ICM’s Crewe and Nantwich poll - which I look at here - also heralds two new changes to ICM’s methodology, which will probably be rolling out across their other political polls for the Guardian and Sunday Telegraph.
The first change is to to adjust their targets for past vote weighting to be slightly closer to the actual result of the 2005 election - specifically, the target is now based 80% on the 2005 election results, and 20% on the average recalled vote in ICM’s polls. In theory this will produce results that are slightly better for the Conservatives and Lib Dems and slightly worse for Labour, but in practice it is a very, very minor change. Taking the Crewe and Nantwich poll, the change was not large enough to change the results by a percentage point.
The second change is more interesting. As I discussed before the London election, turnout is actually very challenging to predict and is probably one of the reasons MORI seem to have overestimated Labour’s lead. One of the reasons it is so tricky is that people aren’t very good at predicting their own likelihood to vote. In the UK pollsters normally rely on asking people to rate their likelihood to vote on a scale of 1-10, but this still often produces more people who are 10/10 certain to vote than actually do. ICM’s new approach seems to draw some lessons from the more complex approaches taken in the USA where pollsters take into account not just people’s own estimates of their likelihood to vote, but also attitudinal factors like their interest in politics, whether they see voting as a duty, and so on.
In this case ICM asked a question on attitudes to voting, asking people whether it was their duty to vote, or if people should only vote if they cared who won, or whether it was really not worth doing at all. This was then cross referenced with the 1-10 likelihood to vote scale to produce a 30 cell matrix and people were weighted by the result. This appears to be a slightly harsher likelihood to vote filter - in the case of the Crewe and Nantwich poll it increased Conservative support by 1 point and reduced Labour by 1 point - but we won’t really be sure of the effect until we’ve seen it in action over a couple of polls.
The tables for ICM’s poll in Crewe and Nantwich are now available on their website, and they reveal some brand new changes to ICM’s methodology which I’ll look at in the next post. First though, let’s dig through the entrails of the Crewe and Nantwich findings.
The narrowness of the 4% was indeed largely down to ICM’s normal spiral of silence adjustment. Taking just those people who actually gave voting intentions to ICM, the Conservatives had a solid 12 point lead. The narrowing of the lead was because a large proportion of respondents who told ICM they voted Labour in 2005 said they didn’t know how they would vote in the by-election: 61 out of 295 apparently - 21% of last time’s Labour voters, compared to 6% of last time’s Conservatives and 23% of the small number of voted Lib Dem last time in Crewe and Nantwich.
This means the vast majority of the don’t knows up there in Crewe are former Labour voters and ICM are making the assumption that those people will disproportionately end up voting Labour. ICM do this by reallocating 50% of don’t knows to the party they voted for last time, based on past research showing this is how people tend to behave at general elections. It is only an assumption of course, and people may behave differently at by-elections. If those former Labour voters actually stay at home or switch to the Conservatives the Tory lead would be much larger. If more than 50% of them end up voting Labour the Tory lead would be smaller than ICM’s poll suggests.
Another intriguing finding in the by-election poll was that the Conservative lead was much higher when people in Crewe and Nantwich were asked how they would vote in a general election - a 16 point lead in fact. On the face of this it is counterintuitive as we are used to bigger swings in by-elections than in general elections, not vice-versa. My best guess to explain this before seeing the tables was that ICM must have used the candidates names in the by-election question resulting in a “Dunwoody effect”. This was wrong - ICM didn’t use candidates names so this can’t be the reason. The actual reason seems to be that more people gave voting intentions for a general election tomorrow than for the by-election.
Comparing people’s answers in the by-election question and general election question, very few people actually changed their answers. Of 478 responses to how they would vote in the by-election, only 13 said they would vote differently if it was a general election. The difference seems to be almost entirely people who didn’t give a voting intention for a by-election, which does rather suggest that those don’t knows aren’t likely to break in Labour’s favour….
The Mail on Sunday has an ICM poll conducted in Crewe and Nantwich. Voting intention in the by-election is CON 43%, LAB 39%, LDEM 16%. This compares to the actual result at the last election of CON 33%, LAB 49%, LDEM 19%, and if repeated at the by-election would be a 10 point swing.
By-election polls in the past don’t have a particularly good track record. That may actually be because they have been done early in by-election campaigns, when actually voting intentions clearly do change decisively within the couple of weeks during a by-election. Either way, we shouldn’t expect this to be a very good prediction of what the final result of Crewe and Nantwich will be.
Does that mean the poll doesn’t matter? Not at all. As I’ve said before, in a by-election in a government held seat a lot of voters will be looking for the party that is best positioned to defeat Labour and punish the government. This poll suggests that party is the Conservatives and that they are alread in a very strong position to win it.
UPDATE: In Iain Dale’s report of the figures he says “I am told the by election figures were adjusted downwards to take account of large number of Labour don’t knows. If they stayed at home on polling day, the Tories would win by 13 points.” I assume that refers to ICM’s normal re-allocation of don’t knows to account for “a spiral of silence” amongst supporters of an unfashionable party, and the tendency for don’t knows who do vote to end up voting for their usual party. For it to change a lead of 13 points into one of 4 points though there must have been a vast proportion of Labour voters telling ICM they didn’t know.
There are four new polls in the Sunday papers, two national polls, one of marginal seats and one London poll which has a separate thread here.
The first is a a MORI poll due in the Observer which leaked out on Friday, shows a 9 point Tory lead, and has already been covered here. The second is a new ICM poll in the Sunday Telegraph which has topline figures, with changes from the last ICM poll, of CON 39%(nc), LAB 29%(-5), LDEM 20%(+1).
This poll suggests that the last ICM poll which showed a sudden narrowing of the Tory lead to only 5 points was indeed a rogue poll - either that or Labour staged a recovery no one spotted, but then immediately collapsed by 5 points: possible, but it seems to be more likely that the last ICM poll was just one of those outlying polls that all pollsters cannot help but produce from time to time.
A third poll for the News of the World is again by ICM, but this time concentrating on marginal seats. The poll was conducted in the 145 seats where the Tories came closest to beating Labour in 2005 (implying they are using the old boundaries, though in most cases these do tend to be the same seats - though on the other hand the list of Labour marginals that would fall on the News of the World website appears to be drawn from my list here) and show a swing to the Conservatives of 9 percent in these marginal seats. The ICM poll in the Sunday Telegraph, which one assumes was done at roughly the same time, shows a swing of about 6 1/2 percent, so the Conservatives are doing significantly better in CON/LAB marginal seats. The News of the World article suggests the Tory advance is similar in northern marginals as in southern ones.
ICM’s monthly poll for the Guardian has voting intention figures, with changes from their last poll, of CON 39%(-4), LAB 34%(+2), LDEM 19%(+1). It was conducted between the 18th and 20th of April.
It is obviously a sharp reduction in the Tory lead when the polls had appeared to be stabilising with the Conservatives in a double-point lead over Labour. This seems to be counter-intuitive when the Labout government have been having a rather torrid time of it over the abolition of the 10p tax rate, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it wrong.
The poll would also have been influenced by media coverage of Gordon Brown’s visit to the USA. Coverage of Brown looking statesmanlike with other world leaders could have boosted him (compare with the polls showing a sharp narrowing of the lead in January 2008 after the Davos conference when the media also had lots of coverage of Gordon Brown looking statesmanlike). Arguing against that, the poll certainly doesn’t show any increase in Gordon Brown’s own ratings: David Cameron now has a lead of 8 points over Brown as best Prime Minister (37% to 29%, with Clegg on 8%).
Rather the most likely reason seems to be an increase in economic confidence - 55% of people in this poll said they were confident about their own financial situation, compared to 48% in February when ICM last asked it. On Friday we should have to chance to see if the boost in economic confidence or the recovery in Labour support are echoed by YouGov’s monthly poll.
UPDATE: In a comment on a post below Mark Senior asked whether having the fieldwork for this poll over a weekend may have made a difference. Well, actually the majority of ICM’s polls for the Guardian are carried out over the weekend so this isn’t unusual at all. Does it make a difference? Well, in theory it could if it produced samples that were different in a way that weighting didn’t correct. As we’ve commented here in the past, for the last 6 months or so ICM’s polls for the Guardian have had a tendency to show lower Tory leads than their ones for other clients, something that seems to be pure co-incidence given they are conducted in exactly the same way (confirmed by Nick Sparrow, ICM’s boss). I initially thought it might have connected with ICM’s Guardian polls normally being conducted over the weekend and their Sunday Telegraph polls being done midweek - but it also held true when Guardian polls were done mid-week. I suppose it’s still possible there could be that there is a midweek vs. weekend fieldwork difference, with pure co-incidence explaining the midweek Guardian polls.
A new ICM poll in the Sunday Telegraph shows a slight recovery for Labour, putting them back above thirty. Conservative support is also up slightly from the last ICM poll so the Tory lead remains in double figures - at 11 points enough to produce an overall Conservative majority if repeated at a general election.
The topline figures, with changes from the last ICM poll a fortnight ago, are CON 43%(+1), LAB 32%(+3), LDEM 18%(-3).
I’ll update when I’ve seen the rest of the poll, although according to Conservative home, the poll also has questions on how people would vote in an Alternative Vote system - it would result in the Conservatives doing slightly less well and finds Cameron & Osborne neck and neck with Brown & Darling on economic competence.
There was also a Scottish YouGov poll this morning. It showed Westminster voting intentions in Scotland at CON 17%, LAB 35%, LDEM 12%, SNP 31%. Scottish Parliament voting intentions stand at CON 12%, LAB 32%, LDEM 13%, SNP 40% in the constituency vote and CON 13%, LAB 30%, LDEM 12%, SNP 33% in the list vote.
ICM have a new poll on the London election for the Guardian, their first of this election (I think it’s their first since 2000, since I can’t find any ICM polls from the last mayoral election) and only the second phone poll of the election by anyone.
Unlike the double point Johnson leads recorded in the recent YouGov polls, ICM find the race
almost neck-and-neck. The topline figures are JOHNSON 42%, LIVINGSTONE 41%, PADDICK 10%, Others 7%. The second preferences of elimated candidates split slightly in favour of Boris Johnson, meaning on the second round support would split JOHNSON 51%, LIVINGSTONE 49%. The poll was conducted between Mar 28th and April 1st.
The obvious question that lots of people have already asked in the comments to the last post is how to explain the big difference between this and the YouGov poll. There is a five point difference in the two companies scores for Boris Johnson, a four point difference in their scores for Livingstone - it seems unlikely to be just random chance, more likely it is something to do with methodology. After Ken Livingstone’s criticism of the YouGov poll the Guardian point out that (unlike YouGov) the ICM poll did include 29% ethnic minorities, which is the estimated proportion of London adults from ethnic minorities (though I’m not sure if it’s the correct proportion of the London electorate). The couple of percentage points difference in the ethnic make-up of the panel is unlikely to be all the difference though.
There is also the question of how ICM have dealt with turnout, and whether there is the equivalent of their normal ’spiral of silence’ re-allocation of don’t knows. We’ll really have to wait for the ICM tables to turn up before we can see. Even then, while it may tell us the reason for the difference, it won’t tell us who is right - assuming that ICM and YouGov both continue to survey up until polling day, only the final polls and the actual result will tell us that.
(Edit - actually I’m told ICM did do a poll for Mind the Gap in 2004. It showed Livingstone at 50%, Norris at 29% and Hughes at 18%, but was very early in the campaign so shouldn’t really be compared to the result: in YouGov’s first poll of the 2004 campaign they showed Livingstone 46% and Norris 31%.)
UPDATE: The detailed tables for the ICM London mayoral poll are now up here. Looking at the details of what ICM actually did (if you’re not interested in the anal details of polling methodology you can skip this post), the figures do indeed appear to have been weighted by likelihood to vote, which as usual increases the reported level of Tory support.
The poll was weighted by ethnicity. This could be some of the difference - certainly ICM found a massive contrast between the voting intentions of white Londoners, amongst whom Boris Johnson led by 19 percent, and ethnic minority Londoners where Livingstone has a mountainous 47 percent lead. Even with a contrast like that though, it doesn’t make quite as much difference as you’d think - if you rework the ICM figures to see what the result would have been if it had contained only 24% respondents from ethnic minorities (as Peter Kellner suggested the YouGov poll did), then at a rough calculation it would make only 1 point difference to Ken and Boris’s scores, increasing the Tory lead by 2.
There would also appear to have been some sort of topline adjustment to the figures, since the filtered, turnout weighted figures were Boris 43%, Ken 41%, Paddick 8%. ICM did something to them that increased the Lib Dems by 2 points and reduced Boris by 1 point. Presumably they followed their normal methodology and added half the don’t knows to the party they voted for at the last election.
Comparing cross-breaks YouGov has Boris doing better amongst women, ICM has Ken doing better amongst women. The two companies agree about Boris’s lead amongst older people, and both have Ken Livingstone doing better amongst more middle aged people - but there’s a huge contrast amongst young people, YouGov have a big Boris lead, ICM a big Ken lead.
In terms of social class the polls show pretty much the same as each other - that is, the pattern of support amongst ABC1s is the same as amongst C2DEs. ICM give a more detailed split, separating out AB, C1, C2 and DEs to show that Boris leads at the top and the bottom of the social scale, with Ken Livingstone ahead marginally with C2s and decisively with C1s.
So, small parts of the difference are probably down to different proportions of ethnic minorities in the samples and ICM reallocating don’t knows to the detriment of Boris Johnson. Most of the difference though is less easily explained, while it appears to be with women and with young people, there’s no obvious reason for that, and given the low sizes of cross-breaks it could just be meaningless chance. Who knows? We can’t tell until the results come out who is right.
While the 16 point Tory lead on Sunday provided big headlines and no doubt cheered up Conservatives across the country, I suspect even the most rabid Tory suspected in their heart that it was probably an outlier and that the lead would return to more normal levels in the next YouGov poll. The latest ICM poll however suggests there may indeed have been some sort of shift in public opinion.
The monthly ICM poll for the Guardian has topline voting intention figures, with changes from their poll conducted last week, of CON 42%(+2), LAB 29%(-2), LDEM 21%(+1). The poll was conducted between the 14th and 16th, so would have included David Cameron’s speech to the Tory spring conference.
The Conservative lead of 13 points is the largest I can find looking back at ICM polls since 1987. While it’s smaller than the 16 point lead the Tories enjoyed with YouGov at the weekend, this seems to be a pattern between ICM and YouGov recently - the higher levels of Lib Dem support reported by ICM are at the expense of the Tories. Whichever pollster is correct, they seem to be interpreting the same underlying position.
Asked about who they trust more with the economy, ICM found an 8 point lead for the Conservatives, 40% to 32%.
It appears that, for whatever reason, the budget has heralded a fall in confidence in Labour’s economic management and a decisive switch towards the Conservatives. While we’ve got a couple of polls confirming it, what we can’t tell is whether it will last at all. If it does we are in a new game - it’s the sort of lead where David Cameron is going to stop facing questions about why he isn’t doing better, and is instead going to end up facing more criticism from his own troops about why he isn’t being bolder. Labour would start facing assumptions of their defeat in the media and itchy backbenchers with the minds focused by possible unemployment.
UPDATE: Tables now up on ICM’s website here. The difference between the lead here and the lead in YouGov’s poll was actually mostly down to ICM’s topline adjustment for the “spiral of silence” - the theory that some people who say don’t know are actually supporters of an unpopular party who are too bashful to admit it to the interviewer. While people still refer to this an as adjustment to make up for “shy Tories”, for the past five years at least it’s normally favoured “shy Labourites”. This month ICM’s unadjusted figures would have been CON 43%, LAB 28%, LDEM 21%.
The full tables for the YouGov/Sunday Times poll are here, no tables yet for ICM, but the News of the World report is here.
As with Populus’s poll in the week, the individual measures announced in the budget were broadly positive received. 68% told YouGov they supported the increase in tax on “large environmentally unfriendly family cars”, 63% supported requiring supermarkets to charge for plastic bags, 77% supporting equiring people on incapacity benefit to attend work focused interviews. A slighlt plurality of people opposed the increase in alcohol duties - 48% to 46% - but this was hardly overwhelmingly opposition.
Despite that, opinion towards the government’s general handling of the economy looked very low - 86% though inflation was higher than the government said, 78% said the government wastes large amounts of money, 66% agreed the government spent too much in good economic times. All the measures of economic optimism were low. 47% agreed Alistair Darling was not up to the job, with only 22% disagreeing and the poll found Cameron & Osbourne had a significant lead over Brown & Darling as the team people trust more to help their standard of living - 33% to 21%. ICM’s poll also found a significant Tory lead on the economy - they were most trusted by 34% compared to 28% for the Tories. A second ICM survey in the Sunday Telegraph found 31% thouht the budget would make things worse, only 7% thought it would improve matters.
It’s an apparent contradiction - the individual measures in the budget are popular, but it looks as though it has really hit their popularity. Off the top of my head I can think of two explanations - it’s possible that people support what Alistair Darling has done given the circumstances he faces, but that the fact the government have found themselves in such circumstances has undermined their previous confidence in Brown’s handling of the economy. Alternatively it could just be that general bad economic tidings, brought home to them by the budget, have made them less positively disposed to the government regardless of whether they actually attribute any blame to them.
On other political trackers Brown’s approval ratings with YouGov slip ever lower - his net score is down to minus 26 from minus 21 last month. David Cameron’s remains unchanged on plus 14. Nick Clegg’s rating was minus 6, but that’s still with 35% don’t knows. In the ICM poll Cameron had a lead of 6 points over Brown on best Prime Minister.
As usual the Sunday Times asked a grab bag of questions of lots of other issues. On Lord Goldsmith’s proposals for Britishness 51% of people supported the idea of citizenship ceremonies, for school leavers… but only if they excluded the suggested oath of allegiance to the monarch, supported by only 15%.
Only 29% of respondents supported Heathrow expansion. 39% thought expansion should be elsewhere, either in East London or in regional airports. 18% were opposed to airport expansion entirely.
Finally YouGov asked about abortion law. 35% supported the status quo, 48% supported a reduction in the legal time limit to 20 weeks and 8% supported a total ban on abortion.
YouGov’s monthly poll for the Sunday Times, one of the the first voting intention polls since the budget, has quite startling topline figures: CON 43%(+3), LAB 27%(-6), LDEM 16%(nc). The poll was conducted between the 13th and 14th of March, so after respondents would have seen the newspaper reaction to the budget.
The 16% Conservative lead is the largest YouGov have ever recorded and the largest any company has produced since October 1987. There are people old enough to vote who weren’t born the last time the Tories were this far ahead. If repeated at a general election it would produce a Conservative landslide majority of 122.
It’s tempting to automatically assume that such a massive shift this must be a rogue poll. My guess is that it will indeed prove to be an outlier - the shift is just too large- but a second poll, this time from ICM in the News of the World, confirms a significant shift towards the Tories since the budget. ICM’s topline figures, with changes from their last poll, are CON 40%(+3), LAB 31%(-3), LDEM 20%(-1). The ICM poll was conducted between the 12th and 13th of March.
More later when details of the polls are available.