Populus’s monthly poll in the Times, with changes from their last poll (conducted for the Daily Mirror in the middle of last month), has voting intentions of CON 40%(nc), LAB 29%(-1), LDEM 19%(nc). The poll was conducted between the 2nd and 4th May (Friday to Sunday).
This is the first poll since the local elections and the mayoral election and is practically unchanged since Populus’s last poll, suggesting no obvious aura effect from the Conservative victory. That does not, of course, change the fact that the poll is awful for Labour. The Populus poll a fortnight ago was already Populus’s worst ever poll for Labour, and this is a point worse.
The rest of the poll has similarly awful news for the government. The Times concentrates on 55% of Labour voters agreeing that the party would do better if Brown made way for a “younger, fresher, more charismatic alternative” which seems to me a somewhat pointless question: would the party do better with a better leader? Well - er, yes, almost by definition they would.
Other findings are just as bad though - Gordon Brown’s average rating out of 10 has dropped to a frankly embarrassing 4.08, which as far as I can tell is the lowest any leader has ever recorded in the period Populus have asked this question - worse than IDS’s or Ming Campbell’s lowest scores. David Cameron’s meanwhile is up at 5.36, the highest Populus have ever recorded for a Tory leader. On the economy 40% now trust Cameron and Osborne most to deal with economic problems compared to 30% for Brown and Darling.
There are two polls in the Sunday papers. Firstly there is a nat-rep Populus poll for the Sunday Mirror. The topline voting intention figures, with changes from Populus’s last poll, are CON 40%(+1), LAB 30%(-3), LDEM 19%(+2). The poll was conducted between 16th and 17th of April.
Populus’s last poll showed a significantly smaller Tory lead than polls from other companies and in contrast to the figures from ICM who use almost identical methodology. Now Populus, ICM and YouGov are all showing double point Tory leads. ComRes and Ipsos MORI continue to show tighter figures.
Secondly there is a mruk Cello poll on the London mayoral race, published in the Sunday Times. It shows first round voting intentons of JOHNSON 44%, LIVINGSTONE 45%, PADDICK 9%. With second preferences re-allocated, the second round figures had the two lead candidates equal on 50%.
It is very hard to put this poll into any context: mruk Cello have no track record of voting intention polling outside of Scotland, and up there they overestimated Labour support compared to other pollsters prior to the 2007 election. While, like all polls, the figures were weighted to be representative, we don’t know if that includes any political weighting (without which phone polls given much higher levels of support to Labour) nor how likelihood to vote was taken into account.
UPDATE: the mruk Cello poll was weighted by past vote (though we don’t yet know to what figures so can’t judge the effect). It wasn’t prompted by party name, probably explaining that low figure for Brian Paddick. The turnout filter included all those 8+/10 likely to vote, so rather more generous than MORI’s filter. This covered 75% of respondents. Thanks to Mike Smithson for getting the info.
Populus’s monthly poll for the Times had topline voting intentions, with changes from last month, of CON 39%(+2), LAB 33%(-1), LDEM 17%(-2). The poll was conducted between the 4th and 6th April.
While Populus tend to be the pollster that produces the most favourable figures for Labour, this poll should probably be seen as good news for them. The difference in methodologies between Populus and ICM is only small, so a poll showing a Tory lead of only 6 points is a lot better for the government than other recent polls (though it does show what a sorry state Labour have got to that we can consider a poll that shows them 6 points behind to be comparatively good!).
Looking beneath the headline voting intention figures there is little else to comfort the government. Labour are now seen as less competent than the Conservative party (last September during the Brown boost 56% thought Labour were competent, now 37% do), 67% think Brown is all talk and no action. Only 5% think Brown has done better than they expected as PM, with 36% thinking he has done worse, a pathetic 3% think Brown has made a real difference to Britain - 62% think he has made no difference at all. 70% think the country is headed in the wrong direction and it goes on… Labour will be happy that this poll shows a comparatively small lead, one that would leave the Tories long short of a majority, but the rest of the figures remain dire.
The first snapshot budget poll - done on Wednesday afternoon and evening by Populus - is up on the Times website. Only 596 respondents and no voting intention, but it is our first straw in the wind and it’s a mixed picture for the government.
The ’showroom tax’ on the most polluting new cars was indeed popular - 68% backed it - but more surprisingly there was also support for the increase in tax on alcohol; 55% backed the rise in alcohol duties. Respondents overwhelmingly (71% to 24%) supported higher child benefit and winter fuel allowances.
Despite positive reactions to the two main tax rises, overall opinion on the budget seems to be negative. 38% think they’ll pay more tax, with only 4% thinking they’ll gain. 42% of people think they’ll be worse off from the budget. 26% think it will be bad for business, with only 9% thinking it will help. 23% think it will increase the threat of recession, only 6% think it help reduce one.
So - the things the government did in the budget are popular…but people think they’ll lose out and it won’t improve things for the economy or for business. It isn’t clear from that whether this budget will improve or damage the government’s popularity or make no difference at all - there will no doubt be plenty more polling on the budget in the next few days which will give us a better idea.
Populus’s monthly poll for the Times has topline voting intention figures, with changes from last month, of CON 37%(-3), LAB 34%(+3), LDEM 19%(+2). The poll was conducted between the 7th and the 9th.
It’s always a mistake to read too much into a single poll, the normal random variation we see from poll to poll could have one drawing conclusions in any direction you wanted - for example, given their methodology is almost identical to ICM’s the 9 point Tory lead recorded by Populus last month seemed somewhat out of line and probably flattered them somewhat - in this case though the collective picture across all the polls now seems to be one of a falling Tory lead, even YouGov who in recent months have recorded the largest Tory leads have shown leads in the 6-7 point range rather than the 8-10 point leads they showed at the start of the year.
The increase in the level of Lib Dem support in this poll may be thanks to the increased publicity they received during the EU referendum debate - an exampe of the old maxim that no publicity is bad publicity, though it could equally be just a reversion to the mean after an outlier; again, Populus’s methodology is almost identical to ICM’s, so January/February figures with Populus showing the Lib Dems at 17% and ICM with them at 21% could never have been sustained. The fieldwork was carried out before Nick Clegg’s conference speech, so any boost they recieve from his first real set-piece outing won’t show up until the next polls.
Even if publicity has boosted the Lib Dems, it hasn’t boosted Nick Clegg. The average rating of his leadership is now at 4.16, slightly below Ming Campbell’s nadir (for contrast, IDS fell to 4.00 in Spring 2003.) The only saving grace for Clegg is that there were probably a large proportion of don’t knows to the question (in January it was 39%, but we won’t know till the tables come out). For the other leaders Gordon Brown remains down at 4.59 and David Cameron is up at 5.23, only marginally below his position during his honeymoon in January 2006.
On other underlying figures there is no shift back to the government either. The percentage of people dissatisfied with the government also crept up. This is a pattern we’ve seen in other companies polls too - a position where the underlying figures on things like the economy, best PM, leader approval and so on suggest no shift back towards Labour, but where the topline voting intention figures show a falling Tory lead - my guess is that the reason is that the larger Conservative leads at the end of last year were never ‘real’, they were the product of a government that appeared to be in crisis - now they have ridden that out we are seeing a more genuine position.
Meanwhile, after those contradictory polls for the Lib Dems and iwantareferendum Populus also asked a question on the EU referendum that gave people all the options - no referendum at all, a referendum on the Lisbon treaty, a referendum on EU membership or a referendum on both the treaty and EU membership. The latter was the most popular, the preference of 36% of respondents, 19% no referendum at all, 18% on just the treaty and just 16% on EU membership alone.
Today sees the first polls taken since the nationalisation of Northern Rock. A snap Populus poll with a small sample size for the Times found that 49% of people agreed that it was right for the government to nationalise Northern Rock, with 40% disagreeing -although 69% thought they should have tried harder to find a private buyer. 58% of people said the government was to blame for the problems affecting Northern Rock to some extent, but this was lower than the proportion of people who blamed the credit crunch, the city authorities or the management of Northern Rock itself.
The poll appears to show Brown and Darling back ahead of Cameron and Osborne on economic trust, though it’s worth noting that the poll doesn’t appear to have been politically weighted. Answers to questions like that are often extremely party partisan, so this shift will be largely to do with weighting, rather than a change in public opinion.
While there is support for nationalisation, it doesn’t mean that Labour’s handling of the issue is a positive for them, it may simply be a recognition that it is only practical opinion at this stage, the public could still think the overall way the problem was handled is poor. A second poll, this time by YouGov for the Economist, found only 11% thought the government’s handling of Northern Rock over the last few months was excellent or good, 51% think it has been poor or awful.
Does this benefit the Conservatives? In the short term at least, not at all: if anything, their reaction appears to have backfired on them. 59% of people agreed the Conservatives would have done much the same and they are just playing politics. That may reflect no more than a low opinion of all politicans rather than the Conservatives specifically, but the proof of the pudding is in the voting intentions - and the figures for the Economist show a marginal shift from the Conservatives to Labour in the wake of the nationalisation - the topline figures with changes from the last YouGov poll were CON 40%(-1), LAB 34%(+2), LDEM 16%(nc). As ever, we shouldn’t read too much into small changes in a single poll, but it looks like this hasn’t damaged Labour.
Populus’s monthly poll for the Times has topline voting intentions, with changes from their last poll, of CON 40%(+3), LAB 31% (-2), LD 17% (-2). The poll was conducted between the 1st and 3rd of February.
Personally speaking the figures are a bit of a surprise, polls throughout January showed the Conservatives falling back and Populus tend to produce figures that are more flattering for Labour than some other pollsters. I’d expected a narrower Tory lead. With the last four polls showing Labour back in the 30%-33% range and the Conservatives still up in the high thirties or low forties, it looks increasingly like the ICM and MORI polls taken in late January were a brief blip.
As with the ICM poll at the weekend there does not appear to be any damage to Conservative support from the Conway affair, even though this poll would have been conducted over the weekend when the media were scrabbling around for other Tory MPs with various familial employment arrangements. In his commentary over at Political Betting Mike Smithson raises his theory that the Conservatives tend to do well whenever David Cameron is on the television even if it isn’t very good for the Tories. He may be right. It may be that David Cameron just acted swiftly enough to neutralise any damage to the Tory brand.
Populus asked some specific questions covering sleaze and the Conway affair. 59% of respondents thought that MPs should be able to employ family members providing (and this is the important bit) that they are qualified, they do the job and their employment is disclosed. Compare this to the ICM poll at the weekend that asked without the qualifiers and found 74% thought MPs shouldn’t be able to employ family members. The difference suggests that if you don’t specify that MPs are employing familiy members who are qualified and do the work, people’s natural assumption is they are on the fiddle, which probably says rather a lot about the public’s view of politicians!
Asked which parties are tainted by financial sleaze, 69% thought Labour were, 51% thought the Tories were and 26% thought the Lib Dems were.
Finally, on Populus’s question about whether people would trust Brown and Darling or Cameron and Osborne to run the economy if it were in trouble, Cameron and Osborne are now narrowly in the lead by 36% to 33%. With people’s perceptions of the state of the economy plummetting, this is an important factor - if Labour were still ahead then people might swing back to them as the known quantity, safe hands in troubled times. The Populus figures suggest they haven’t even got that card to rely on.
The first poll of the year shows the Conservative gap narrowing, and a boost for the Liberal Democrats under their new leader. The Populus poll has topline figures, with changes from last month, of CON 37%(-3), LAB 33%(+1), LDEM 19%(+3).
We had some contradictory polls last month, some showing the Tory lead narrowing, others showing it growing to record levels. This poll again shows Labour recovering slightly - the one point change is not itself significant, but the context of the ICM and YouGov polls last month that also showed them up, it appears that they have rallied somewhat from the disasters at the end of last year.
More significantly this is the first poll that can really show the Clegg effect - the other polls since he became leader were either done partially before the result, or in the case of the last YouGov poll, has a fieldwork period that hardly instilled confidence. It looks like the change of leadership has given them a long overdue boost, putting them up at 19%, the highest the Lib Dems have recorded in a Populus poll since April (and at the expense of the Conservatives).
A poll showing the Tory lead cut by 4 points should at first sight be a good poll for Brown, yet the Times headlines it “Fresh poll blow for Gordon Brown as David Cameron cements lead”. In one sense it’s a reflection of the media environment Gordon Brown has to operate within these days, a poll shows his party up and his opponent’s lead cut and it’s a “blow”. However, this isn’t going into UKPollingReport’s “crap media reporting of polls” hall of fame - while this poll certainly isn’t good for Cameron, it isn’t particularly good for Brown either, a one point recovery having dropped 5 points last month isn’t something for Labour to celebrate, and certainly isn’t as positive as the ICM and YouGov findings. More importantly, the Times headline refers not to bad news for Labour in the voting intention figures, but to poll findings about Brown himself, which are certainly a blow.
On having what it takes to be a good Prime Minister Brown now trails Cameron by 40% to 44%, where he lead Cameron by 9 points as recently as November. Brown’s reputation for strength, shattered by “chicken Saturday” has not recovered, he leads Cameron by only 6 points when he once dominated him with a 32 point margin.
Looking at the 1-10 scores that Populus ask people to rate party leaders upon, Brown has fallen to an average of 4.6, down from 5.79 in September, the lowest he has yet recorded and lower than nearly ever score that Tony Blair recorded - to put it in context, it’s the sort of figure Michael Howard and Ming Campbell used to record. David Cameron meanwhile was up to 5.07, but first time he’s popped back above the 5.0 mark since January last year. (Clegg is even lower than Brown, but a very large proportion of respondents said don’t know). It looks as though while Labour are rallying slightly, perceptions of Brown himself are still deteriorating.
Hi - still offline most of the time, but here’s a quick update on the two polls that are out today.
Populus’s December poll had topline figures of CON 40% (+4), LAB 32% (-5), LDEM 16% (nc). The poll was conducted between the 7th and 9th of December.
Populus’s methodology tends to produce figures that are slightly better for Labour than, say, ICM or YouGov - in fact, they are the only pollster who until now had not shown the Conservatives back in the lead. There isn’t any nice formula you can plug a poll into and say “well, an 8 point Populus lead is thesameas an X point ICM lead”, but 40% for the Tories in a Populus poll is a good thing from Populus. The picture heeis much as we’ve seen elsewhere, the Tories advancing up into the 40s, Labour falling into the low 30s and the Lib Dems back off the canvas but now semingto be somewhere around the mid teens, depending on the pollster.
Ipsos MORI’s political monitor for December has topline voting intention figures of CON 42%
(+1), LAB 35% (+3), LDEM 14% (-3). The poll was conducted between 29th November and 7th December.
The figures here would appear to show Labour recovering, in contrast to all other polls. In recent days the news coverage has moved away from negative stories about the government to obsess over canoe man, and if this poll was very recent I’d guess it was a genuine recovery. Given some of it is almost a fortnight old and Populu’s more recent findings, I suspect the changes are more down to the fact that last month’s MORI poll was done on the phone omnibus while they reviewed their sampling points, rather than their standard face-to-face interviews (or even just random sampling error).
The latest Populus poll for the Times has topline voting intentions, with changes from last month, of CON 36%(-2), LAB 37%(-3), LDEM 16%(+4). In his commentary Peter Riddell emphasises the parties are virtually neck and neck, the gap is mostly due to rounding with only 2 respondents making the difference between Labour and the Conservatives.
Like ICM’s recent poll this suggests the Lib Dems are recovering from their awful ratings last month, presumably thanks to the publicity of their leadership contest.
What it doesn’t show is Labour closing the gap, Ben Brogan! I don’t, it has to said, have particularly high expectations of press coverage of polls, but Ben Brogan’s blog is normally one of the best, so slapped wrists Ben. Unlike all the other companies Populus have not shown the Conservatives back in the lead since the election, their methodology tends to produce figures that are slightly more favourable to Labour than other companies, and this is actually a relative advance for the Tories compared to Labour - though clearly the Lib Dems seem to gaining from both of them.
Peter Riddell’s article suggests that the polls may be returning to the sort of equilibrium they’d reached before Gordon Brown became Labour leader. I think it’s still too early to draw that conclusion, it’s possible they will, and the Conservative vote does indeed seem to be streadying at about the same level, but Labour and Lib Dem support is still on the move, and we still don’t know what the lasting effect of the Lib Dem leadership change will eventually be. I’m going to be very cautious about concluding that the polls are starting to be steady again.
UPDATE: I’ve had a chance to look at the rest of the poll’s findings. As with other recent results Populus have found a drop in perceptions of Gordon Brown. His figures here haven’t fallen off a cliff as they had in some measures on YouGov’s Sunday Times poll, but then, these haven’t tracked concepts of decisiveness which was where Brown had suffered the most. Populus have found a steady decline in the percentage of people who think Brown has what it takes to be a good PM (49%, down from 54% last month and 57% at the height of the Brown boost), those who see him as a strong leader (58% down from 60%, at the height of the Brown boost 77% thought him “strong”) and those who think he understands the problems facing ordinary people (47%, down from 49% last month and 61% during the boost). Meanwhile David Cameron’s figures are creeping upwards, 40% now think he has what it takes to be a good PM (up from 37% last month and 32% at the height of Brown’s popularity) and 42% think he is strong.
Despite the more hostile media narrative these days, these are actually all still pretty positive figures for Gordon Brown. The trend however is downwards and, while he still leads David Cameron on nearly all the measures Populus asked about, the lead is narrowing. Back in July he had a 24 point advantage in terms being seen as having what it took to be a good PM, now it’s only 9 points. Since a lot of the Labour’s increase in the polls has been Brown’s increase (satisfaction with the government increase only marginally during the handover while satisfaction with the PM rocketed), I suspect we won’t have stable figures for voting intention until perceptions of Brown have stabilised.
While looking for the past figures on leader perceptions I also found this poll Populus conducted for the Daily Politics last month on the Lib Dem leadership contest. As Mike Smithson commented yesterday, we are really flying blind on the Lib Dem leadership race - there has been no polling of Lib Dem members voting intentions, and the two candidates are so little known we can’t even really see what the wider public think of them. The Populus poll asked people if they would vote Lib Dem with Nick Clegg as leader, and if they’d vote Lib Dem with Chris Huhne as leader. 11% said they would vote Lib Dem with Clegg, 12% with Huhne - so no obvious difference. I should add that these low figures don’t represent some collapse of the vote with either man, it’s because 35% and 36% respectively said they didn’t know or hadn’t heard of them.