Tories back to 10 points ahead
Through December there were some somewhat contradictory polls – we saw YouGov putting the Conservatives way up at 45%, then an ICM poll showing Labour recovering. That was followed by a YouGov poll that also showed Labour recovering…but that was taken in the few days before Christmas when it’s had to believe a reliable sample could have been drawn.
It looked like Labour might have been recovering. Populus’s poll this month didn’t show the same sort of recovery in Labour’s support, but it did show the Tory lead falling thanks to them loosing support to the Liberal Democrats. Now two new weekend polls, one from Ipsos MORI for the Sun and one by YouGov for the Sunday Times suggest the Conservative lead is back up into double figures.
MORI’s topline figures, with changes from last month, are CON 42%(nc), LAB 32%(-3), LD 15%(+1). YouGov’s figures are CON 43%(+3), LAB 33%(-2), LDEM 14%(-1) – though that is comparing things to the poll done at Christmastime, comparing it to the previous YouGov poll the Conservatives are unchanged, Labour up 2, the Lib Dems down 2.
We can’t tell exactly what happened – it could have been that ICM’s poll and the Christmas YouGov polls were just blips or artefacts of the seasonal timing, and that actually the picture is pretty stable with the Tory party stable at around 40%, Labour recovering ever so slightly but still in the low thirties, Alternatively it could be that Labour had been recovering, but have been put back in their box thanks to the Hain funding row which has been ticking over during the week – both MORI and YouGov’s fieldwork was done mid-week. It’s now pretty irrelevant, whether there was a recovery or not, these two polls suggest Labour are back down in the low thirties.
On the Lib Dem front, there’s a contrast here between the Populus poll which showed them three points up and the MORI and YouGov polls which show no Clegg boost.
UPDATE: There is also a new ICM poll in the Sunday Telegraph. The topline figures with changes from the December ICM poll are CON 40%(+1), LAB 33%(-1), LDEM 18% (nc), so again the Tories up around 40%, Labour down in the low thirties but recovering slightly (remember the changes here are comparing the poll to the ICM figures that showed a big increase last month – 33% is still an improvement on Labour’s November’s figures) and no obvious boost for the Liberal Democrats.
UPDATE 2: Some more interesting stuff in the polls – the full tables of the YouGov poll are up here, I’ll have a proper look tomorrow.
Filed under: ICM, MORI, Voting Intention, YouGov
What are the Yougov figures?
Sean – didn’t have them earlier. Now up in the article.
Terrible polls for Labour really. I think this is showing the folly of polling over the Christmas period, but these post Christmas polls are looking very much like the pre Christmas polls, with the polls that were conducted over the Holiday itself, seeming to be rogue’s.
Labour haven’t had a bad Christmas period, and I’m not sure the Hain thing has been going on long enough to really filter into the polling data? So whats going on?
Mt guess is, theres two issues at work, and both will fill Labour with horror;
1. Brown has been all over the TV this week. Theres increasing evidence that Brown is proving a turn-off, and the more the public see of him, the worse Labour’s position get’s. Thats the opposite of the Cameron effect, where the more people see of him, the better the Conservative position gets. If that is going on (and the evidence os growing) how on earth will Labout get through a general election campaign with Brown in the spotlight every day for 3-4 weeks?
2. Labour are flatlining at around their core support, and nothing they or the other parties do really boost’s their position. I’ve suspected for a couple of weeks now, that Labour are seemingly stuck at between 30-33% for the forseeable future. Whether the Tories go up or down. Whether the Lib-Dem’s go up or down. Labour’s position seems to be stuck on the low 30’s.
Anthony , the new layout on Yougov’s website is ok but unfortunately now most of the links to the detailed data in the polls don’t work , hope that they have not been lost permanently .
Mark. Deary me – I’ll flag it up on Monday. It looks like you can work round it though, change the “/archives/pdf/” in the address to “/uk/archiveupload/” and they turn up.
The “economy” responses look rather partisan with both Conservative and LibDem voters predicting a recession in sizeable numbers (29 and 25% respectively, a further 27 and 25% also saying it won’t grow at all) whereas Labour voters still expect some growth in fairly high numbers
Well I said that the polls at the turn of the year looked suspect. And indeed we now have retrospective errors on them: both 2.2%. The Weighted Moving Average is 41:33:16 and it won’t be long before it gets to 44:30:16 I suspect with this absurd fiasco of Peter Hain (and as Guido Fawkes points out even Gordon Brown’s Leadership Campaign is in breach of Labour Party Rules) and the general miasma of incompetence.
As ever I look at the Scottish figures first and even with the usual caveats about sample size the 7% for the LibDems looks awful. On a UK scale that is equivalent to about 10%….
As with previous YouGov figures it shows Labour and the SNP neck and neck mid thirties, although 18% for the Tories looks higher than recent polls but that could just be sample error.
Peter.
Good results for the Tories.
Perhaps the sudden narrowing over Christmas/New Year were away from the trend, but my gut feel is we (in the Tories) need to move the agenda on a bit to a wide range of domestic policy to get into the mid 40s consistently.
Gaffs and scandals are not enough.
To be fair, a lot of policy work has been done, but often I doubt the public knows we are doing it.
Still looks to me like the political situation is fairly stable, rather than the received wisdom of being volatile. Again, its steady post-Conference not just over the last couple of months but also matching what people were saying they would think this time last year.
The good news for the Tories (and bad for Labour) is that this makes it look like our current lead is fairly strong and not flakey. However the concern is where do we go from here? If the ~40% who said a year ago they’d support Cameron’s Tories v Brown’s Labour are the ~40% now, etc, etc for the other parties . . . then what’s it going to take to cause a shift (any direction) in the polls.
If GIN’s #1 theory is correct then that must fill Labour MPs with trepidation. If the situation is like this at the start of the eventual election campaign, I just don’t see Brown improving the situation during it when up against Cameron daily.
As for detailed policy work, I disagree with the idea of announcing stuff now. Anything good will be nicked by the magpie’s in the government and thus unavailable for the eventual manifesto, anything unsuccessful will be attacked and used as a weapon (potentially in 2 years time still). The risks outweigh the gains IMO.
The work should be done, but the results need not be announced prematurely. Besides, the opposition should not just be planning to be a successful opposition, but a successful government. If Cameron is to be our next PM then lets hope he gets there knowing what to do to move this country forwards. That doesn’t mean announcing daily “headline grabbing initiatives” Blair-style a couple of years before he’s elected.
For all the doubters in my posting after the first POLLS of the new year especially by Populus I have been proved right again (which i said was a rogue POLL) . So many with little faith in my forecasts and predictions .
I don’t know why the Tory followers panic at the sight of a rogue POLL and the Labour followers leap with joy at one .
I agree with GIN in his comments – the Labour mishaps are helping the Tory boost slightly , but i honestly think that it has been proved over the last 4 weeks that even with no bad news coming in for Labour over the Xmas period and Brown getting more exposure in the last 2 weeks with his statements ,if this is the best they and the Liberals can do , they are gonna find it very hard to pull back up in the POLLS once the rot sets in – these POLLS show the trend now till the next election – with of course the odd rogue POLL showing through to worry some.
JOE JAMES BROUGHTON :-
You say that a lot of policy needs to come from the Tories – they can’t give out all their policies at once or too early – we have seen how Labour try to pinch them everytime – i believe it is working in the Tories favour that the public see Labour as without any new ideas and the Tories with new ideas that are filtered through gradually .
Having been a labour voter party supporter since 1979 I think Gordon Brown is an embarracement to the country and his party i find him far to, false,elusive,opportunistic, and out of touch for me he and his spineless allies removed Tony Blair for this!!!Im sorry but for the first time and it hurts to say but its Cameron for me at the next election so promise me David you WILL GET A GRIP ON;Tax,benifits including foreign nationals,europe and its influence on our laws ,council tax spending , public sector pay and pension settlements,,health and saftey laws,the human rights act,immigration,pc culture and so on please set us free from this awful staight jacket of a society we live in today if you can you will have my vote for life well we can all dream cant we!!
Cllr PETER CAIRNS :-
You wrote “As with previous YouGov figures it shows Labour and the SNP neck and neck mid thirties, although 18% for the Tories looks higher than recent polls but that could just be sample error”
Why do you find the Tory figure of 18% a sample error , but all the other figures especially for your party correct ?
I have said before – the Tory revival is not just an English thing – even Scotland as part of the UK wants change , but not the type that the SNP are offering.
I still believe that with a Liberal & Labour collapse at the next general election in Scotland the Tories could well take the 11 seats I have previously quoted !!
With regards to the polls I agree with GIN we will not see the the full extent of the Tory lead over Labour until Brown and Cameron go head to head we had a small preview of that over the election that never was and the swing to Cameron was quite astonishing and Im sure the Labour party are only to aware of this so I think Labour will set their sights this year and maybe next waiting patiently for Cameron to slip up in one form or another then go for a snap election while Cameron and the Tories are trying to recover when that will be is anyones guess but I think it will be Labours only chance but even if Labour are ahead in the polls when the election is called I still think the head to head will destroy Brown and the Labour Party
Mike, I am curious if your “Tory followers who panic” remark actually refers to anyone here or elsewhere in particular. I saw no such panic by anyone.
Not good for Labour, but I guess the only glimmer could that if the Xmas polls were rogues there is a (very) slight recovery. The LD’s have not yet had an impact – that is something we need to wait for, as well as seeing if the Hain story has affected these polls – my guess is it hasn’t, and this is the underlying position. If it has had any impact, this mornings Tory donor story may be interesting – I don’t think it’s particularly important in itself, but any linkage of the Tories to the super rich may help to puncture some of DC’s ‘man of the people image’.
The figures quoted above on the views of the economy split by party allegience are interesting. If a recession does occur, Labour is probably finished. If things turn out better than many expect, what will be the response of the Tory/LD voters who currently expect a recession? It may be that this is the underlying story of why the polls are where they are, and the ultimate result may depend on whether the more dire predictions are played out. My guess is that things won’t be as bad as many expect, and this factor may help Labour to close the gap in 9 – 12 months, but I wouldn’t bet my mortgage on it.
Usual responses on here from those who pick and choose the poll figures they like . Look at the detailed figures from the Yougov poll . The unweighted data shows Con 36% Lab 26% LibDems 10% Others 7% . This purports to show that turnout out will be 79% at the next GE some 10-12% higher than all other pollsters and these extra voters are all going to vote Conservative . This may be true of a self selected panel more interested in politics than the electorate as a whole , but is manifestly not a representative opinion poll of the whole electorate .
Mark Senior, you obviously have a thing about YouGov polling. As a member of the YouGov UK panel one would advise you to heed their results more then any others.
YouGov has been the only polling organisation to inquire about my views, and one is – by habit – a political beast that would like one’s views to be reflected. One suspects many fellow-members hold a similar viewpoint. As such, at a election, we are more likely to vote. Other “random” polling samples always seem to miss me by.
Add to which one likes the unweighted values. It matches ones forecast for Labour support. One would certainly regard YouGov’s analysis has more bi-partisan then the BBC’s George Osbourne [non-] story which it attempts to lead on today!
Gin’s idea about GB’s adverse personal effect is interesting.
Both the Times & Telegraph Polls asked opinion on “Welfare to Work” policies and got massive positive responses.Although both Labour & Conservative have policies on this it would usually be associated with the right of centre party I think. So we have yet another area of traditional Conservative thinking-like Immigration control and Crime reduction where the public expresses concern and approval for action.
It is no wonder then that Brown and Clegg are shifting policy rightward-but if the public really wants these sort of policies why vote Labour or Lib Dem?
Seems to me that there is a slow tide of opinion on “the state of the nation” which is moving from left to right. Question is who is trusted to deliver?
Brown’s credibility credentials have collapsed,and taken together with Gin’s idea, if/when the public seriously buy in to Cameron’s then I think Labour have had it.
This tip-over point is close I think-but not quite there yet.
peter,
as ever you are trying to down play the conservatives in scotland.their last poll was 19%.
one day the snp(if the are not lefties)will work out the tories are their best vehicle to power.politics is not as grown up in scotland as norther ireland where the nationalists and the unionists work together very successfully.the reactionary parts of the snp need to grow up.
Mark – I’m quite bemused by your recent obsession with unweighted figures. Weighted figures are what matter, the unweighted figures are a sign only of what would happen if pollsters didn’t properly weight their sample. YouGov often have to weight downwards older voters, but no sampling technique gives perfect samples just like that – ICM for example often have to weight up under 24s very heavily to get a representative sample.
The better a sampling technique is then the less weighting should be required, and large amounts of weighting technically reduce the effetive sample size and increase the volatility of a poll. But for our purposes it’s largely an academic point – we can tell from experience how volatile different pollsters are and as long as they are all correctly weighted to make up for the biases of the different sampling techniques, the raw unweighted figures won’t effect the final figures.
I don’t know what actual reason you are so certain the YouGov panel is more politically aware thn samples obtained using other techniques (well, beyond as you say, those people who desperately want to find fault with polls tht give low ratings to their party of choice). The overwhelming majority of panelists are recruited pro-actively to make up a panel that is balanced overall – very few just join through the website. At some points that will involve recruiting people with little interest in current affairs through advertising or surveys on entirely none political things like celebrities or sport – at other points that’s involved specifically recruiting people interested in current affairs because the panel was politically aware enough.
The really politically and socially marginalised are unlikely to be included in any poll, however it is conducted. Remember response rates are about 1 in 6 or something, so those uninterested in current affairs are able to massively self-deselect themselves from phone polls.
The difference in implied likelihood to vote is largely down to what the different pollsters do with the data and what questions they ask. YouGov polls have a proportion of don’t knows and won’t votes somewhere in the low 20s, ICM’s are normally in the high twenties or low thirties (though ICM assume that is partially down to the spiral of silence and reallocate many of those don’t knows). The differences in implied turnouts are much larger but are because YouGov assume all those people will actually vote, while other pollsters ask them their likelihood of voting and exclude various proportions of people who they think will not actually vote.
Mark
I really think it is time you stopped your vendetta against YouGov-they are a fine highly rated polling organisation with a good track record. Find another subject please.
Mark
Analysis of all the published polls since the beginning of 2006 shows that the only difference between the 52 YouGov results and the 118 from the other pollsters (on aggregate) is that the YouGov are somewhat more accurate (StD of their their “error” from the Weighted Moving Average is 2.1 rather than 2.7 – the mean “error” is 0.1 in both cases).
I always thought we applied weighting to get us from people who say they will vote (for whoever) to “actual” votes in the notional election we asking about. As far as I’m aware these two things are quite different and have been so for many years.
As far as Labour’s chances go, it seems that at last Labour’s competence on the economy is slipping:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article3177630.ece
Looks like steadily rising oil prices will ruin any chance of a Labour comeback. But, would anyone else do better?
I think Mike does have a point that some Tory supporters panic at the site of a worse poll or a rogue poll – (probably an unrepresentative sample of anoraks).
I seem to spend a certain amount of my life trying my best to calm people down on Conservative Home who seem to demand that every single poll is as good or better than the last one – and was slightly worried before Xmas that there would be a load of vitriolic posts on there criticising the national party because the next polls weren’t 45%!
Perhaps there is a nervousness that the lead may be related partly to scandals and gaffs. I agree with the other point that the Tories shouldn’t release all their policies to have them pinched – the trick is to set out clear aims without publishing hostages to fortune.
I am pretty sure that turnout at the next General Election will be in the mid to high 60s.
That seems a reasonable bet for an election which will be close.
Perhaps it will rise 7 or 8 points in marginal seats, and increase about 2 points in safe Labour seats.
I don’t have any statistical evidence for this – it’s a gut feel – but it looked like turnout hit rock bottom around 2002 (following the miserable turnout in the 2001 General Election) and has been on a gently rising trend since.
Mike,
It’s always difficult to put any real weight on the Scottish intentions because we are talking about samples usually under 200 and sometimes half that.
The Scottish sample is only 193 in this poll so you really can’t say that the Tories going up to 18% from 16% is a trend.
However the LibDems showing 7% when the lowest I’ve seen previously I think was 11% seems really low.
It’s the same with my comment on Labour and the SNP.
They seem both to be in the mid thirties and where as I suspect Labour are ahead, they could be anywhere between 32-40% and the SNP between 28-36%, so I wouldn’t really say anything other than we are clearly the two main parties in Scotland both probably polling more than the Tories and LibDems combined.
What we could have is the possibility that the switch to Clegg the LibDems in Scotland have become less attractive to Scots Tories who defected when they had a Scot in charge and the likes of Michael Howard reminded people to much of the Thatcher years.
It’s possible but I wouldn’t predict it on one poll with a sample of 193…..
Peter.
Someone earlier said this was a terrible poll for Labour. That’s not really true, since their vote is only down 3% on the last election. It’s more of an excellent poll for the Tories, taking most of their support from the Lib Dems, who are still down 9% on 2005.
Andy,
That’s what makes the 7% for the LibDems in Scotland stand out.
In the last Westminster election they were on just over 21%in Scotland , which means that, in theory, they could have lost two thirds of their vote and be down 14%.
If that’s true and they are still dropping , they are in free fall……
Peter.
I have a theory that a lot of well-off core Conservative supporters must have been on holiday over the Christmas period – thus accounting for their support dipping and now rising again.
I am surprised how badly the LibDems are doing. So far they have received no bounce at all – if anything they are doing even worse.
Clearly – a good poll for the Tories.
Regarding one or 2 posts about the LDs.
I agree that they are doing badly and, new leader or not, I still say they are going to get badly squeezed in the next election.
If there is any sort of a major mood for change in the electorate this will hurt the LDs. If you want to remove the Government the best way to do that is to vote Tory.
The LDs have benefitted in previous elections from Tactical anti-Tory voting. I don’t feel that sentiment will be there next time.
Unless Cameron slips on a major banana skin between now and the next election (and there is plenty of time for it) the Tories will take a lot of seats back from the LDs.
If the Tories can hold 42% and look to go higher this year then I think they will have an unassailable lead whenever the elction is.
A word about gaffs. The polling for these polls looks to have taken place before much of the news about the Hain issue broke. The Hain Gaff is another gift to the Tories and bad for Labour.
Time will tell but the Osbourne donation issue looks nowhere near as serious as the Hain episode.
For a start the money was given to the Tory party (not to Osboune directly) then chanelled to Osbourne to run his shadow chancellor office. Secondly, the money has at least been declared (although possibly not totally in the way it should have been.)
“If there is any sort of a major mood for change in the electorate this will hurt the LDs. If you want to remove the Government the best way to do that is to vote Tory.”
KTL, I think you’re probably right about that. When Labour won in 1997 they lost no seats to the LibDems at all – they gained Rochdale and Inverness, Nairn and Lochaber East. In fact, even in 1992 Labour they lost no seats to the LibDems.
If Osborne can produce emails saying he was told it was not a matter for the Register of Interests by that very department – having complied with all other rules, he should come out fine.. He can clearly show he had talks with them
BUT Labour will try and muddy the issue and what is more may succeed if all journalists show the quality [or lack of it] that Martha Kearney showed on Newsnight on Friday. She didn’t allow a Welsh Nat MP to reply to charges that he was ‘dispicable’ for saying Hain’s credibility was still very much in question and allowed the ‘Hain man’ to use up what time was left with a repeat of ‘I have no explanation of what happened but I am sure all is well’.
I am not a Welsh Nat, but he was treated disgracefully.
I also note that the Times / Sun have gone soft on Brown recently. The talk on some websites is that the review of Murdoch’s ITV shares has led to a softening of Murdoch’s approach to Brown. We will see if the combined effect of the BBC and Murdoch [and the Mail] press is to keep Brown afloat or whether he will continue to decline.
The Gov has not had a bad press in 2008. ‘Hain’ has an effect on us political anoraks, but doesn’t seriously affect most voters [more of a drip drip in the background]. It will be interesting to see if the PM’s high profile and a kind press continues to fail to help.
If he continues to stagnate does it mean the public will have passed a tipping point or at least that the Tory lead is made up of ’solids’?
Political Betting have been having an interesting discussion about whether Brown’s ‘this is not a relaunch’ relaunch and his daily appearances are actually detrimental in themselves.
On a previous thread I [half] jokingly said a particular poll where the Tories had gone down a bit and Labour had gone up a bit was because Cameron had not been in the news and neither had Brown!
Many a true thing is said in jest.
Sally C – I take your point that “Hain” won’t affect voters intentions in general and will be more of “drip drip in the background”. I agree with this.
The problem for the Government is that there have been a lot of “drip drip” stories in the last few months and it is cumulative effect of all these stories together that is important on voters intentions not one story in particular.
The biggest “drip drip” story that is hurting the Government is still Northern Rock which has been going on for a few months now without a decent solution for the taxpayer in sight. Now the NR Pension fund says they have a £100M hole in the Pension Fund and are asking for money. Where will this one end ?
I have to say my own opinion is (unfortunately)somewhere close to Philip Johnson’s i.e the results are pretty stable Labour 32ish, Tories 41ish with the Liberals maybe moving around a little more between 14 and 19.
I can see the sense in Cameron not making too many big policy announcements in case they get stolen inheritance-tax-style but I think it would be a mistake to keen too silent. I think most people generally vote for someone, not against someone. If by election time they don’t like Brown but they’re not too bothered about Cameorn either thay simply won’t vote at all. Mike,
I can’t quite remember what your prediction was – you suggested I should cut and paste it for later use but I forgot. Could you remind us what it was again? I know it was for the first week in February but I can’t remember what the percentages were.
Sorry, presses enter before reading that through. THe second paragraph was supposed to be addressed to Mike Richardson.
Sorry to have upset the Yougov supporters with my observations earlier today . As a point of interest I am a member of the Yougov panel to which helps to show that it’s representatives are more politically motivated than the population as a whole .
Yes Anthony , I accept that the weighting SHOULD eliminate any discrepancies in the unweighted figures because of a non representative sample . However the unweighted figures from all the polls show that the Yougov sample responses always have a greater response from over 55 ABC1s than they should do .
Further the essence of getting an accurate opinion poll of the country as a whole is to have a sample which is representative of the country as a whole . The panel used by Yougov is clearly NOT representative of the country as a whole . It’s members are clearly more interested in politics than the population at large witnessed by the fact that nearly 80% of them say they will vote in a GE whereas other pollsters find a figure in the mid to high 60%s and the figure at the last GE was of course in the low 60%s .
Yougov may produce useful polls in measuring the political temperature of that part of the population that are politically motivated but it requires a false assumption that the non politically motivated part of the population less interested in politics will behave in the same way to use them as measures of overall national public opinion .
I would welcome someone from Yougov able to give some evidence that their panel is rather more representative of the whole population than I have stated .
Mark,
As the polls are weighted to give as accurate a prediction of the intentions of those who will vote as possible it doesn’t matter in the slightest if the group you started with is 80% or indeed 405 likely to vote, as it’s only the ones who will vote that you will base your prediction on.
You seem to be moving towards saying YouGov can’t be relied on to give an accurate election prediction because it doesn’t the voting intentions of people who probably won’t vote, that’s just daft.
If you did a 100% poll of every voter in the country and everyone responded, which would be closer to the actual result?, The figure for the 100% asked or the one for the 60% who would vote?
YouGov like everyone else filters to focus in on the voters and the bit they cut out be it big or small is just chaff.
It’s not about testing the mood of the nation for the sake of it ,it’s about accurately trying to predict what will actually happen.
The proof that YouGov’s panel and methodology works is pretty obviously that they have a proven track record of getting poll results pretty damned close to the actual election results. I suspect that if you compared all the polsters unweighted results, weighted ones and actual election results you’d find that weighted ones are more accurate.
That’s why people weight results…..
Peter.
Peter , no I am not saying that Yougov cannot be relied on to give an accurate voting prediction because they do not poll the people who do not vote . I am saying they do not give an accurate voting prediction because they do not poll a representative sample of the whole population .
I recall that one of the first ever opinion polls in the USA in the 1940’s by Gallup had a massive sample number ( 40,000? ) but was way out on the final result because it only sampled people who read the Readers Digest and as it turned out their voting intentions were not the same as the rest of the USA population .
Noted your comments re the Yougov Scottish subsample . FWIW with the low subsample numbers , Populus had Conservatives at 11% and LibDems at 13% which does not agree with your hypothesis .
Peter , one further point , I have nowhere said that unweighted polls are more accurate only that looking at the unweighted data can give some clues as to whether the sampling is a good representation of the population as a whole .
If I were the Labour Party person in charge of boosting their figures I would
1. Have less of Brown and more of the other members of the Cabinet
2. Have fewer messianic policies for 50 years time but more policies for today such as how to clean hospitals
3. Admit the whole process of electing a Deputy Leader was flawed
4.Make Vincent Cable an offer to be Chancellor
Mark,
But representing the views of the population as a whole is pointless if it doesn’t give you the result you want, one that will reflect the final outcome. The objective is accuracy.
If you asked everybody in a factory lossing money that could be closing should it close the majority would usually say “No we want to keep our jobs”.
But if you asked the members of the board you may well get a different result and it’s that result that will be closest to the final outcome. It’s the board you sample because they are the ones who will make the decision that you are interested in.
It’s the reverse of the RD Poll in 40″s American, there they polled the wrong sample and got the wrong result. The key lesson from that isn’t to poll everybody but to poll the right people.
As I said previously the touch stone of that is how close you get to the final result, and so far YouGov is up there with the best.
You can never know till the votes are counted and you are constantly reviewing and checking your methodology, but I think you’ll find lessons have been learned and things moved on a bit in the last 60 years.
As to Scotland, different polsters with different methodologies produce different results in their UK polls, I think MORI had the Tories at under 10% last month but the number of identified Tories was only about twenty.
The issue with the YouGov 7%, is that it looks exceptionally low compared to previous YouGov polls over the last year or so using the same methodology and indeed the same panel.
The difference is that as Anthony is pointed out as YouGov use the Scottish TV region as a results break but don’t try to balance within regions then the very weighting system that means it’s UK samples are accurate can’t be used in the sub samples.
That’s why Anthony really only comments when there is a full quality Scottish poll, he’s got a reputation to think about, me I don’t give a monkey’s. For all there limitations sub sets are all I usually have and I find them interesting.
Peter.
Mark -
From the top:
1) You don’t know what the demographic make up of the YouGov panel is. No figures have been made public for a long time.
2) It is irrelevant anyway what the make up of the overall panel is. To give an example, imagine there was a panel that was perfectly representative, obviously you can get a very good sample from it. Now imagine that an extra 50,000 older, working class men from Wales joined. The panel as a whole would now be grossly skewed towards older working class welshmen…but you still have all the people you need for a perfect sample, there is just more choice when generating the quota of older working class welshmen. The overall make up of the panel doesn’t matter, it only matters that there are enough people of every social group and classification to allow a representative sample to be drawn (though for a business, it’s obviously advantagous if lots of discreet samples can be drawn at the same time so you can have lots of clients!)
3) The current YouGov sampling frame appears to get more responses from over 55s than are needed, so they have to be weighted down. Again, this doesn’t matter beyond slightly decreasing the effective sample size. Imagine 75 fewer over 55s checked their email that day, would the sample then be wonderful? Well, that’s the effect that weighting them down has.
4) There is no sampling technique that gives perfect results. Look at any tables and you’ll find some demographics needed a lot of weighting to get right. Phone polling tends to get far too few young people and needs to weight them upwards, there is no point comparing things to the platonic perfect sample cos it doesn’t exist (I haven’t checked, but I expect you’ll find MORI need the lowest level of weighting since they have the most control over their fieldwork, interviewers pick people to meet demographic quotas and can stop interviewing when they fill them. YouGov can invite people to match the profile, but if more respond then they have to weigh them down). The degree of weighting that YouGov uses isn’t higher than other pollsters – I just gave you an example from ICM’s weighting of under 24s last month, ICM very regularly apply a weight around 1.4 or so to under 24s, a greater weight than that YouGov use on over 55s.
5) There is no comparable data to demonstrate that YouGov respondents are more likely to vote than respondents in phone polls. The pollsters ask in entirely different ways, and there is very likely to be an interviewer effect. With the exception of YouGov pollsters ask people to give likelihood on a scale of 1-10, with the lowest number meaning definitely not voting. YouGov only determine not voting by including a not voting option when asking about voting intention.
If anyone came on here trying to claim there had been a rise or fall in likely turnout by comparing a figure taken from an interveiwer question asking directly about likelihood to vote using a ten point scale, to a figure obtained online by taking won’t votes from a voting intention question then they would rightly be laughed out of the place.
YouGov very rarely ask likelihood to vote, When they do the figures are not unduly high. For example, in the final polls before the 2005 election YouGov found 55% of people said they were 10/10 certain to vote, ICM found 62% and MORI found 70%. There’s a big spread there, causes by various reasons like how postal votes were included (thats a major reason why YouGov is lower, the percentage didn’t include postal voters), exact question wording, interviewer effect, question order and so on. Wording matters a lot in this question – it’s why ICM always preface the question with the words to the effect that “many people have said they wouldn’t vote in an election” – in any other question we’d dismiss that as having the potential to skew responses, but in this case pollsters try their best to get people to admit they may not vote. What differences there are between pollsters are as likely to be down to wording as sampling.
6) There is no evidence to suggest YouGov samples are anymore unrepresentative of the population than those obtained by other pollsters (beyond, of course, the obvious of having internet access)
If you want an answer from YouGov then feel free to email Peter, he doesn’t comment here.
I feel unhappy put in the position of defending YouGov here since I don’t write the blog from that standpoint. I hope I would defend ICM or Populus against unfounded sillyness in the same way, and while it’s probably obvious that I’m a support of past vote weighting so don’t favour MORI’s methodology, I hope I give a fair explanation of their case when that arises.
I’ve said many, many times I really don’t give a stuff what polls people believe, if they want to believe voodoo polls, or press-the-red-button polls on Sky, (or the findings of Scottish sub-breaks with tiny sample sizes Peter!) or whatever else then that is their call; no skin off my nose. My aim here is only to help people understand why there are differences between the polls, what the genuine differences and question marks are so they can base their opinions on something more than a visceral dislike of any pollster that give their party bad ratings.
I suspect past vote weighting sounds valid, but in practice can be a bed of nails.
If people are shifting their view they may well deny what they voted before.
A lot of (ex) Tories would have denied they voted as such in 1992 – after Sept. 92.
And some people have really atrocious memories – no head for details – and can’t remember.
JJB – “False recall”. I’ve talked about it here at length in the past, but it’s probably time i did another post on it (especially if relatively long time readers like you can’t remember the last one).
I think pollsters univerally accept that it is a factor theses days – the evidence from panel surveys is pretty conclusive that the same people will change their response to past vote questions – the dispute amongst pollsters is more how stable it is over time. ICM and Populus take the view that the pattern of false recall changes only gradually over time, so it is safe to weight by past vote adjusted to take into account an estimated level of false recall. Ipsos MORI take the view that isn’t stable and can change suddenly in response to events, so that weighting by past vote might actual cancel out and hide genuine changes in opinion.
FWIW, I think the main drivers of it are social pressure to claim you did actually vote, which tends to push up the people who claim to have voted Labour, and the way people report tactical voting. If you were a Labour supporter who voted Lib Dem at the last election because you were in a CON-LD marginal, then I suspect many would answer Labour if asked who they voted for at the last election because Labour was the party they really supported, the Lib Dem vote was just because of local circumstances…hence false recall produces a lower level of Lib Dem support than they actually got.
The headline for the MORI poll in the SUn on Saturday was interesting- It was something like ‘Battler Brown stays ahead’. This was the case because Brown was 3% ahead of Cameron on one of the head-to head clashes. Labour were 10 points behind. Pretty good headline for a 10 point deficiet.
Lukw – swings and roundabouts really. The Times poll showed the Tory lead halved, but headlined it as being bad news for Labour because Brown’s own figures had slumped. Their stablemate the Sun showed a great big 10 point Tory lead, but headlined it positively for Labour because Brown stayed just ahead of Cameron in their figures.
A reminder to always look at the figures themselves rather than someone else’s analysis
LUKW.
I note your comments about The Sun. Brown has put Murdoch’s holdings at ITV back on the table for discussion and so the paper will row in behind him for a while. Polls are like all statistics, they can and are being used selectively. In some cases, I would suggest this may come about from direct pressure from the Govt. If Murdoch is forced by the Government review to sell his shares in ITV he is said to lose 200 million?
Murdoch claims that he does not influence The Times. We will see.
I just want to check Mark that you are still sticking to your autumn forecast of a great Lib Dem recovery in the opinion polls by the Spring? Including YouGov.Isolated council bye election gains ie as in Thatcham last week don’t count but as I said before the May elections do as they will be measurable on a wide front against previous years. Are you also Mark forecasting that the Lib Dems will-as in 2006- outpoll Labour in the May elections? And do you think that any Lib Dem losses to the Tories will be less than last year,about the same or worse. Intrigued as to your answer.
Nick
Yes my forecast is that LibDem poll figures May time will be around the same level as they were last May .
My forecast for the May locals is entered in the pb.com competition , Labour to have a net small number of gains circa 70 with Conservatives and LibDems both losing a small number of seats 20-30 each . Labour will be able to spin this as a success but in reality they will be bumping along the bottom as all the seats being fought ( only 1/5th of those fought last year ) and were last fought in 2004 which was a very bad year for Labour anyway . As the majority of seats being fought are in the Met districts , Wales and other urban areas , Labour may actually outpoll the Conservatives as well as LibDems in actual results but not of course in notional figures that allow for the fact most of the Conservative leaning districts are not voting .
LibDems v Conservatives gains/losses should be virtually neutral as in deed they were last May in these districts as opposed to those areas which had allout elections last fought in 2003 .
Anthony , many thanks for the detailed reply , I will respond further when I have time but having to do some proper work at the moment .
Anthony,
Ouch…..
I am aware of the severe limitations of the figures for Scotland, but they are all I’ve got.
As such I try to look for definite trends If I think I’ve found them.
That’s why 7% for the LibDems looks unusual, it could just be an error but it looks a bit large for that. With the best periods for the LibDems in over a decade coinciding with two Scots at the helm, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to suggest that not having a Scottish leader might well have had an impact.
I can think of three reasons.
1) That could particularly be the case because of lack of recognition, Cambpell and Kennedy were household names (literally…) in Scotland before becoming leader, Clegg is an unknown.
2) Clegg seems to be to the right of either Kennedy or Campbell and a bit like a tort, not a great asset in Scotland.
3) Rightly or wrongly many Scots feel that both Scots leaders were stabbed in the back, and that hasn’t helped the Libdems image, particularly the “We’re the nice guys, you can trust” bit.
Peter.
“LibDems v Conservatives gains/losses should be virtually neutral as in deed they were last May in these districts as opposed to those areas which had allout elections last fought in 2003 .”
I think this may be an attempt to spin the LD ratings – which may be more favourable against the Tories in some of the areas voting this year,
but is deeply misleading nevertheless, because the
overall picture in May 2007 was the LDs taking a hammering
by the Tories (and sometimes even Labour).
Joe , sorry it is not spin but fact . As an example for the Met districts all last fought in 2004 ( as they will be this year ( 1/3rd of all the seats being fought this year ) , the actual gains/losses were :-
Con 19 gains from Lab 9 losses
Con 3 gains from LibDems 10 losses
Con 2 gains from Others 1 loss
Lab 22 gains from LibDem 16 losses
Lab 5 gains from Others 2 losses
LibDem 2 gains from Others 1 loss
Net Con +4 Lab -1 LibDem +2 Others -5
I am not interested in spinning what happened last May that’s history , but giving reasons for my forecast as to what will happen this May .
Mark
Actually the Lib Dem figures last May were not that hot with the average a little over 18% as compared to a bit over 16% today so you are only forecasting an additionally 2% which seems somewhat modest.I think Mark it has to exceed that before you can lay claim to a significant revival. Nevertheless fair enough you have posted a forecast so lets hear from Mike Richardson (Con) and Steve Wheeler (Lab) as to where percentagewise they think their parties will be -on average-in the polls come May.
I would hope (as a Tory) that in share of vote, we exceed the 40/41 of May 2007 (in 2004 it was 38%).
I am prepared, for some Labour gains (maybe gains and losses on both sides) because this is a fairly small round of elections (unlike 2007) and not our most fertile areas, although we need to show improvements in them too.
Labour should do better than their awful 26% in 2004, and probably above the 27% of 2007.
If they are above 30 per cent, then there should be some Labour gains.
Perhaps the Lib Dems will go down with about half each going to the other 2.
We are voting in my own area on Feb 7th.
In fact we have 2 votes that day – one is a local council by-election and the other is a County Council election.
I agree with previous views that by-election result should be treated with a very large pinch of salt but they are real votes and perhaps some useful information may come out of the result – such as a higher than usual turnout or a large swing to one particular party.
Joe , guess you are talking the notional vote shares rather than the actual vote shares . For interest these were :-
Mets
Con 2004 25.9% 2006 27.0% 2007 27.0%
Lab 2004 32.6% 2006 34.0% 2007 34.4%
LD. 2004 25.5% 2006 23.6% 2007 22.0%
Unitaries
Con 2004 30.9% 2006 33.5% 2007 32.9%
Lab 2004 29.6% 2006 28.5% 2007 28.7%
LD. 2004 24.1% 2006 25.1% 2007 23.8%
Districts
Con 2004 41.7% 2006 44.6% 2007 44.3%
Lab 2004 21.8% 2006 20.1% 2007 19.6%
LD. 2004 25.3% 2006 25.3% 2007 23.7%
Wards won
Con 2004 1012 2006 1015 2007 949
Lab 2004 .784 2006 .743 2007 712
LD. 2004 .604 2006 .579 2007 553
Anthony , thanks for your detailed response , some of which I do agree with . Yes weighting can and probably does make full amends for a bias in the sampling for demographic factors such as age/sex/ABC’s . No I do not know the make up of the Yougov panel but there is much anecdotal evidence that in the last 2/3 years an increasing number of politically active people have joined myself included and for example the urgings of Iain Lindlay on his site . Has it been enough to make the panel unrepresentative of the population as a whole a la Readers Digest in the US in the 1940’s – I believe so .
For evidence , I quote both the unweighted and weighted figures from the latest polls
Y/G unweighted Con 35.7% Lab 24.9% LD 9.6%
Pop unweighted Con 24.2% Lab 20.7% LD 10.2%
ICM unweighted Con 25.6% Lab 21.7% LD 9.2%
Mor unweighted Con 27.8% Lab 22.3% LD 10.1%
Y/G weighted Con 33.8% Lab 25.8% LD 10.6%
Pop weighted Con 23.0% Lab 19.9% LD 12.0%
ICM weighted Con 24.3% Lab 21.0% LD 11.0%
Mor weighted Con 27.5% Lab 21.9% LD 10.2%
Clearly the Yougov figures bear no similarity to those of any other pollster either unweighted or weighted and the difference is not simply one of being related to Yougov getting voting intentions from a higher 5 of respondents than other pollsters . Yougov are getting a greater % of responses saying they will vote Conservative and a lower % saying they will vote LibDem than all the other pollsters including Mori .
This discrepancy is before we get into whether weighting for past vote is justified or not and to what level and it is right that someone should question whether it is .
Does it all matter that we have this discrepancy . I feel it does . Prior to the last election all the pollsters were in pretty close agreement with their findings , now they are not . Variations from poll to poll due to ampling errors are to be expected but to me it is worrying that such a large difference has developed . Now it may be that Yougov are correct and the other pollsters are wrong but they cannot all be right and in something which is or should be a science this should not be the case .
Thanks to Mark for his detailed response, and for those figures which I found useful.
As he well knows,
the BBC, and Thrasher and Rawlings do a national projection from a large number of key wards, because they are not all contested each year, although 2007 was of course a big round, but with nothing in London.
There are also difficulties doing projections from places where there are lots of Independents.
Last year it was 40/41 to 27.
Joe , I should have made it clear that the figures I gave above for 2007 are for the Unitaries and Districts with only 1/3rd elections and do not include the substantially higher number with all out elections . They are therefore pretty much comparable to 2004 and 2006 .
Leaving that that anecdotally you think that lots of political people have joined. I can quite understand why you’d think it, in the public eye YouGov are associated with political polls so you’d expect people interested in politics to join. It doesn’t actually work like that. Most panelists don’t join through the website, they are recruited through other surveys or projects that are non-political. If panellists are recruited through a survey about pizza, why would they be unduly politically minded? I know all this, and see the break downs of the panel, but it even surprises me to be honest. I remember when we were doing some polling of party members and I looked at the actual numbers of party members we had amongst panellists, I expected a greater proportion of YouGov members to be party members than amongst the population as a whole and was actually quite surprised to find that they weren’t vastly over-represented.
The unweighted figures have no reason to be the same across different sampling methods (there is no reason why they should be. Phone polling for example tends to produce raw samples that contain too many Labour supporters, no one is sure why. It doesn’t matter because the phone pollsters correct for it). You’re left with weighted figures.
There are a number of potential causes of the differences, and it’s probably a mix of lots of them. One is YouGov doesn’t get refusals as part of the sample. Phone polls tend to get about 7% or so who refuse and I guess people who refuse to answer questions probably don’t join an online panel in the first place.
Secondly the phone polls tend to get a much higher level of don’t knows. Within that there are different potential reasons – it could be that the samples contain different proportions of people who don’t know if online panels do have more committed and political people, on the other hand it could be an interviewer effect: as you will know, ICM and Populus believe that many of those people who say don’t know are actually just reluctant to give their real voting intention to an interviewer and reallocate the responses accordingly. It could be a bit of both, or something else entirely.
Thirdly there is the weighting the different pollsters use – we know it makes a difference in support for parties, but they also have to decide what levels do they weight people who didn’t vote in 2005, or don’t remember their vote in 2005 or say they don’t idenfify with any political party? They differ, and therefore lead to different proportions of people not giving a voting intention. Some pollsters could be weighting them wrongly – hell, they could all be weighting them wrongly.
The blunt truth is that the raw samples don’t even pretend to be random at all in the case of MORI and YouGov, and aren’t actually random in the case of ICM and Populus. No one pretends they are representative when they are unweighted. When they are weighted, what they are weighted to is entirely the choice of the pollsters and they can be wrong or right, there is nothing to judge them against and consensus does not necessarily point to who is correct, as Harris showed in 1992 and ICM showed in 1997.
Political polling would be a science if everyone could get genuinely random samples with 100% response rates and get respondents to always give accurate and truthful answers. None of those things are the case, in the case of the first two, pollsters don’t even get close, not in the same ballpark. In many ways it is more an art than a science.
In the final published figures polls sometimes get different answers because they are actually asking slightly different things in terms of turnout or dealing with don’t knows. There are other differences because of sampling differences, weighting differences and so on. Until the mythical day comes when polls are perfectly random surveys with 100% response rates and cannot possibly be improved, I think different results are good. That’s the way things improve, some companies get the wrong, other people get it right, people learn, methods improve.
The bottom line in all of this however is that the YouGov C Lead comes out on average as the same as that of all the other pollsters aggregated, just slightly less variable. “There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays, and every single one of them is right” (great quote I recently found – see here if u r interested)
At least this site (unlike others) does not seem to go overboard in paying undue attention to the latest poll. A friend asked me recently what I thought the outcome of the next general election would be and I said we have almost no evidence at all as yet.
If pressed I’d hazard that there’s about a 30% chance of another Labour overall majority, 55% chance of a hung parliament (evenly between Lab and C largest party) and 15% C overall majority – and that almost whatever happens in 2008 I’d be likely to say much the same at the end of the year, unless an election were to be imminent – and with an equal lack of confidence that this would be right!
On turnout, Joe: the factors that cause high turnouts are usually ideological disparity (no), a close result (likely) and a national crisis (eg 9/11 in USA)(unknown)- so that between them it looks as if it matters whether one votes.
As at least one of these factors is likely to apply, I’d expect a somewhat higher turnout than last time, but with the general trend downwards it may well not exceed 65%.
Welcome to this site Robert Waller-we are for the most part friendly to each other here and reasonably respectful of each others views . Occasionally Anthony has to indulge in some censorship to keep us on the straight and narrow but not often.
Are you the same Robert Waller who as a leading pundit of his day predicted a big majority for Harold Wilson over Ted Heath in 1970 and continually dismissed Margaret Thatcher’s chances or was that someone else? I see that you only rate the Tory chances of gaining a majority at the next GE as 15%!!! Why so high? That would be unlike the Robert Waller I am thinking of. Mind you is there any chance of me having a wee wager with you at those odds? In these days of credit crunching and worthless Northern Rock shares a man must seek more reliable sources of income wherever he can.
Nick Keene
I notice you say ‘for the most part’ friendly and ‘reasonably’ respectful before trying to have a (doubly inaccurate)go at me!
1. I wouldn’t have done my GCSEs (or O levels) in 1970, so it would have been both flattering and foolish to laud me as a pundit then …
2. On my hesitant and under-trailed opinions, which so seem to offend you, did you bother to get through to the bit where I said “with an equal lack of confidence that this would be right” ?
This would have suggested that I’m not in the business of betting on this (isn’t that another site anyway?). As I said, no-one actually knows.
I suspect you are a partisan. I am not.
For what it’s worth, though, I am the person who made a five figure sum betting that John Major’s Tories would win the 1992 general election, and that was nothing whatsoever to do with my subsequent meetings with him in the Cabinet Room and elsewhere in No 10 as an adviser on polling research.
Perhaps you may have mistaken me for someone else, or something.
Is it any longer possible to draw conclusions from previous trends in Labour/Conservative support levels?
I find the volatility of the polls over the last year to indicate that the electorate is far more sensitive than before to image, press coverage, and politics in general.
Ideological differences no longer guarantee a “core vote”, since they’ve largely disappeared, and policies are formed more and more according to what the policy makers judge the voters want, rather than trying to sell us a coherent set of ideas, and such judgements seem to be coming from analysis of the polls.
In a similar vein, it is natural to be wary of making predictions – especially of events, and so you’ll quite often see closing remarks like “interesting times ahead!”
Robert Waller
Don’t spoil my fun…you could have pretended to be the Robert Waller I am thinking of for just a little while!…he is probably playing his harp somewhere I guess….you hardly upset me or offended me with your opinions Robert but you cannot virtually dismiss the Conservatives better than sporting chance of winning the next election outright without expecting somebody to tweak your tail. I don’t know if your prognosis is based on the ‘uniform swing’ argument ie that the Tories have to be 10 points ahead in the polls before scenting a majority. This view has been debated many times on this site and by less allegedly ‘partisan’ contributors than I with the consensus being that a uniform swing is most unlikely, indeed I contend that an unravelling of the anti Tory tactical vote is well in progress. I would say that the last 4 general elections offer less of a guide as to what might happen if The Tories were to win by that margin than the 1987 election. Above all else if the Tories are heading for victory it is not because they are so popular-they are not- but because the government is so widely despised even by their own supporters. People won’t vote for a Mr Bean.
If 32% say they will now, and the coverage can’t get much worse, then it’s likely that Mr could end up just as popular as Mr Snake or Mr Giraffe.
Nick
First of all, I am pretty certain that there isn’t another Robert Waller who said anything about the 1970 election – it must have been someone with a different name. It is true that a lot of people called that one wrong – including ‘yer darling Harold’ himself, of course! – but even if I had been old enough I doubt I’d have been among them as I did become interested in elections during the great byelection blitz of 1968-69.
In a way it’s partly that experience that guides my tentative – and I repeat, if you look at the way I presented my non-predictions originally, you cannot in fairness call this ‘dismissing the C chances’ of an overall majority. Historically I think Oppositions have been much further ahead in the mid-term slump period; sometimes they have won, sometimes lost.
On uniform swing, most elections have conformed fairly closely to this pattern overall and it tends to be the wishful thinkers who ‘dismiss’ it. Parties may do slightly better in marginals (usually incumbents) but there is unlikely to be anything like the end of the way the electoral system is currently biased against the Conservatives.
That is because the main reasons why the C need to be around 8 or 9% ahead for an overall majority will still pertain:
1. The over-representation of Wales and to some extent inner city seats.
2. The lower turnout in Labour seats – a very striking feature.
If the turnout rises, this may benefit Labour as it was largely their supporters who did not vote in 2001 and 2005, whne there was no real chance of them losing.
It’s not really so much the boundaries or alleged tactical voting.
In sum, the Conservatives could win an overall majority, but there is really rather little evidence that it will happen at present, just partisanship; it’s a mountain to climb. I know few impartial observers or level-headed Conservatives who think there is a high chance of it; most talk of victory in two leaps.
There is an ancient philosophical problem, is there not, about distinguishing the ‘is’ and the ‘ought’.
Robert Waller
Oh yes indeed there was a pundit bearing your name way back in time but never mind I am more interested in your political points to which I respond as follows
1 You make no comment on my point about the government’s popularity which with the current economic outlook hardly looks set to improve. Oppositions don’t win elections governments lose them. That’s what happened in 1997 and that’s what looks to me increasingly likely to happenen whenever Brown takes the plunge in the next two years.As for turnout I completely disagree that the liklehood of defeat increases the chances of Labour supporters turning out. Opposition supporters especially Tories are much more motivated when a government becomes loathed as this one is whereas government supporters in this case Labour become more not less lethargic with time with the memories of how they once hated the Tories having faded to the point of indifference.
2 The longer a PM in this situation clings to office the greater the feeling of time for a change will grip the country as in 1945,1951,1979 and 1997.
3 The Lib Dems are weaker than at any time in the last 20 years. one third of their vote has deserted back to the Tories. It is their weakness plus that of UKIP which will help the Tories to register the swings they need in many of the seats they need to seize
4 The number of Welsh seats is comparitively small and the Tories have never even in their halcyon days commanded a majority of them .It is not an impediment to Tory victory.Your point about inner city seats is true but to some extent it has ever been thus.
5 In my constituency lots of middle class voters have not bothered to vote at all in years because they felt that the Tories were unelectable and that Labour if not exactly their cup of tea were running the economy in a way that did not affect their well being. I can tell you that all that began to change over a year ago. They will vote en masse next time Tory to get Labour out because they are angry. Very angry.
Nick , whilst I agree it is unlikely that Brown and Labour will recover from their current levels of unpopularity , it is not impossible . The Conservatives were even more unpopular in 1981 , at times in 1985/86 and in 1990 and won the subsequent general elections .
Your statement that LibDems have lost 1/3rd of their vote to the Conservatives is plainly false . The latest polls show ( comparing vote at the last GE with intention now )
Populus 1/7th
ICM 1/5th
Comres 1/6th
with in all cases a small compensatory movement from those who voted Conservative in 2005 but say they will vote LibDem now .
I find no evidence talking to people at work or in the pub that voters en masse are angry with Labour . Certainly they are unhappy with things at the moment and have been for some time but angry – no . The only issue that excited any real interest and political discussion for most of them was the lost CD data . Other than that most people are continuing to live in a state of political apathy not too happy with Labour but not enthusiastic over any other party either .
Nick,
Robert is quite right – there are some parts of the electoral “bias” towards Labour that are pretty much set in stone, like Welsh over-representation and for all intents and purposes the very low turnout in inner city slum seats.
Increased turnout might well help Labour as Robert says, but it’s possible it might actually reduce the appearance of bias in the system (imagine Gordon Brown enthused traditional Labour voters in safe inner city seats who hadn’t bothered voting in recent elections because the Conservatives were out of it and they didn’t like Blair. Labour will pile up extra votes for no return in seats, resulting in the electoral system appearing to become fairer).
Other bits of the electoral ‘bias’ are more variable and dependent on public opinion, most importantly tactical voting. Martin Baxter demonstrates its importance using two wonderful graphs on his website here – they are of seats where the Conservatives have between 35% and 40% of the vote, and seats where Labour have between 35% and 40% of the vote. Labour hold lots of theirs because the opposition vote is split. The Tories hold few of theirs because voters have unifed behind the party best able to beat them. Obviously, should the Tories become more popular and Labour less so this can change… but it won’t change things that much.
On a straight uniform swing the Tories need to be 11% ahead. In reality my guess is they could do it on a smaller lead than that, because of disproportionate swings and changes in the pattern of tactical voting, say 7% or 8% or so… but Robert just said that he thought they could do it on 8% or 9% so it’s not like there’s a huge difference in opinion. If the Tories get just a small lead over Labour then, unless the Lib Dems have been completely smashed, they are NOT going to have a majority, and probably won’t be the largest party.
Mark – I think 1985/6 is the more useful example. A 1981 style recovery would require a popular war and the main opposition splitting into rival parties, a 1990 style recovery would need a change in leadership. 85/86 is a better example of a government recovering without some major event to provoke it (though of course, who’s to say there won’t be an ‘event’ that saves Labour?)
This doesn’t look like Dr Robert Waller’s style actually, but I apologise if it is.
Actually I think it is,
Robert I think I disagree with you on the likelihood
of defeat not urging Labour supporters to turn out.
It wouldn’t be on the scale of Tories appearing from under stones in April 1992,
but surely there are at least some Labour non voters of 2001/2005 and basically Labour but Lib Dem 2005 voters who would rally to the polls if the Tories looked like winning or doing well.
Sorry I am disagreeing with Nick Keene, not Robert Waller.
I’ll read all this properly later!
Nick, don’t you think that I’d be in a better position than you to know if there are two people writing on this subject with my name (yes, Joe, it is me – I’ll say just two words – Twickenham Riverside!)? Still, I won’t be discourteous enough to assume that just because you’re wrong there that you’re wrong on everything else!
so …
1. How can you or anyone else be sure of what the economy will be doing in 2009/10? I am known for being accused of economic determinism myself, but the best evidence I have (from quite an authoritative source, but still an economist!) is that our best guess is a slowdown, but not a recession – which is consonant with a decline in Labour’s position since 2005, though not a wipe-out (the Tories will need about 90-100 gains from Labour for an overall majority).
As for turnout, as I’ve said on an American thread here, it tends to increase as elections appear close. If there had been compulsory voting in 2001, God forbid, Labour might have been 15% plus ahead. You can tell this from polling and British Election Study analysis.
Incidentally, that links with one of Anthony’s points: yes, a higher turnout might reduce the pro-Labour bias (while not helping the C), but I’d guess the differential between Lab and C seats would remain.
On the economy in general as a guide, if you think it’s important, as I do, I have always suggested looking at the ‘best party on the economy’ question rather than voting intention, which I actually think isn’t very helpful (as a pollster myself from 1986 to 1998). The last I saw had the Conservatives 2 or 3% ahead, which I think is a pretty good stab at what would happen in a general election now. But the future? Unknowable!
2. I could quibble with the selective figures you give eg Churchill in for only 5 years, Attlee 6, Callaghan 3, Major 7, Brown 2 or 3 … compared with the re-election of Thatcher after 8 in 1987 (an election you mentioned somewhere), Blair after 4 and 8 in 2001 and 2005 … but actually I agree time for a change is an independent variable which probably reduces Labour’s chances of a fourth term. It doesn’t get the Tories to an overall majority necessarily, though.
3. whether the Lib Dems are weak now is arguable and irrelevant. How strong will they be in 2009/10? It just takes one of their byelection specials to get them back into the 20s in the polls. And such is their incumbency power that I myself think that even with say 13 or 14% of the vote they would not lose more than 10 or 15 seats. Now that IS one area where unoform swing does not apply!
4. Ever thus and still will be. I’m not making the ludicrous point that Tories need to win inner city seats to win an overll majority – they don’t, no more than Labour needed seats in Surrey etc – but just to support the explanation of the electoral bias, and how it is likely to continue (which you doubted).
5. Subjective, subjective. Turnout among the middle class has demonstrably been higher than working class in recent elections, probably more so than ever before in 2001-5. Angry? You may be. So may some others. But I try to quantify, to be dispassionate and as I’ve said, not to mix up what I may want and what I think is most likely to happen.
Though I’d agree on one or two things: what does Robert waller know? Either of them?!
I think the Lib Dems might have a tip over point.
If they had just 13%, that would surely be below the point where lots of them would lose on a national swing (down over 9 points nationally).
I doubt they will go as low as 13% though – 17/18% seems a more credible figure. I’d like them to be destroyed – but that’s another matter.
I have done an analysis since the last election, based on a 6-poll rolling average and uniform probabilistic swings using Anthony’d notionals. An SNP 15% rise is assumed, together with a calculation of LibDem incumbency based on previous elections where their national vote declined.
For a brief 1 week period in December 2007 the Tories crested to a forecast 15 seat majority, but now appear to have declined again. This was the first occasion since 1992 that a Tory majority of any kind was forecasted..
Con/Lab left hand scale (blue/red lines); LibDem right-hand scale (yellow columns)
http://www.titanictown.plus.com/bigpic.jpg
Some interesting stats… Since May 2005 the “average” forecast is
Con 254
Lab 310
LD 48
Nats 17 (based on +15% poll assumption)
Oth 3
NI 13 (SF abstain)
62% of the time a Hung Parliament has been forecast…
36% of the time a Labour majority….
2% of the time a Tory majority…….
73% of the time Labour was forecast to be ahead of the Tories in seats….
viz
http://www.titanictown.plus.com/seatlead.jpg
The Tories don’t appear to be doing well enough to expect even largest party status at the next election, never mind a majority. A hung-parliament remains odds-on, but we are now past the half-way stage of this parliament, and might expect the balance to start moving back to Labour…
Mark Senior
What do you mean by the latest polls? The latest polls were YouGov/ MORI/ICM not Populus or ComRES.
Robert Waller
Where did I suggest that there would be a recession? Nobody knows that one . What I suppose I am suggesting is that a number of factors are combining to reduce if not end the feel good fsctor literally as we speak.At the very least we have a slowdown possibly a slump in prospect and I won’t even dwell on the likes of inflation , public spending, house prices, consumer confidence , public and personal debt. A lot of chickens are coming home to roost and I think-unfortunately for all of us- that it will take longer than 2 years for all of them to get their necks wrung.
Anthony
I am not denying that there is an electoral bias against the Tories but there is nothing new about that.Nor are the predictions that the Tories can’t win as a result-I have heard it all before. Obviously if the opposition in a Labour held seat say with a 5,000 majority like Dover-no 90 on the Tory target list- continues not only to split their votes between a Tory challenger (16700), a third placed Lib Dem(7600) and a fringe party of the right ie UKIP(1,200) and even worse from the Tory point of view with others still voting tactically to keep the Tories out by supporting Labour then the Tories cannot prevail.However it would not surprise me in the least to see the Tories take this seat with a 1,500 majority or more having taken 5.000 votes or so right across the board from all of the above with votes moving in both directions between Labour and Lib Dem.I won’t dwell on turnout for who can predict that? I simply do not accept that it is wishful thinking to suggest that such an outcome cannot be repeated all over the country or that the Tories only have a 15% chance of getting a majority. It’s much better than that although I do agree with Robert on one thing -the Tories still have a considerable part of the mountain to climb but then of course I am sure that somewhere along the line the late Sir E Hillary and the Hon D Cameron must be related…
Nick , neither Yougov nor Mori show a comparison with how people voted in 2005 although Mori do in some polls . The other 3 pollsters do in every poll and clearly show in all their recent polls nothing like 1/3rd of LibDem voters moving to the Conservatives and an admittedly small number moving in the opposite direction .
I suspect the economy will avoid a recession (I hope it does) but it will be slow growth, and there will be concerns, and sectors in difficulty.
To add a footnote to my last message and with no idea of the latest odds offered by the bookies I would at this stage give the Tories a 30% chance of a majority and (overall) a 60% chance of being the largest party. Those figures may or may not shorten as we get towards 2009 -but that’s for the future.
Nick, apart from wishful thinking, what are you basing your probabilities on?
Nick-these odds from BestBetting now:-
Date of GE
2008 Best14/1 – Worst 6/1
2009 Best 1/1 – Worst 0.64/1
2010 Best 1.38/1 – Worst 1.1/1
Most Seats
Con Best 0.84/1 – Worst 0.67/1
Lab Best 1.22/1 – Worst 1.00/1
Overall Maj
None 1.75/1
Con 1-25 8/1
Lab 1-25 10/1
RodCrosby
History.
The thing I always say in responce to the ‘opposition has to be miles ahead int he mid-term’ argument is that that only applies when the Conservatives are incumbant and Labour in Opposition. There are examples of Labour being streets ahead in oppositions nd still losing- but never the other way around. The Tories in all of the last two elections did better int he election than in the mid term. There has never been a swing back to any incumbant Labour Government in an election which has overcome a Tory lead which was registered in the mid-term. I therefore don’t see how this point holds.
One further thing. Given the still hopeless Tory scores in Scotland, they must be doing proportionatly even better in the rest of the UK by a few %. That might have some impact.