A new YouGov poll for the Sun tomorrow has topline figures, with changes from their last poll, of CON 49%(+5), LAB 23%(-3), LDEM 17%(nc). This is the first poll conducted wholly after both the local election results and Boris Johnson’s victory in London, though Populus’s poll was partially conducted after the mayoral results.
The 26 point lead is obviously in a different league to every poll that’s gone before, on a uniform swing it would produce a Conservative majority of 272 (though obviously, in the vastly unlikely event that such a lead occured at a general election all bets would be off and who knows what freakish result would actually occur). It’s the sort of lead that ICM - the only pollster whose figures from back in 1992-1997 are comparable to their figures today - was recording for the Labour party when the Conservative party was flat on the canvas back in 1995.
As ever, we need to be cautious about any poll that shows large shifts of support. This one is explicable - big election victories like the local elections last week often have a halo effect, the winner suddenly has the aura of victory about them, the loser the scent of defeat. Another good example are the polls from straight after the Lib Dem victory in the Brent East by-election back in 2003, when the aura of success about them briefly saw them leap to joint first place in the polls on 31%.
They soon fell back, and if that’s what’s going on here the Tories will fall back too; I personally find it hard to believe they’ll stay at quite this level anyway. Alternatively, the local election defeat may have been the trigger for a real change in public attitudes towards Labour, confirming an image of them as past it and ready to be kicked out.
A third possibility of course, is that this is just a freak result. Remember Populus’s poll earlier this week showed no such similar jump in the Tory lead. YouGov normally show the largest leads, so I doubt other companies will match the scale of this lead, but we’ll have to see if they show the same trend towards even larger Conservative leads.
UPDATE: The Sun says this is the lowest Labour have ever sunk in the polls since records began. Is it? As far as I tell it equals their lowest rating ever. There was also a Gallup poll in December 1981 that put them on 23%.
UPDATE 2: Seems it’s even lower than December 1981. Apparently that Gallup poll actually had Labour on 23.5%, so this really is the lowest since records began.
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.
ComRes’s monthly poll for the Independent has a Conservative lead of 14 points. The full topline figures with changes from last month are CON 40%(+2), LAB 26%(-5), LDEM 20%(+3). The poll was conducted between Apr 25th and 27th.
Nothing much new here but a confirmation of the trend, the Conservatives seem to have an increasingly stable double point lead, more polls are showing Labour pushed below the 30 point level and, without much real remark, the Lib Dems are gradually increasing their support - this is the first time since last April that a pollster other than ICM have shown them at 20% or above.
We still await the possibility of an ICM poll on the London elections. MORI have confirmed there’s nothing more to come from them for the mayoral contest, and we know that there is still a YouGov poll to come. ICM, over to you…
UPDATE: Just a thought, that’s only a six point gap between Labour and the Lib Dems. If the Lib Dems moved to second place it would be a huge boost for them and their image as real contender. Lib Dems winning here and all that. Still - just an idle thought, it’s a long way away yet.
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.
After their mayoral figures apparently leaked out the Guardian, MORI have also accidently put up their monthly monitor figures on their website which were supposed to have turned up in the Observer on Sunday. The topline figures, with changes from their last poll, are CON 40%(nc), LAB 31%(-4), LDEM 19%(+1). The poll was conducted between the 18th and 22nd April.
While it shows a much smaller Tory lead than the YouGov poll which was conducted at almost the same time, the trend the two polls are showing is pretty much the same with the Labour vote crumbling in the face of the 10p tax row, and in sharp contrast to the ICM poll. Like YouGov MORI have also shown a gradual increase in the Lib Dem vote over the last few months. It’s gone unremarked because of the big Tory leads, but they’ve been creeping upwards.
YouGov’s monthly poll for the Telegraph shows a massive 18 point lead over Labour. The full topline figures are CON 44%(nc), LAB 26%(-2), LDEM 17%(nc).
The poll was conducted between the 21st and 23rd of April, so while the 10p row was at its height, but almost entirely before the government announced their change of policy Wednesday lunchtime. It goes without saying that the poll shows the exactly opposite trend to ICM’s earlier this week, which suggests one (or both) of the polls are outliers. Certainly given the mess the government was in when this poll was being taken, a fall in Labour support seems prima facie more likely, but we’ll see.
This is the largest poll lead the Conservatives have achieved since 1987, and the lowest Labour share of support I can find since the aftermath of their 1983 rout, though I don’t have very complete records of opinion polls prior to 1987. If repeated at a general election it would produce a Conservative landslide majority of 154, with Labour down to 190 seats.
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.
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.
A new YouGov poll for the Sunday Times has voting intention figures, with charges from their last poll, of CON 44%(+1), LAB 28%(-1), LDEM 17%(nc). The poll would have been conducted between the 10th and 11th of April, so the fieldwork would have co-incided with the Bank of England rate cut and lots of discussion in the media about the state of the economy.
The change from the last YouGov poll is insignificant, and the 16 point lead is the same as the YouGov poll before that - together the three YouGov polls since the budget paint a pretty consistent position of a Tory lead up to the mid-teens, enough for a substantial majority if repeated at an election. The picture they paint is also pretty consistent with ICM’s recent polls (though they show a smaller Tory because their topline adjustment is picking up some “shy Labour voters”). Harder to explain is that Populus poll in the week showing a much smaller Tory lead.
There is supposedly also a poll due in tomorrow’s Observer (MORI, I would guess), so it will interesting to see if that shows the same sort of large lead as ICM and YouGov are showing, or the sort of narrower lead that Populus and ComRes have found.
UPDATE: For the record, I’ve already seen a couple of comments about it being a 16 year high rating for the Tories. It isn’t. It’s the highest since December when YouGov had them at 45%.
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.