Ipsos MORI February poll
MORI have released their monthly political monitor. The topline figures, with changes from their January poll, are CON 39%(+2), LAB 37%(-1), LDEM 16%(nc). The fieldwork was conducted between the 21st and 26th February, so it’s actually slightly older than last weekend’s YouGov poll.
The two point Conservative lead seems much smaller than that shown in other recent polls, but is an improvement for the Conservatives from the January MORI poll which – uniquely amongst all the polls in the last four months – showed a Labour lead. The 37% figure Labour are recording in this poll is significantly higher than the level of support they are recording in other companies’ polls, but is actually marginally down on January’s figure.
It is difficult to know what to make of this – in hindsight I’m tempted to dismiss the January MORI poll as a rogue, and therefore see this one as good for Labour. Overall though we shouldn’t obsess too much over the ups and downs of individual voting intention polls since right now the next one is likely to contradict you. Leads and figures seem rather erratic at the moment, probably because there isn’t a clear trend so we are seeing only noise – the Tories in the high 30s or low 40s depending on the pollster, Labour in the low thirties to mid thirties depending on the pollster, Lib Dems around 16%-17% or up at 21% depending on the pollster.
On MORI’s other questions, crime and immigration remain the most important issues by far when asked what the single most important issue facing the country is. On the combined question that asks people to list more than one important issue they lead with 50% and 44% respectively, following by NHS on 25% and then the economy on 18%. The economy has actually risen significantly up the table – last month it was slightly higher at 20%, but looking back it never rose above 14% last year, it peaked at 11% in 2006, in fact you have to go back to 1999 to find a time when as many people thought the economy was one of the important issues facing the country.
Anthony.
Why so long on the fieldwork?
This was started before the Comres poll [showing an 11 point Tory lead and Labour on 30!] and after the You Gov.
Anthony. Is not 8% an impossibly low figure for “Others”? If so, what does that say about the rest of the figures?
Sorry that should say …. before YouGov.
I truly think MORI need to review their polling methodology.
Andy D -
I think all the others should modify theirs
It could be looked at as a best case scenario for Labour. In that light, it’s not looking great.
Also I’m wondering what the effect of recent confusion in the libdem ranks will be.
Yet again Mori is way out compared to all the other pollsters. The WMA was 39:33:17 when they completed their poll, and is now 40:33:17 with the YouGov. Mori’s last effort was 6 points out (both on the WMA and retrospectively) and I expect this one will be as well.
I can’t see Lab or LibDem doing will out of the Referendum fiasco, but we shall have to see what happens.
John tt’s point is very apt, and again, don’t lets get tied up with WMA’s. These different polls are producing consistent divergences. Someone is right, and someone is wrong. Who we choose to select at the ‘correct’ pollster seems more to reflect people’s own political persuasions. I would love to be a fly on the wwall in some of these companies officies – they must be getting very nervous, as somewhere down the line someone’s reputation will take a very big hit.
Sally C – MORI’s fieldwork takes much longer because they do it face-to-face in people’s homes rather than over the phone (why it took longer for them to publish once it was done I don’t know)
It’s tempting to dismiss MORI’s accuracy sometimes, but then their exit poll with the 2005 general election was 100% correct (although that was a combined MORI-NOP poll).
ANDY STIDWELL – Exit POLLS are more accurate because they are asking people once they have actually voted – not much chance of getting that wrong – MORI obviously are more inept at seperating the people who will actually vote !
I think this latest POLL showing the Tories back in the lead – however small is MORI trying to not look so obviously out of tune with other POLLSTERS – their credibilty is at stake !!
Alec: If you take one pollster you will be looking at an estimate whose 90% confidence interval is about +/- 5%. Well good luck, but please don’t try to draw any conclusions. I do have my suspicions about Mori’s apparent bias, but if you look at their last 10 polls, 5 of them have had the CLead too high compared with the WMA and 5 too low. Having said which, they do tend to under-estimate the CLead by 1% on average.
Interviews in peoples homes does distort the sample – but then so (of course) does every other method. The WMA is the best way I can see of using all the information available. Of course if you throw away the 70% of the data you don’t like you can “draw conclusions” that are more palatable.
Mike Richardson:
However odd MORI’s figures, to suggest that they have given the Tories a narrow lead just to save face is a bit far-fetched…. In my opinion of course!
Mike – you conveniently forget the exit polls during the 1992 election which were almost as badly wrong as the pre-election polls!
Your final comment seems to imply that MORI are massaging their figures to make them LESS good for Labour than they really are which (a) I imagine is not what you mean at all and (b) is libellous.
“Of course if you throw away the 70% of the data you don’t like you can “draw conclusions” that are more palatable.”
I’m assuming this comment doesn’t refer to my earlier posting, as I hoped I made it clear that I like all the poll data – I’m just making the point that some of it is clearly wrong, and unlike Mike Richardson, I and the rest of the human race do not know which numbers are true and which are false. If all the methodologies were identical, the WMA would have a great deal of statistical relevance – by enlarging the sample the outliers would be smoothed out and sampling errors would be minimised. The fact is, the WMA is comparing wildly different sample selection, interview methods, question wording, and post response filtering. It’s trying to combine apples and oranges into a single ‘fruit index’. It won’t help – we still end up with some apples, and some oranges. This is nothing to do with what I like – its just an observation on the fact that we have very different views among polling companies about how best to test public opinion, and they are coming out with consistently divergent views.
For what it’s worth, I don’t see double digit Tory leads as reflecting the real world, and I think that currently things are running more for Labour than for the Conservatives. It’s not scientific, but my sense of where we are nationally is that Cameron has reached his peak, but has not, and probably will not go any further. He will eventually face his ‘Obama’ moment when voters will question just what he will be like at No. 10, and I think he needs to be much further ahead to ride through that successfully.
Alec: the *ideal* scenario for WMA is when the methodologies are completely different (so that the errors are un-correlated) provided they are all unbiased (ie the errors in each methodology average to zero). As noted in previous posts, there is strong evidence that 3 of the pollsters are unbiased in that sense and the apparent biases of the other three are around +/-1% so not statistically significant.
Alec , totally agree with your points re WMA , it is of no relevance as to telling us which of the pollster(s) if any are giving the true position . We are left with personal preference as to which we will tend to believe .
Alec
I agree with the conclusions you reach in your second para.Given known differences in methodologies it seems both logical & important to view there results as alternatives, not components of a forced average.
For me it’s YouGov vs ICM.They poll much more frequently so their trends appear more apparent over time & they are certainly telling a very different story just now.
ComRes & Populus seem to be more in line with YouGov, but with less frequency. I’m not sure about MORI-I tend to ignore it.
I,m not sure about your last para-though I can appreciate why you reach those conclusions.The punters certainly seem uncertain about aspects of both Con & Lab.
It is quite tight at present but I think there is an understandable mood of “time for a change”. For this reason I can’t see why Labour would go into a significant/sustained lead-unless Cameron screws up badly on something.
It seems to be there for Cameron to take if he can convince people -his problem is painting an appealing picture of what a Conservative Government under him would be like, after the Party has been out of power for so long.
And Brown is clearly intent on reversing policy mistakes by adopting more Blairite/Centre Right policies-Immigration Control/Welfare to Work etc.-so the “clear blue water” will become greyer.
I think that Cameron has to hope that Labour’s appalling managerial record will continue and that his claim to greater competence & use of taxpayers money will begin to take root.
Must say -on a partisan basis!- that I’m encouraged to hear Brown ( & Bleers) using Class & Social background in their speeches-that is a sign of desperation.
Colin – think you’re about right. It is there for Cameron to take, but I’m not sure he, or at least his party – can do this. I’m still interested by Labour’s remarkable calmness compared to the Tories periodic jitters.
Alec-well I suppose whilst Labour are looking at a worst case of hung parliament , it’s not yet a prospective disaster-though there must be individual MPs who are contemplating their gold plated pension entitlements.
The Conservatives may be forgiven some jitters I guess, since they are outside trying to get in.But they should perhaps reflect how far they have come since 1997-or even 2005!
“ANDY STIDWELL – Exit POLLS are more accurate because they are asking people once they have actually voted – not much chance of getting that wrong – MORI obviously are more inept at seperating the people who will actually vote !”
Actually I seem to remember rather a lot of exit polls being wrong down the years, not least UK 1992 and USA 2004.
Anthony
Thank you for your reply.
I think I’ve read that on here before now you mention it when a discussion took place about face to face, telephone and internet polling and their potential effects.
Sorry to be a slow learner.
We all believe want we want to… and so our ‘feelings’ are not ojectively worth the space we take to express them….but underterred, the idea that Labour is polling higher than it did at the last GE doesn’t ‘feel’ right to me!
Sally – I think you’re also probably right about Labour’s current support, although a lower LD score may help both the main parties.
As for the comment about ‘feelings’ not objectively worth the space etc – many might disagree – politics, at any level, is always about feelings.
Andy – exit polls may be more or less wrong, the point is that they are different creatures entirely. Normally pollsters face the challenges (amongst others) of getting a representative sample of the country based on either demographics or random-ish selection and working out which people are likely to vote.
With a exit poll the random sampling is easy – you ask every nth person who wanders out of the polling station, the challenge for getting a sample is picking which polling stations to use and translating that into results. Predicting whether people have voted or not becomes simple, of course, since it’s a fair assumption everyone coming out of the polling station has.
Because they are different challenges, how good a pollster is at one doesn’t necessarily reflect how good they are at the other.
Sally, if you look at the opinion polls just after the last election (May 2005) Labour were polling around 37-41 where as the Tories were around 30-32. So it could be argued that they are not polling as high as around the time of the last election.
I’m not convinced by NBeale’s argument re WMA, but for some strange reason, I’d just love his WMA to be spot on come the next election, no matter who wins!
Adrian, Labour got about 36%[?] at the last election. The polls prior were alot nearer to that. I think only about -2% out on average re Labour and a tiny bit under on the Tories.
[I am sure some of this will be wrong and I will be given homework - quite soon and quite right too].
Still, according to MORI Brown would have a bigger share of the vote now.
I don’t believe it. Even with the Lib Dem woes.
Of course this poll was started about the same time as the Comres poll which showed Labour on 30% with an eleven point deficit and I can honestly say when I go into our regional Tory office, that is just what it ‘feels’ like. [Smilie face to indicate presence of humour - must download some!]
Sally I think a simple colon and a close bracket might sort you out
[Sorry, that should say +2 not -2]
Johntt
Thank you :]!!!
Not a square bracket, though! :] is ok but a round one ) with a preceding colon gives a proper smiley. Much over-used in my opinion, though.
this poll is very odd in two way’s it shows labour up by some way and the conservatives making ground over the ld’s thats not far out, but labour on 37% you must be jokeing!!!
Like all polls they are designed to give us something to talk about. Mori polls have been not too bad in the past but I think it is really difficult to get the true voting intention this far from an election.
It is easier to state support for the opposition when it makes no difference but when it comes to putting the x in the box, thats a different story (just ask Neil Kinnock).
Labour on 37% seems a wee bit high but the tories are way behind of where they need to be at this stage to win. probably a lack of difference between the two parties is a factor.
The comment someone made about it feeling “not right” for Labour to be polling higher than they received in the last election seems to me to be a very interesting point. It does indeed seem rather strange, but that may be because we haven’t been in this situation before in British politics, where a governing party won power with only 36% of the vote.
The slight increase in Labour’s vote – in this poll at least – could I suppose be down to factors such as a slight recovery in Labour’s position among groups such as Muslims and students who refused to vote Labour in 2005 because of the war in Iraq. Unfortunately for them, such a recovery won’t really help them in terms of seats except in one or two cases such as Bethnal Green.
I have noticed over the last 12 months that any poll that doesn’t show the Conservatives way ahead is an “outlier”,”rogue” or a “I don’t feel it’s right” poll.Do you not all think that as virtually all of you are Conservatives,that this is swaying what people think on here.
Very rarely do you see anyone question a poll showing the Conservatives ahead by double digits.
Andy
I shouldn’t get too excited. By the YouGov poll, afew days later, they [students, Muslims etc] had all left again:)
[OK John tt:))))!!!]
any new polls on the way,beacuse thing have gone slack with polling over the past few days, but on the other hand may be a few on the way this weekend
P Franklin: The CommRes poll (24/2) overstated the CLead by 4 points, then the I/Mori (26/2) understated it by 4. I said so at the time.
Not long to go…!
Look folks, don’t get to hung-up on these silly-season polls. The electorate know they have no voice, and that politician’s don’t care – how else could one explain a proposal [in effect] for a subsidy for smoothies, woolly or what!
Come April we enter a run up for the next bout of elections. Now, a failing I know, I am unsure when pooling must be suspended, but with the May/June elections [and maybe a GE?] the polling should be clearer.
As for NBeales NWA, it is probably the most consistent indicator of what is happening in a diverse polling environment. [If it cannot be trusted, then the nations accounts are highly susceptible, and those for the EU - well, enough said!]
As for those critical of emoticons, I have seen some really cool ones on a military-forum I googled. Many of which – one must admit – would not be allowed on this site, as they would be considered too partisan….
N Beale,you must be in a minority as when it shows the Conservatives between 10-14% ahead,it seems to be taken as true,with a lot of people going on about landslides and winning loads of seats in Scotland(that does bring a smile to my face).As soon as it goes below 5% the said poller “obviously has his polling wrong”.
Not a criticism just an observation.
Oh and one more, surely certain peoples “feeling” of how it is” must be slanted if the actually work for the Conservatives and come on a messageboard which is mainly conservative.If your life and leisure time is conversing with other likemind Coservatives,how does your feeling not become slanted?
As to the last poster:
If this site is conservative it is not by design. My own allegiance is much closer to home!
If you have issue with a point made, please counter it. If you have an issue with a contributer, or a “particular train-of-thought”, please check the decorum of the site. Anything else, Anthony will advise upon….
Where is my cup of tea…? [W'ot, no biscuits!]
fluffy,
from what i understand from debates and house of commons clashes the next election will not be for two years but if the EU debate goes on the PM may think its time to go to the country, but if his polls remain rubbish at 30-32% then no poll will be called unless his own men turn on him and vote him out as PM, then they would almost have no choice they would have to go to the polls. what wouldthey fight over, tax is top of the list, migrents is next and then EU membership and law & order, who would win well on a UNS it would be a hung parliment with the Con’s as biggest, but if the exit poll at an electionshows a gap of 7 or 8pts to Con’s then we can talk about majority’s for one party, the midlands and london will be the first sign’s of change, then later in the night as scotish results come in and also the north, the true back lash if one happens will show its self in this area. in the event of an election in 2010 most likely date, at the current rate a Con majority will be almost in sight.
Fluffy Thoughts – That EDP,I assume that means English Democratic Party.Just been on your site and been reading your messageboard.Someone complaining the reason England lost to rugby was because they played a Tongan and Gordon Brown.
In fact Gordon Brown gets blamed for everything from the weather to their dishwasher breaking…all true,it’s very entertaining.I thought the site was very good by the way.You must have a good programmer in your party.
I go away for a week and come back to see TWO “rogue” polls making the conservatives among us slightly edgy. Maybe I should go away again.