieve next time round. The 11% ‘others’ vote is of course about 3% higher than normally found at GE’s and it will be interesting to see if that holds up or drops the nearer we get to an election. I wonder if it represents an increase to UKIP or the Greens, any figures on this Anthony?
Richard Nicholson.
Wilmslow.
Not yet – it probably won’t turn up until the tables go up on ICM’s website. The make up of the “others” is a bit volatile anyway, no one individually weights for past green voters, past UKIP voters, etc – just for “others” in general.
Judging on this Opinion Poll Labour would win by Majority of 36 Seats.
NET CHANGE OF SEATS & %.
Labour 37% 343 Seats -6 losses +1%
Conservative 35% 235 Seats +25 Gains +2%
Lib Dems 17% 38 Seats -24 losses -6%
Others 11% 34 Seats +5 gains +3%
Labour Majority of 36
GREEN GAIN MP IN BRIGHTON PAVILION.
SNP GAIN MP in OCHIL & SOUTH PERTHSHIRE.
PLAID CYMRU 3 GAINS 3 MPS in YNYS MON, ARFON, CEREDIGION. RESPECT HOLD ON AND SO 2 INDEPENDENTS?
These Results due notional results of 2005.
If Results are close like this I reckon for the General election MAY 2009 like this a close Race.
NET CHANGE OF SEATS & %.
Labour 37% 340 SEATS -9 Losses +1%
Conservative 36% 243 SEATS +33 Gains +3%
Lib Dems 17% 36 SEATS -26 Losses -6%
Others 10% 31 SEATS +2 Gains +2%
Labour Majority of 30 seats
This would mean Greens narrowly miss out to Labour in Brighton Pavilion and Respect lose to labour in Bethnell Green and Bow and the English Independent loses out to the Conservatives in Wyre Forest representing Kidderminister the moment?
But SNP Gain Ochil in Scotland and Plaid gain 3 Seats in Wales?
Trish Law keeps her seat?
These are 2 scenarios the Moment we wait see in 2 years time?
But Hung Parliament Scenario Likely I’m hoping for?
Like this
NET CHANGE OF SEATS & %.
Labour 35% 320 Seats -29 Losses -1%
Conservative 36% 260 SEATS + 50 Gains +3%
Lib Dems 17% 36 SEATS -26 Losses -6%
OTHERS 11% 34 SEATS + 5 Gains +3%
General Election Notional Result on May 2005.
650 SEATS
Boundary Change Movements.
Labour 36% 349 Seats -7 Losses
Conservative 33% 210 Seats +12 Gains
Lib Dems 23% 62 Seats No change
Others 8% 29 Seats -1 Loss
General Election Actual result May 2005.
646 MP’S
Labour 36% 356 MPS
Conservative 33% 198 MPS
LIB DEMS 23% 62 MPS
OTHERS 8% 30 MPS
Please can you give me feedback on your Scenarios what future General election will be?
I would to hear from you Anthony Wells to give your Forecast please?
Others please join the discussion?
‘I bet the Tory supporters will be backing off from their calls of unfair voting systems now a poll has shown Labour support down!’
Why? The two things aren’t linked.
Anthony,
Was the poll taken before or after the car bombs were found in London?
Could this be the beginning of the end of the Brown bounce? That is a likely conclusion.
I think the Tories will be back ahead in the autumn.
The polls are behaving like they did in 1978 at the moment.
At first glance, these most recent polls don’t look very encouraging for Labour, but it’s easy to momentarily forget (as I sometimes do) that they actually represent an increase in Labour support from the last election. That’s the problem for the Tories; because Labour’s vote fell much more than expected at the last election to the very low level of 36%, there’s much less scope for further drops in this fourth term of office.
It would be interesting to see the breakdown by country.
You could have the situation with the Tories winning in England, but Labour winning overall and then using MPs from outside of England to force through leglisation against the wishes of England.
It then should make the calls for an English Parliament stronger.
Thanks Anthony for that.
Ralph,
Re my comment on Tory supporters backing off from the unfair voting system argument -
The two things are certainly not linked in reality!! However, they appear to be linked in the minds of some Tory supporters because whenever Labour are either in the lead in the polls or have just won an election, some Tory supporters roll out the ‘Not Fair’ argument! When the Tories are either in the lead in polls or have won an election the ‘Not Fair’ argument seems not to get raised much and seems to not cause concern any more!
That’s the reason I made the comment ‘I bet the Tory supporters will be backing off from their claims of unfair voting systems now a poll has shown Labour support down’. In other terms, I was suggesting that their argument appears to be quite a fickle one because if they really believed the voting system to be unfair, why is it they are not so vociferous when the Tories are ahead in the popularity stakes – it seems it just doesn’t matter to them then and the clamour of ‘Not Fair’ goes away!
Maybe the only ‘Fair’ way is P R, but in my opinion that would produce so many hung Parliaments with no real chance of radical government, that it just would not be good for this country. The present system will never seem fair to those not in power, just as it did not seem fair to the majority of the electorate who did not vote Tory from 1979 to 1997 but had to endure landslide Tory governments.
It’s not necessarily an equal system, but in my opinion it’s the best anyone has come up with so far.
The system as we have it at the moment, is the one that works in the best interests of the country and the argumant about taking Scotland or Wales out of the equation is just party politics from the Tories. If we went down that route, where would it end – we would then probably have the argument that the North of England should have a separate administration from the South and the country would end up going back to how it was a few hundred years ago – ungovernable.
Richard Nicholson.
wilmslow.
Sorry for the double submission – apologies to anyone offended!
Kevin R:
I think you are pretty close with what will happen at the next G.E.
I really cannot see Labour polling any less than 35% and in my opinion will achieve 36 or 37%. I agree with Andy Stidwell that the Labour vote last time fell very low really to 36% and barring catastrophes from Gordon Brown I just do not see it dropping any more and that is indeed the problem for the Tories.
As I have previously mentioned, Labour support could even drop to 35% and the Tories rise to 36% and Labour would still have a small majority.
I think the Tories will poll about 36% and the decider is what percentage the Libs get and what percentage goes to others. I think the ‘Others’ will be higher next time because of disaffected Tory voters who disapprove of Camerons tinkering with ‘their party’ voting Green or UKIP.
I can really see a 36 – 36 – 17 and others on 11 which will give a Labour majority in the 30’s. Bear in mind that just a 1% bigger lead at these levels for Labour will give Labour a majority in the 50’s too!
So for me Kevin, its Labour next, a Lab/Lib coalition for the one after that (because of the problems the Tories will have following Camerons tinkering and subsequent defeat)and who knows from there!!
It is much to early to say this is the end of the Brown Bounce, it is in fact only the start, Cameron took over 4 months to give the Tories a bounce that stayed positive. During those 4 months Labour and the Tories kept switching for supremacy! I think we need to wait for about the same length of time to see where the votes are going to settle.
Nothing is certain, any election projections now are far too premature. After conference season later in the year and then the resumption of Parliament then will be a good time to see things settle down I suspect.
I assume this poll was done after the Glasgow/London terror attacks.
PS Anthony: With your new layout, if I press tab from the comments box its taking me to the big banner link to your homepage, rather than to the Submit Comment button, which is a frustrating bug. On Firefox 2.
Philip – that’s a new one on me. It does it on IE6 too. I’m afraid I haven’t a clue what’s causing it or how to cure it.
Gary – that wasn’t the Cameron boost. The effect of Cameron becoming leader – the “Cameron boost” – was the change that put the two parties neck and neck. The shift in the polls 4 months later that put the Conservatives ahead was the combination of the foreign prisoner release, the Prescott affair and the 2006 local election results – not a delayed effect of Cameron just being there.
Obviously Gordon Brown could do something wonderful in 4 months time and get a boost in the polls, but it would be a “Brown does unspecificed something wonderful boost”, not a “Brown boost”.
In the meantime Shift+Tab will work (I think Anthony needs to fix the Tab Order).
I think’s it’s fixed now.
Yes it is thanks Anthony.
I wonder if how much (if any) of the sustained boost in Tory fortunes came from the grasping of straws of the ‘Dave the Chameleon’ advert etc?
I know when I first saw the “New Labour, New Danger” devil-eyes advert I thought then that it was all over and I think ads like that can really backfire and say to the public “Yes they’ve changed, even we’re saying so now”.
Richard Nicholson,
I think you are confusing the difference between unfairness inherent in the system and unfairness arising from its application.
Thatcher achieved her landslides in 1983 and 1987 because she polled significantly more than the leading opposition party, so the FPTP system amplified her lead. The same was also true of Wilson’s 1966 landslide – and also those secured by Attlee in 1945 and Churchill in 1955. That is a “bias” inherent in the system which is what Liberals complained of long before they started hitting 20%+ after the formation of the Alliance.
The “unfairness” now evident is that the boundaries have been drawn such that Labour could still win a majority of seats nothwitstanding the Tories having won several % more votes. Your own comment in response to Kevin Rodgers’ analysis proves my point.
If the next election were to show Lab 38/Con 37/LD 20 / Others 5 and deliver a small Labour majority I would be disappointed but accept the result as “fair”. If however the result were Lab 37/Con 38/LD 20/others 5 and delivers Labour a majority of 30 with Tories 100 seats behind Labour I don’t see how anyone could describe that as “fair”.
And I would say the same if the positions were reversed. Tell me you would not.
Of course some of us totally disagree with FPTP as it will always magnify the winner and so believe a single tranferable vote is a far fairer system, such as used in Australia. The STV means no vote is wasted and so enagages the public far more, at the very least. (One can vote Green /UKIP or whatever first, for example, to warn the main parties of important issues but it is only how one ranks the possible winners that finally matters. And the possible winners you can put in the last places…)
Jack,
Australia uses “AV”, a modified version of STV using single member constituencies whereas STV normally works best on 3 or 4 member consituencies.
While our system is “first past the post” the Australian system could be described as “last man standing”.
The French have a single-member system which requires a majority (>50%) of votes cast in first round, with a rerun a week later for those seats not won this way, and from which candidates securing below 15% of electorate are excluded. In practice, in most seats only two candidates go through to second round, but they do have some three-way fights, in which case a “simple” majority (ie FPTP) applies.
They also use this system for their Presdiential elections – with the entire country as a single constituency – but only two candidates go through to second round.
There is clearly a cost attaching to the two rounds of votes, but it does have other merits – in particular in allowing candidates and electors to review the national and local position before deciding where to pledge their support in the second round.
The French system allows multiple / smaller parties to flourish while still delivering a workable majority in Parliament (most of the time). The emergence of “co-habitation” between a President and Parliament of different political colours is a result of the separate roles and timing of elections, and not an inevitable consequence of the system. This is equally true of the USA where it has more often been the case that Congress had a Democrat majority with a Republican President or vice-versa.
I agree, it is high time we had a debate about electoral systems in this country and some proposals for change.
I mean, making every vote count for something and ensuring that the result in parliament accurately reflects the overall view of the country.
The big problem for PR in the Uk is that “Turkeys Don’t Vote for Christmas”.
In almost all Uk elections the majority of MP’s standing for re election get re elected. The introduction of Pr would put far more at risk than a conventional FPTP election.
The only time FPTP puts more at risk is when the government looks like getting pasted at which point it hasn’t really got the authority to make such a change, and even if successfull risks an even bigger pasting in the election.
So it’s pretty unlikely to get PR through the commons. The only likely ( and still not very) way it would come about is some form of PR elected House of Lords (senate) which people started to view as more legitimate that the House of lords.
The second possibility is that with regional government (or an English Parliament) which introduced PR for local government leaving Westminster as the only remaining FPTP elections.
It’s worth noting that most pro PR groups like the electoral reform society seem to be focusing more on these no westminster reforms that FPTP for general elections, perhaps as a long term strategy to isolate FPTP for Westminster only.
Peter.
In almost all elections under any system, FPTP or PR, people are more likely to get re-elected than not. Especially in ‘list’ systems of PR.
I’ve said it before, I can not imagine situations like Portillo losing his seat under PR, he’d be too high up the list.
In FPTP if you get 35% of the votes or 30% or 40% the difference can result in hundreds of seats difference. In a true PR system then you’re just talking a 5% difference, the vast majority will keep their seats regardless.
Philip,
Yes, but in that first PR election the difference between the 5% PR change and the FPTP result can be “hundreds of seats” and in order to get PR you need to get a majority of MP’s, many of whom would be at risk in the first change over election, to vote for it.
Peter.
Cllr Cairns is quite correct about the (un)likelihood of changing away from FPTP for Westminster. But actually that was not what I was advocating further up this thread.
Apart from the obvious question – why should a party vote to keep itself out of office ? – the personal factor would ensure that MPs in marginal seats (from all parties) would take a “principled” stand to protect their own seat. This would inevitably be one of those issues on which a “free” vote would have to be allowed.
Equally, changing the system to protect one’s party from a drubbing is not likely to work. Francois Mitterand tried that in France in the early 80s and still lost the ensuing parliamentary election – though by not as large a margin as would have been the case under FPTP. In the event, Chirac’s RPR government changed the system straight back, and, apart from European Parliament elections where they always used a national list system, France has not toyed with electoral reform since. The French system works, but probably because the two-round voting system mitigates the wilder swings in number of seats simple FPTP can throw up in a multi party election.
In a British context, PR was conceded by Labour for the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly to keep the Lib Dems on board. Ironically, the result was to lose Labour their expected domination in both countries while the top-up system benefitted Tories and both Nationalist parties most. I am sure that Blair and Brown regretted having made this concession from May 1999, possibly even as early as May 1997, but did not feel able to go back on the deal agreed in the Scottish convention.
Having seen the consequences, Labour would have to be really desperate to make the same mistake in Westminster. Lib Dems may dream of a hung parliament in which they finally secure PR at Westminster, but the reality is that any coalition will break-up over the issue, precipitating a new election. A clever Labour leader would ensure that the actual rupture was presented as being over something unrelated.
On the other hand, I can see benefits in adopting the French system for Westminster elections. This would allow working majorities for the strongest party yet ensure that the main opposition parties were not significantly under-represented.
Had we had such a system in the UK, it is possible that the Tories would not have been faced with total wipe-out in Scotland & Wales in 1997 once it was clear that Labour had won, and we could well have had a hung parliament in 2005.
At other times, Labour would not have been banished from rural England as they were in 1983 & 1987. And yes, the Lib Dems would benefit too since their supporters would be free to vote LD in the first round regardless of the relative strength of the other parties. They might thus win many more seats from both Labour & Tories.
Sorry for the double post,
One consequence of Mitterand’s switch to PR in 1980s was to let LePen’s National Front into Parliament for the first time since the 1950s. They won 30+ seats at that election which gave them a firm foothold across the south coast and in several large cities from which they have not been dislodged since, even after the switch back to 2-tier FPTP, as they have built up their local strength.
As we saw with the European Parliament elections in UK, while the LDs finally got some MEPs elected in 1999, by 2004 this was allowing fringe parties like UKIP and Veritas to pick up seats and funding from a low electoral base.
PR has also worked against Labour in many of the Mayoral elections across England. One place where it has worked in their favour is actually London, where Tories took 11/14 of the FPTP seats but were pinned back to 12/25 after the top-up process.
I don`t agree that Labour’s support could not go lower than 35-26% which they achieved in 2005. Labour has polled lower in 1983(28%) and 1987 (31%) and 1992 (34%) and remember 1992 was a close run thing until the end and Labour had “modernised” for several years.
Therefore it is not inconceivable for Labour to poll in the low 30’s and the Conservatives to get 40%, especially since the LD vote seems soft and most LD seats are in Conservative areas.
The reason to abolish FPTP and put in either STV or PR is simple; there is a consistent anti-Conservative majority throughout the UK. 2/3rds or so of the people consistently reject Tory policies–if anti-Tory parties realised this and understood that coalitions are fine then the Tories would be consigned to oblivion. Simple. For a PR version, simply have a minimum quota -say 5%- before a ’seat is allocated. Then one has to take the consequences be they BNP or whatever. Or do we only agree with democracy when it returns the pople we like? (Conside the rejection of the legally elected Hamas as one related issue and our support for militray dictators like Pakistan…)
And yes, I know AV. The reason why it is good is that it is the person least loathed who gets elected, a fine improvement on FPTP where a minority candidate (but one whom the vast majority may abhor) can get elected. It also allows for protest votes (Green / keep my Hospital / UKIP)to be amde and not be wasted as they basically are in FPTP. This engages the elctorate as they can vote for whpoever they like and not ‘waste it’. I might add I fully approve of a shift of elections to saturday- the current situation is fracical-we have voting but people can not watch the consequmeces of it as they have to go to work in the morning. If we had Saturday elections, closing at 6, counting could start at 8, basically be over by 1 am and everyone could have watched it. An excellent idea for the elctorate to see the consequences of their actions.
I wonder, Jack, whether by AV you mean the Australian system (rank candidates in order) or “approval voting” (just tick those you would be prepared to see win). The latter is simpler, less liable to confuse voters (easier to vote /fewer spoiled ballots) and will nearly always produce the same result.
It has I believe also been shown that it will usually produce the same result as FPTP – but has the merit that no voter has to worry about “wasted” or “tactical” voting.
Instead in Australia you get the problem of “donkey voting”, especially because of their compulsory voting. This is where people write 1 at the top of the list and then go down 2, 3, 4 etc
Having your name at the top of the list is estimated to be worth upto 2% of the votes.