Comments on: More from YouGov’s Sun Poll

By: JackR

JackR — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 20:38:21 +0000

James, I see were you are coming from but in a way it is easier for the Government when it comes to campaigning. They can talk proudly of their achievements and Labour usually uses the tactic of scaring people away from voting Tory and to be fair to them it does work to some extent.
I think Labour has more material to use is an election campaign as voters will, in my opinion, see voting Conservative as a slight risk. If when the next election is called and the most recent poll is accurate when going into the campaign everything is to play for and it could come down to who has the best message.
Whilst the Polls give us some idea of what the result could be if an election was held they can’t forecast what change might happen with a good,strong campaign.

By: Cllr Peter Cairns (SNP)

Cllr Peter Cairns (SNP) — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 20:33:35 +0000

The popular choices for cuts remind me of what happens at Council level.

When we need to make efficiencies the first choice of the public is always “Councillors expenses”.

When I ask; “Do you know how much we spend”,

The standard answer is ” To Bloody much”.

Much as things like the UN, EU or aid may be popular targets they are also very small percentages of the overall spend, and to be honest you could scrap them all and still not find the money we need.

The big budgets tend to be things like Education and health and the public don’t want to see these cut.

The effect is to make polls like this all but useless from a policy point of view.

If it’s popular it will have a large budget but politically you can’t touch it, if it’s unpopular it can be cut but the budget is to small to make the difference.

YouGov could of course try to find a client willing to pay for something more sophisticated.

A list of spending departments and there budgets by percentage and asked people to put in cuts to add up to what they thought we should cut. ( I think Darling was after £5 bn over and above what was already targeted).

That would give us an idea of not only how much we thought should be cut but where it should come from. We could also see where each parties supporters thought the axe should fall.

Peter.

By: Jim Garner

Jim Garner — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 09:25:42 +0000

I am always wary of polls which ask about attitudes. Enough respondents give the view that seems less selfish than what they really feel.
This has been a contstant factor in the past with the shy Tories concept when we had high unemployment twice under them.
For example whilst the base rate cuts is a response to the macro-economic sitiuation there are big (tracker mortgage) winnners and big losers, savers with high deposits.
How will these balance out and whose natural supporters are affected is significant and will gainers answer honestly to pol questions.
The contradiction in recessions is that those in work who do not feel vulnerable often do well due to low base rates and lower taxes.
I wonder if poll company adjustment to raw data that applied previously should be as big as one thing Cammo has done is to make it appear less selfish to be Tory (not a partisan remark but a comment based perceptions, nasty party et al.)
41% not excactly decisive? should be 45% and above to be sure of winning outright. may get there as recessioins bites let’s see?

By: Cllr Peter Cairns (SNP)

Cllr Peter Cairns (SNP) — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 23:13:03 +0000

Fluffy,

Don’t be too worried about us, Oil is still viable and the banks are still there.

As to defence spending it’s currently at £35 bn of which £3 bn comes from Scotland. At present the UK spends less than £3 bn in Scotland so if it is cut but tax isn’t a lot of people up here will start to get upset.

Peter.

By: James

James — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 21:15:35 +0000

JACKR> “The Government always traditionally sees an increase in support at a general election”

Actually no, as we briefly discussed on the last thread.

The evidence shows that the Conservatives traditionally increase support at a general election, whether they are in government or in opposition.

From my post on the last thread:

‘Over on policitalbetting dot com it also forms the basis for Smithson’s Golden Polling Rule: namely that when, for a Lab-Con contest, you are presented with a spread of conflicting opinion polls, the most accurate are always those that give the worst position for Labour.

Apparently this holds true for every general, european, mayoral and by election since the 1980s.

In the 1980s and early 1990s, th statistics seemed o show that ‘governments’ always suffered mid-term blues, then recovered somewhat for the election.

Since 1997 and the advent Labour government, bizarrely it is still the Conservatives who dip in the mid-term, and recover for the general election.

So the true ‘mid term blues’ trism should be that the conservative Party always suffers mid-term blues, then pull back in time for the election (even if not enough to win).’