Britain’s current nuclear deterrent, the Trident system, is nearing the end of its lifespan and the govermment will soon have to decide how, and if, to replace it. Greenpeace has today published a new MORI poll, which shows the public are ambivalent at best about whether Britain should replace Trident.
Asked a straight question on whether or not Britain should develop a replacement for Trident 44% think we should, 46% think we shouldn’t. When, using a split sample, the sheer cost of developing a new nuclear system was included in the question (an estimate of £25 billion - a figure that seems to be around the top end of the price scale when it comes to alternatives to Trident) support fell to 33%, with 54% opposed.
MORI then asked people when they thought it appropriate to actually use nuclear weapons. The public were overwhelmingly against using nuclear weapons against countries that do not have nuclear weapons (5% support with 87% against), or who have nuclear weapons but are not using them (11% support with 77% against). Even if Britain were to come under nuclear attack itself, only 55% would support using nuclear weapons in response. This question used identical wording to a Gallup poll back in 1955, and showed a significant fall in support for the use of nuclear weaponry since the height of the cold war - back in 1955 only 16% of people would have opposed using the H-Bomb in response to a nuclear attack on Britain, while today 32% would oppose nuclear retailiation.
There have been new polls on the Tory leadership by both YouGov and ICM over the weekend, and David Cameron seems increasingly unbeatable. YouGov’s poll in the Telegraph showed Cameron leading Davis amongst the general public by 34% to 13%, and amongst Conservative supporters by 56% to 16%.
Asked who would make the better leader on several specific criteria, such as how they come across on the television, how they perform in the Commons, what chances they would have of winning the next election and who would make the best PM if they did, David Cameron trounced Davis on every count.
As Tony King points out in his commentary, support for Cameron must be largely image based, since the majority (61%) of the public had little idea on what Cameron’s views were in regard of levels of public spending on reform of public services. That said they were equally ignorant of what David Davis’s views were, thought the survey was likely carried out prior to David Davis’s well publicised pledges on taxation.
Meanwhile ICM’s poll for the Politics Show contacted Conservative party members to ask how they would vote in the leadership election. The sample size was only just over 200, but the actual figures were broadly inline with YouGov’s earlier poll of party members - 24% said David Davis, 76% said David Cameron.
The ballot papers for the Conservative leadership election will be sent out next Friday, and conventional wisdom is that most party members will return them almost straightaway. Unless something goes spectacularly wrong for David Cameron in the next week, or next week’s Question Time sees a major turnaround, David Cameron appears to have won.
This brings us onto the question of what happens next - YouGov also asked what voters would like to see the Conservative party do in the future. The results were quite interesting - most of the answers supported moving the party towards the centre ground, the public wanted to see the Conservative party move towards the Centre (net approval of +41), giving more help to the less well off (net approval of +64), paying more attention to the economy and public services and less to immigration (+41) and opposed promises of big tax cuts if they meant cuts to public services (net disapproval of -42). Conservative voters broadly shared these opinions.
However, some radical policies were supported by both Conservative voters and the general public - radical reform of public services ‘including privatisation’ was supported by 47% of the public, and opposed by 30%, while threatening to withdraw from the European Union was supported by 49% of the public and opposed by 29%. While public opinion does seem to favour a Conservativbe party that moves back to the centre ground, gives more help to the needy and worries less about taxes and immigration, they do seem to be receptive to radical solutions in a few specific areas.
UPDATE: I’m told there was a further ICM poll of party members, presumably with a larger sample, being carried out over the weekend. Perhaps it’ll be in tomorrow’s Guardian.
MORI’s October political monitor has also been published, and included questions on the Conservative leadership. Asked who they would most like to see as Conservative leader David Cameron was the most popular choice amongst the public. Unlike YouGov’s poll the public were given the choice of all the candidates, not just those remaining in the race, so this the first time that Cameron has overtaken Ken Clarke in a poll of the general public. Asked to chose between just Cameron and Davis Cameron is ahead by 42% to 15%.
On Monday afternoon Tony Blair is set to announce new government plans for secondary education and, with rather excellent timing, the free-market think tank Reform have published a new ICM poll on education.
The poll suggests that people would be supportive of an increase in choice in education. 76% of people told ICM they agreed that the way education in Britain is organised needed ‘fundemental review’, ICM then asked respondents if they would support a system where “parents should be allowed to use the government money spent on their children’s education (around £5,500 a year per child) to send their children to any school they choose, including independent schools” (a policy very similar to the Conservative policy at the last election, though the Tory version had restrictions on spending the money on independent schools that cost more than the government figure). Overall 49% of people thought this would be a good idea, while 23% thought it would be a bad idea.
The demographic breakdown of the figures revealed two interesting factors. Firstly, young people were far more positive towards the policy - amongst under 25s 63% thought it a good idea while only 15% opposed it, amongst the 25-34 age group 56% thought it a good idea and only 13% opposed it. Secondly, support for a free market reform of education doesn’t seem to be particularly partisan - support amongst Labour voters was almost identical to support amongst voters as a whole - 48% to 23%.
With Liam Fox eliminated the Tory leadership contest moves to the party membership. We’ve already seen in YouGov’s poll earlier this week that David Cameron holds a commanding lead amongst party members, but their voting decisions will obviously be influenced by how the polls suggest the voting public will react to David Davis and David Cameron.
MORI’s poll in this morning’s Sun was actually conducted on Wednesday, so the question of which of the remaining candidates the public would have preferred to see as leader is already out of date (for what it’s worth, the figures were Cameron 33%, Davis 13%, Fox 11%).
More relevant are the hypothetical voting intention questions - respondents were asked how they would vote if Gordon Brown were leader of the Labour party, Charlie Kennedy leader of the Liberal Democrats and either David Cameron or David Davis were leader of the Tory Party. The Labour lead would be 7 points under David Davis, but only 3 points under David Cameron (bear in mind that these figures are not adjusted for turnout, so aren’t comparable to MORI’s normal voting intention figures).
A large majority (69%) of people thought that David Cameron was not too young to be Prime Minister, and 74% thought that the British public would not be reluctant to vote for a Prime Minister who went to Eton.
The poll did, however, provide a useful reminder of the limits to the importance of the leader. Asked whether the identity of the Tory party leader or the party’s policies were more important in making a voting decision, only 12% said the leader, while 80% said the policies. The questions is a bit of a simplification - firstly saying that one sagely considers the parties’ policies is obviously a more ’socially acceptable’ answer than saying one votes for the nicest chap, and equally most pollsters (not least MORI themselves) will tell you that there is a third important factor, the overall image of a party, which is itself influenced by the leader’s image and the party policies. All the same, it’s worth remembering that who the leaders of the parties are is only a small part of the story.
ICM’s new poll was also carried out prior to Liam Fox’s elimination - the questions though were all ‘head to heads’ so haven’t been rendered obsolete. In a straight choice between David Cameron and David Davis the public would prefer David Cameron by a margin of 44% to 20%, though a large (25%) proportion of people don’t know.
David Cameron leads amongst every demographic group. There is some truth in the idea that David Cameron would appeal less to voters in the North, but it is only one of degree. Cameron leads Davis by 39% to 22% in Scotland and Northern England, compared to 50% to 17% in the South.
ICM also asked ‘head to head’ questions on whether people would prefer Gordon Brown or Davis/Cameron as Prime Minister. Amongst voters as a whole there was already a significant difference - people would prefer Brown to Davis as PM by 45% to 32% and would prefer Brown to Cameron by 43% to 38% - the real contrast though was amongst ‘floating voters’, the 28% of voters who told ICM it was only ‘possible’ that they would vote Conservative at the next election. Floating voters would prefer Brown to Davis as PM by 44% to 36%, but would prefer Cameron to Brown by 48% to 33%.
The Conservative leadership election is (briefly!) down to three candidates - David Davis, Liam Fox and David Cameron - and Thursday’s Telegraph has what is likely to be the only poll between the first and second leadership ballots. It shows that David Cameron’s lead amongst party members is now overwhelming; he would easily defeat either of the other two remaining candidates. More unexpectedly, Liam Fox has now overtaken David Davis to become party members’ second choice.
Asked who they would chose as leader now that Ken Clarke has been eliminated from the race, over half of party members chose David Cameron, with Liam Fox overtaking Davis to become second favourite. The full figures, with changes from YouGov’s last poll of party members when Clarke and Rifkind were still in the race, were Cameron 59%(+20), Fox 18%(+5), Davis 15% (+1).
Over 80% of party members now want David Cameron to be one of the candidates put before them in the last round and with Liam Fox second on 58% a Cameron-Fox final round would seem to be the most popular choice. As things presently stand David Cameron would thrash either of the other candidates in the final round - members say they would vote 72%-22% in a Cameron-Davis final and 67%-27% in a Cameron-Fox final. In a Davis-Fox final round, members would currently vote for Liam Fox by 48%-39%.
Cameron has a dominant position - asked which candidate they thought would be best at attracting new members, best for party unity, best at opposing Brown and Blair in the Commons, best on the television and radio, which candidate would offer the best chance of winning the election and which candidate would make the best Prime Minister if the Tories did win, David Cameron trounced the other candidates on every count, beating Fox and Davis by over 30% in every question (differences between Fox and Davis were more subtle - members thought David Davis would be better than Fox in the Commons and in leading a united party, on all the other counts members preferred Fox).
Asked about the drugs question the overwhelming majority of party members thought politicans should have the right to refuse to answer questions about whether they took drugs at university. 13% of members said the recent insinuations about David Cameron using drugs in the past and his refusal to answer questions about it had made them less like to vote for Cameron, but an equal amount of members said it had made them more likely to vote for Cameron. In contrast, David Davis’s perceived role in the drug allegations seems to have damaged his campaign - while only 20% of members thought that the Davis campaign or its supporters were actively involved in smearing Cameron, 36% thought that David Davis conspiculously failed to distance himself from the media campaign against Cameron and 50% of members thought that the episode had done more damage to Davis than to Cameron.
Ideologically David Cameron is quite firmly identified by members as being on the left of the party. Using the “clear blue water” and “one nation” split which YouGov used in their last poll of party members, 57% saw David Cameron as a “one nation” Tory. Liam Fox and David Davis are both seen as “clear blue water” Tories. Despite this Cameron is still the most popular candidate amongst members who see themselves as “clear blue water” Tories, and they would still vote for him rather than Fox or Davis.
Assuming that the race does go to a full ballot of party members (and the BBC was suggesting on Wednesday that it might not) then there will be six weeks or so for the position to change, and the party membership have certainly shown themselves to be a volatile electorate. For the time being however David Cameron appears to have a near unassilable lead.
The first round of the Tory leadership contest is on Tuesday and the last few days have been dominated by questions about David Cameron’s past - specifically whether or not he ever used drugs at university. Today is our first chance of seeing whether or not the allegations have made any difference to the contest.
Sadly there isn’t YouGov poll of Conservative members this weekend, so we can’t tell if their opinions of Cameron have changed. There is, however, a BPIX poll of the general public in the Mail on Sunday and a Communicate Research poll in the Indy on Sunday.
BPIX have a full set of hypothetical voting intention polls, asking how respondents would vote if each of the contenders in the Conservative leadership election were Tory leader, along with some specific questions about views on drugs.
BPIX don’t give the detailed voting intention figures, but at present Labour are 7 points ahead of the Conservatives (whatever that may mean - we don’t know how people are answering the standard voting intention - when they say how they’d vote in a General Election tomorrow are they already taking into account who they expect to be the next leader? We don’t know). With Cameron as leader the Labour lead would fall to 5 points, while under Ken Clarke the Labour lead would increase to 9 points and under Liam Fox or David Davis the Labour lead would increase to 13 points.
As I’ve noted before, questions like these don’t really tell us how well the parties would do at the next general election if they were led by the different candidates - respondents do take into account the context of the question and use it to indictate a preference for one candidate or another, not to mention the fact that whichever of the candidates does become leader may be very different to how the respondents imagine them to be. It does serve as a good proxy for how popular they are, and how much support they are likely to gain in the short term compared to each other (in the long term of course, it depends on what they do after they become leader!)
The poll also asked about the drugs issue. Opinion was sharply divided on whether or not David Cameron was right to refuse to answer questions on his past behaviour - 44% said he should answer, 43% said he shouldn’t. BPIX asked what people thought should happen if it emerged that a leadership contender had used drugs - should he stand down? Half of respondents thought that a leadership contender who had used class A drugs like cocaine shouldn’t have to stand down, 36% thought he should.
Asking just Conservative voters support for Cameron’s position became stronger. 39% of Tory voters said he should answer questions, with 52% saying he was right not to. Only 29% thought that a contender should stand down for having taken Class A drugs like cocaine, 61% disageed. So Tory voters seem to think that Cameron is right not to answer questions about taking drugs, and most wouldn’t seem to be too fussed if he had.
The Communicate research poll in the Independent was much shorter, and just did a forced choice question between Labour and Conservative under David Cameron and David Davis (why a forced choice rather than a voting intention I don’t know). Again David Cameron would do better, but this time the difference is much, much smaller closer - Cameron would only cut the Labour lead by 1 point more than Davis.
With nearly all the newspaper commissed opinion polls covering the Conservative leadership election, it’s easy to forget that the Labour party conference was also dominated by questions about their party leadership - when exactly should Tony Blair step down, and should Gordon Brown replace him?
Since the Labour conference there have been two polls about the Labour party leadership. The first, by MORI, found that 36% of respondents wanted Tony Blair to step down immediately, with a further 12% wanting him to go by the end of 2005 or 2006, suggesting that just under half of people want Blair to go sooner rather than later. 6% of people said they wanted Blair to stay right up until the next election, with a further 6% wanting him to stand down after the next election. A mysterious 19% of people said “Other”.
Populus’s poll published yesterday had similar findings on the proportion of people who wanted Blair to go soon - 45% of people wanted Tony Blair to stand down before the end of next year. 23% wanted him to stand down near the end of the Parliament, while 24% wanted him to reconsider his decision and stay on beyond the next election (my guess, therefore, is that the mystery 19% of people in MORI’s poll were people who didn’t want Blair to step down after the next election, but to carry on even longer).
More important for the Government is what Labour voters think. MORI didn’t break down the figures according to party, but Populus found that 30% of Labour voters wanted Tony Blair to go now, while 41% wanted him to reconsider his decision to stand down and remain past the the next election. Only 27% supported Blair’s stated intention of standing down towards the end of the Parliament.
Did the conference make any difference to the position? It’s hard to say, but the trend does seems to be moving away from Blair - back in July Populus found 48% of Labour voters wanted Blair to stay on past the next election and only 24% wanted him to go before 2006.
Finally, what do people think about Tony Blair’s likely successor? MORI asked people if they thought Gordon Brown or Tony Blair would make a better Prime Minister. People were actually quite evenly split - 39% said Blair, 42% said Brown. There was, however, a sharp contrast between supporters of different parties. Unsurprisingly Tony Blair appealled more to Tory voters than Gordon Brown by 45% to 37%. Amongst Lib Dem voters Brown is easily preferred to Blair, 53% to 27%. And amongst Labour’s own voters? Well, despite Brown’s popularity most Labour voters still seem to think that Blair would be better at the top job, by a margin of 56% to 37%.
We’ve seen David Cameron move into the lead amongst Tory party members, now a new Populus poll in tomorrow’s Times has him ahead amongst Tory voters.
At the start of September Populus found that Ken Clarke was the first choice of 55% of Tory voters, with David Davis in second place on 16% and David Cameron trailing behind Malcolm Rifkind with only 3%. On today’s figures David Cameron is joint first choice amongst Tory voters on 33% (up 30) alongside Ken Clarke, also on 33% (down 22). David Davis is third with 12% (down 4*).
The figures amongst all voters echo those of ICM in their weekend poll for the BBC. While Clarke remains ahead on 25%, he is down by 16% while Cameron has moved up to second place with 18% (up from 2% last month). David Davis also gains 2 points amongst all voters, but it still leaves him in third place on 12%.
Voting intention figures from the poll were LAB 40%, CON 30%, LDEM 21%.
(*The Times reports this is David Davis being up four points. However, last month’s Populus figures clearly have him on 16%, so there is a mistake at one end or the other.)
The figures for the YouGov poll at the weekend are now up on the website , as is Peter Kellner’s commentary.
Interestingly, the full figures are broken down into “One Nation” and “Clear Blue Water” Tories - i.e. the 43% of members who told YouGov they thought the party should move closer to the centre, and the 50% who thought the party should stay firmly to the right to differentiate itself from Labour.
The most important finding looking at the figures this way is, as Peter Kellner says in his article, that David Cameron is ahead in both groups. Aside from that though there are some interesting differences. Amongst “one nation” Tories Cameron has huge support - he is the first choice of almost half of respondents, with Ken Clarke second on 32%. There is very little support for David Davis (7%) or Liam Fox (4%) on the left of the party.
On the right of the party Cameron’s support is lower - only 32% - but support for the other candidates is pretty evenly split - Davis and Fox are neck and neck on 20%, with Clarke on 18%. Cameron’s support, while drawn slightly more from the left, comes from both wings of the party. Clarke’s is mainly on the left, but he retains a rump of support on the right. Davis and Fox both draw the bulk of their support from the right.
Looking at who members don’t want as leader, predictably enough there is a large body of members on the right of the party steadfastly opposed to Ken Clarke - 54% of “Blue water” Tories say Ken should definitely not be leader. Equally there are large sections of “One Nation” Tories who would staunchly oppose Liam Fox (43%) or David Davis (49%). While there are more members who would object to Cameron on the right (17%) than the left (7%), there doesn’t seem to be any large body of ideological opposition to him (indeed, amongst “clear blue” Tories there are more opponents of Fox (20%) and Davis (20%)than Cameron).
The most obvious explanation for this is that Cameron isn’t seen as a candidate from the left or right of the party by most party members - he isn’t alienating any support for ideological reasons. Whether he can continue in the same vein under the spotlight of the leadership campaign is a different question.
Finally we come to the run offs between the various pairs of candidates. Obviously there are some differences, but in the Davis/Cameron, Clarke/Cameron and Fox/Davis run-offs the winners are the same amongst both wings of the party. The only run-off out of the four that YouGov tested that would be a true ideological face-off was Clarke/Davis - 68% of “one nation” Tories would back Clarke, 60% of “blue water” Tories would back Davis.
According the media the Tory party conference was a triumph for David Cameron and a disaster for David Davis. Until now though there has been no way of knowing whether the views of Tory activists in the conference hall would be replicated by Conservative party members across the country, or indeed the general public. Have the conference speeches really swung the votes of party members across the country, or just the sort of activists who go to conference?
The first proper polls are in tomorrow’s Sunday papers, most notably a poll of party members by YouGov. Perceptions of the candidates’ performances at conference were pretty much in line with media reports (though that should hardly come as a surprise - most members would have seen the conference through the prism of the media). 91% of members thought Cameron had done well (68% thought he had done “very well”), with only 3% thinking he’d done badly - a net rating of +88. 29% thought Davis had done well, with 65% thinking he’d done badly - a net rating of -36. The figures for other candidates were Clarke +80, Fox +64 and Rifkind +31. 44% said the conference had changed their opinion on who should be leader.
The last two YouGov polls of party members have shown Davis and Clarke as the clear front runners, with Davis ahead in a run off between the two. In YouGov’s latest survey David Cameron has a substantial lead over other candidates: he is the first choice of 39% of party members, followed by Clarke on 26%. From being front runner David Davis is now fighting Liam Fox for third place, with 14% and 13% support respectively.
Leadership elections are not just won on who people like though, they are based on who people don’t like. IDS won in 2001 not because who he was, but because he wasn’t Ken Clarke. One of David Davis’s strengths up to now has been that he was the candidate who was least disliked - there were very few people who wanted anyone-but-Davis, while there were plenty of anyone-but-Clarkes. That too has changed - David Cameron is now also the candidate who members find least objectionable, only 12% think he should definitely not be leader, while 33% think Davis should not be leader (Clarke is objected to by 40%, Fox by 30%).
Asked who they would like to see reach the final round of voting, 71% of members said David Cameron and, on present voting intentions, he would obliterate Davis or Clarke in the final round. Party members say they would vote 60%/33% in a Cameron/Clarke run off and would vote 66%/27% in a Cameron/Davis run off (unfortunately YouGov didn’t ask how opponents would vote in a Cameron/Fox final round). In a Davis/Clarke final round Clarke has pulled ahead and now leads Davis by 49% to 44%. The only run off question conducted for Liam Fox was Fox vs Davis, where Davis would win by 44% to 41%.
Logically, since Davis would beat Fox, and Clarke and Cameron would beat Davis, Clarke and Cameron should also beat Fox - in reality though people don’t necessarily vote like that. It does correlate with the first preferences though - Cameron would beat Clarke, who would beat Davis, who would beat Fox.
The impact of Davis and Cameron’s conferences performances has indeed stretched beyond the media and the conference to normal party members - the electorate who will make the final decision. It remains to be seen if this is a permanent change in opinion, or if Cameron will fall back once the immediate rush of media adoration falls away. For the moment at least David Cameron is the clear front runner.
Meanwhile, amongst the public as a whole, Cameron’s rating has improved, but he is hardly sweeping all before him. A second poll tomorrow, by ICM for the BBC’s Politics Show, asked a sample of normal voters and found that Ken Clarke remained their favourite candidate, with 27% naming him as their preferred leader. Cameron has moved up to 13% to put him joint second with David Davis.