So that was 2005. What should we be looking for the political polls for 2006?
At the moment the Conservatives are ahead in the opinion polls - amongst some of the pollsters it is their first lead since the fuel strikes. It’s probably four years until a general election, so polls are of no use in predicting the next election at this point, what they show in the next 12 months though will be vital for all the political parties.
The Conservatives are enjoying their poll lead at the moment - one important question for them will be to what degree it lasts. The boost in their rating that has resulted from David Cameron’s election isn’t actually much greater than the increase we saw after Michael Howard became leader (with the notable exception of the MORI poll that showed a 9% Tory lead - a figure it would be wise to ignore unless another poll backs it up), based just on the voting intention polls it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise if the Tories drop back behind Labour once the initial Cameron euphoria drops away.
Where the Conservatives have more grounds for optimism are some of the other questions asked in the recent polls about David Cameron - a recent ICM poll that found that David Cameron was seen as a potential PM, a person who could change the way people thought about the Conservatives and a person who over a third of Labour voters and almost half Lib Dem voters said they could vote for; another ICM poll that found that 40% of people thought that Cameron was the natural heir of Tony Blair - these sort of findings were definitely not seen after Michael Howard became leader.
The important figures for the Conservatives next year will be firstly the voting intention figures - the Conservatives need a substantial lead to have any chance whatsover of forming a government and if David Cameron wants to keep the support of his party he needs to show he has the potential to deliver.
More importantly though will be seeing if David Cameron manages to change the Tory party’s image. His initial announcements as leader - ditching policies on immigration, highlighting social justice and involving people like Bob Geldof and Zac Goldsmith suggest this is the course he is committed to. If he is successful we will be see the proportion of people associating the Conservative party with things like understanding people’s problems and being caring increasing, and people’s perceptions of the Conservative party on the left-right scale moving closer the the centre of gravity.
Labour shouldn’t be worrying too much about voting intention figures, it is early in the Parliament after all. That said, if the Conservatives open up a very large lead in the polls it will further undermine Tony Blair’s leadership - whether that hastens his demise though depends upon the man expected to succeed him.
The most interesting question for Labour in the polls will be about Gordon Brown. If we go back a year or two Gordon Brown’s polling figures were unambiguously sunny. Huge majorities of people were satisified with the job he was doing as Chancellor and polls asking how people would vote if Gordon Brown took over from Tony Blair invariably showed him delivering a huge boost to the Labour vote. Just recently things have changed - polls have started showing Gordon Brown’s satisfaction ratings falling and, since the emergence of David Cameron as Tory leader, polls have consistently suggested that Labour would do worse under Brown than under Blair.
If this trend continues and isn’t just the effect of the Cameron honeymoon, then it’s possible that Labour MPs might begin to wonder how advisable it is to replace Blair with an even less popular alternative. At the moment there is no clearly identified alternative to Brown as the next Labour leader, but if one does emerge and the polls do not improve for Gordon Brown, he may yet face a true challenge for the top job.
Finally what do the polls have in store for the Liberal Democrats? The big question, that of their leadership, will probably not be much informed by polling - after all, Charlie Kennedy, while few people’s choice for Prime Minister, is generally far more positively rated than any other political leader.
Voting intention figures are more interesting - the Lib Dems secured 23% of the vote at the general election. Since then they’ve fallen to between 18% and 21% (there may be a methodological difference between the pollsters here - YouGov have shown a gradual consistent fall in their vote and have them pretty steady around 18%. ICM on the other hand have shown them consistently around 21%). Since last year’s final polls David Cameron has been targetting the Lib Dems, appealling for defections - it will be interesting to see if next year the Lib Dem vote is squeezed by a resurgent Conservative party (or, if Tony Blair does step down, by anti-war Labour protest voters returning to the fold) or whether they manage to hold onto and consolidate their support.
The Lib Dems also face the question of their position on the political spectrum - are they a party of the left, or will they turn to a more economically liberal position. They have already dropped their policy to increase the overall tax burden, and a new leader would almost certainly have their own views about the way they want the party to develop. At the moment the Lib Dems are percieved as the most left wing of the three main political parties. Would a new leader want to change that?
As the third party you don’t actually get many opinion polls focusing on the Liberal Democrats, further details of the monthly ICM poll in today’s Guardian include the first question related to to Charles Kennedy’s recent troubles.
Asked if, in the light of the Labour and Tory parties both having new leaders at the next election, whether the Liberal Democrats would be better off with a different leader. 52% of people though they would, with 38% of people saying the Lib Dems would be better off retaining Charles Kennedy.
Leadership questions like this always produce partisan results and Labour and Tory voters are most likely to want to see the back of Kennedy. However, even 44% of Liberal Democrat voters say they think the party would be better off with a different leader.
While many Lib Dem voters think they’d be better off with another leader, the great majority of Lib Dem voters continue to think he is doing a good job. 76% of Lib Dem voters approve and 22% disapprove, a net approval of +54 - but these are comparatively low figures for a party leader amongst their own supporters - Blair has a net approval of +64 amongst Labour voters and Cameron +76 amongst Tory voters.
One of the reasons I first started blogging about opinion polls was the newspapers’ insistance on writing about the polls they commissioned themselves as if they were the only polls in the universe. Today’s Guardian leader says ” With the sole exception of September 2000, in the aftermath of the tanker drivers’ fuel protest, this is the first ICM poll since January 1993 in which the Conservatives have led Labour.” In actual fact it’s the first ICM poll to show a Tory lead since…er…a week and a half ago in the Sunday Telegraph.
Still, the poll pretty much echoes ICM’s Sunday Telegraph poll - the topline figures are CON 37%(nc), LAB 36%(+1), LDEM 21%(nc), the only difference being an insignificant change in the level of Labour support. The poll was taken between the 15th-18th December, so well after Charlie Kennedy’s latest problems had hit the press - they do not seem to have had any negative effect upon the Lib Dem vote.
Like the Sunday Telegraph poll, ICM’s Guardian poll also asked a theoretical voting intention poll with Gordon Brown as Labour leader. Voting intention would then be CON 41%, LAB 36%, LDEM 18%, following the increasingly familiar pattern of the Conservatives increasing their lead, with the Lib Dem falling back - presumably as a result of churn as anti-Blair Lib Dem voters switch back to Labour, but anti-Brown voters switch over to the Tories. It’s worth remembering that all these theoretical ‘with Brown as leader’ voting intention questions also include the assumption that Charlie Kennedy will still be Lib Dem leader - something that looks considerably less likely after the past week.
David Cameron continues to enjoy very good underlying figures - 66% of people see him as a potential Prime Minister (obviously this includes nearly all Tory voters, but also a majority of Labour and Lib Dem voters). More importantly 51% of Labour voters and 62% of Lib Dem voters think Cameron could change their view of the Tories, and 36% of Labour voters and 46% of Lib Dems think that Mr Cameron is “someone I could vote for”. Charges that he is all spin and no substance chime with only 26% of people (mostly Labour and Nationalist voters), only 13% of people agree that he is too young for the job.
The last two weeks’s PMQs exchanges between David Cameron and Tony Blair have concentrated on education, with Cameron doing his best to try and drive a wedge between Blair and his backbenchers, and Blair doing his best to paint Cameron as a supporter of academic selection in schools. Is that really such a bad thing to be though - some Labour MPs may retain a visceral hatred of the 11-plus, but what do the public think about academic selection in schools?
The latest YouGov poll also included a series of questions on education. The idea of streaming by academic ability within schools meets with overwhelming support - only 4% think streaming is a bad idea. 83% of people supported streaming, with respondents split fairly evenly between a programme forcing all schools to stream pupils by ability, and allowing schools to chose whether to stream or not.
Asked if the abolition of Grammar schools and secondary moderns and their replacement with comprehensive schools was in hindsight a good or bad idea, 48% of people think it was a bad idea, with only 31% thinking it was a good idea. There is a sharp political divide here - Conservative voters overwhelmingly think it was a bad idea (72% to 16%), Labour voters broadly support it (48% to 31%), while Lib Dem voters are pretty evenly split.
While people may think the passing of the old 11-plus system was a bad thing, there is less support for the reintroduction of academic selection in schools. 41% of respondents thought that schools should not be allowed to select any pupils on the basis of ability. 28% thought that schools should be free to select a proportion of their pupils on the basis of ability, while 20% thought that schools should be able to be completely selective. There were predictable differences between supporters of political parties - Labour voters were most opposed to selection and Conservative voters most favorable towards it. However, the division were not as sharp as you might think - 39% of Labour voters supported some degree of selection, with 11% supporting complete selection. 28% of Conservative voters were opposed to selection in schools.
YouGov also asked where decisions about admissions policies should be made. 38% supported leaving the decision with LEAs (either as at present, with some grammar, church and specialist schools allowed to make their own decisions, or giving complete control to LEAs), 45% of respondents supported giving all schools the right to make their own decisions on admissions (either with (29%) or without (16%) the option of returning to the 11-plus). Again there were sharp political divides - amongst Tory voters the split was 26% in favour of LEA control, 62% in favour of giving control to schools, amongst Labour voters the split was 49% to 33%.
It seems that on education there are still sharp divides between the supporters of different political parties, even if the two party leaders make a show of ‘agreeing’ every Wednesday lunchtime. Conservative voters tend to support selection and giving admissions control to individual schools. Labour voters tend to be opposed to selection, and support the role of LEAs in distributing school places. Overall the Conservatives seem to have regained their position as the party most trusted with education - a position they last achieved in Michael Howard’s honeymoon as leader - asked which party had the best policies on improving the quality of education in schools 24% said the Conservatives, ahead of Labour on 20% and the Lib Dems on 11%.
This month’s political monitor from MORI has one of the largest shifts I’ve ever seen in a voting intention poll - the topline figures are CON 40%(+8), LAB 31%(-11), LDEM 21% (+2). The nine point lead is the largest Conservative lead in any poll since May 1992, and the largest lead in a MORI poll since January 1989 (although MORI polls prior ro 2003 aren’t really comparable).
Ironically, even a whopping great lead like this would, on a uniform swing, leave the Conservative party tantalisingly short of an overall majority in the Commons - although in reality I suspect differential swings in marginal seats would probably mean that these shares would deliver a Conservative majority.
MORI also asked a Best Prime Minister question - giving respondents the choice of Cameron, Kennedy or Gordon Brown, the expected Labour leader at the next election. Here, despite the overall poll showing a large Tory lead, Brown lead Cameron by 31% to 27%. While on the surface this suggests that Brown may yet be a plus to Labour, it’s worth remembering that the voting intention questions on MORI polls include only people certain to vote, while questions on best Prime Minister include all respondents.
The poll was actually taken a week ago, making it older than the YouGov poll in Friday’s Telegraph - in fact it was taken at roughly the same time as Populus’s poll that put Labout three points ahead. Obviously, the Labour figures in the MORI (31%) and Populus (40%) polls are outside each other’s margin of error, so one of them is wrong. The difference may well be down to their methodology. The MORI poll was conducted by telephone, but unlike Populus they do not weight by past vote to ensure a politically representative sample. This would result in MORI polls being far more favourable to Labour than Populus or ICM, but MORI also deal with likehood to vote differently - including only those voters who say they are absolutely 10/10 certain to vote, a filter that greatly favours the Conservative party. At the last general election the two methodological approaches cancelled each other out and the pollsters ended up predicting roughly the same shares of the vote. Now that the political battleground seems to be shifting this may no longer be the case. On the other hand, the difference could simply be that either the MORI or the Populus poll (or even both!) were rogue polls outside the margin of error.
YouGov’s monthly tracker poll is in today’s Telegraph and shows the Conservatives continuing to enjoy a slight lead over Labour. The topline figures with changes from YouGov’s poll last weekend are CON 38%(+1), LAB 36%(nc), LDEM 18%(nc). It won’t be for a month or two until we can tell if if Conservative advance is a real change, or just the boost from a new leader. As Tony King points out in his analysis of the poll, YouGov found almost identical levels of support a month after Michael Howard became Tory leader and in his case they fell straight back behind.
David Cameron has also caught Tony Blair in the best Prime Minister rating, with both leaders on 30%. Again, there is a precedent for this - Michael Howard ever so briefly matched Tony Blair as preferred Prime Minister in 2004 before dropping behind. The main loser on the best Prime Minister question is Charles Kennedy, who had been up at 18% at the last general election and is now at 10%. Once again though, there is a precedent - back when Michael Howard became Tory leader Kennedy’s rating for best PM fell to 10% before recovering.
All in all, on YouGov’s polls at least the topline figures for David Cameron are no improvement on those Michael Howard achieved when he first became Tory leader - it’s the normal “new Tory leader” boost. Only when you look at the underlying figures do we find significantly more positive figures for David Cameron.
Firstly, there seems to be far less hostility towards the Cameron-led Conservative party. Back in 2003 when Howard became leader YouGov asked what people’s reaction would be were Michael Howard to form a government - 19% would have been delighted, 32% wouldn’t mind, 34% would have been dismayed, a net balance of -15 (by February 2005 this had decayed to -28). In today’s poll 21% of people said they would be delighted if David Cameron formed a government, with only 24% saying they would be dismayed, a net balance of only -3.
YouGov also asked a series of questions offering respondents pairs of words and asking which best applied to David Cameron. YouGov asked the same questions about Tony Blair at the end of November. On every count more people associate David Cameron with the postive option, and on every count his figures are better than Blair’s, in some cases quite startlingly so. 52% of people thought that Tony Blair did not listen to reason, a net rating of -22. Cameron’s rating was +15. While 46% of people thought that Blair was likeable, 38% of people though he wasn’t. In contrast Cameron was seen as likeable by 51% of people, with only 12% saying he was not likeable. Blair’s net score on trust was -34, Cameron’s +2 and so on. A lot of this is because people don’t yet know Cameron - on nearly every count the majority of people said don’t know - but those that did have an pinion tended to be positive.
Populus’s monthly poll in the Times also shows a boost for the Tories, up three points under their new leader, however unlike ICM and YouGov this is not enough for them to overtake Labour. The topline figures are CON 35%(+3), LAB 38%(-2), LDEM 19%(nc). In Peter Riddell’s commentary he suggests it may be because Populus conducted their poll slightly later than ICM and YouGov - personally I think the difference may simply be one of methodology - while before the election Populus and ICM weighted their polls almost identically, last month Populus weighted past Labour voters signficantly higher, and past Conservative voters significantly lower than ICM did.
(UPDATE - part of the difference was indeed this - if Populus had used ICM’s weightings it would have been LAB 37%, CON 36%. The Labour lead could, as Peter Riddell suggests, be the immediate rush of Cameron euphoria passing, but it could equally be normal variations within of margin of error)
While Labour retain a lead at the moment, Populus also asked how people will vote on the assumption that Gordon Brown becomes Labour leader by the time of the next election - the result would be CON 41%, Labour 35%. Hypothetical questions like this are just that - hypothetical - and you shouldn’t read too much into them. That said, this follows polls by ICM and YouGov that showed Labour performing worse under Brown than under Blair, and if polls continue to show that Brown would damage Labour’s electoral hopes it will over time damage his chances of succeeding Blair.
Populus also asked about the images of the political parties. David Cameron’s accession has not changed the underlying perceptions of the party - the number of people thinking the Tories are honest, or that they care about the problem of ordinary people, have not changed. What has significantly increased is the proportion of people thinking that the Tories have a good team of leaders, and are united. It’ll be interesting to see if David Cameron can build upon that to improve the more fundemental problems with the Tory image.
Two new polls in the Sunday papers show the Conservative party in the lead for the first time since April.
The ICM and YouGov polls were conducted immediately after David Cameron’s election. YouGov’s topline figures, with changes from their poll for Sky News conducted immediately prior to Cameron’s victory, are CON 37%(+1), LAB 36%(nc), LD 18%(nc). ICM’s topline figures, with changes from their last monthly poll for the Guardian conducted in mid-November, are CON 37%(+4), LAB 35%(-3), LDEM 21%(+2). While there is no significant change in YouGov’s poll, their last two polls were conducted when the media were treating Cameron’s victory as a foregone conclusion - if you go back six weeks YouGov too were showing an 8 point Labour lead.
There is, therefore, a pretty unambiguous Cameron boost. The important question is what happens next - it may be a purely temporary phenomenon, once the media circus dies down and some of the novelty rubs off Cameron the Conservative vote may well drop back down again. On the other hand it may be start of a permanent sea change - Tony Blair’s election as Labour leader in July 1994 saw Labour’s lead in Gallup’s monthly polls increase by almost 10% and, except for a downwards blip in October 1994, it pretty much stayed up thereafter.
There is also the question of Gordon Brown - voting intention figures 4 years from a general election are of little importance at the best of times, let alone when we know the sitting Prime Minister will probably change before the next election. ICM also asked a voting intention question asking how people would vote assuming that Gordon Brown was Labour leader - like YouGov’s poll earlier this week this showed Labour doing worse under Brown than under Blair; with Brown as leader voting intention would be CON 40%, LAB 37%, LD 18%.
Polls like this are purely hypothetical, but if polls continue to suggest that a Brown lead Labour party would fail to achieve a Commons majority, it will hardly ease Gordon Brown’s accession to Downing Street when Tony Blair does step down. YouGov’s poll also suggests that Brown’s reputation as Chancellor has plummeted in recent months. In recent years YouGov’s polls have consistently found that the overwhelming majority of people thought that Gordon Brown was doing a good job as Chancellor - his approval ratings have been consistently high - normally around +30 and, at the end of last year and earlier this year, +40 and +41. YouGov’s poll this week - conducted just after his announcement that his earlier growth figures were wrong - has Brown’s net approval rating down to only +4.
At this moment in time the Conservatives’ new leader seems to have given them a boost at just the time that the iron Chancellor’s reputation has begun to tarnish. In both instances though, it remains to be seen if it is a permanent change or purely a passing whim - if nothing else politics suddenly looks more interesting.
UPDATE - the newspaper reports are here and here. There are a few more interesting findings in them - David Cameron’s initial net approval rating from YouGov is +34 - that the third highest approval rating I can find for any Tory leader ever (the top two being John Major’s approval ratings during the Gulf War). It doesn’t signify much other than that he hasn’t done anything to annoy anyone yet.
ICM also asked abouit who should replace Blair as Labour leader once he stands down, Brown, or an unnamed younger leader. The public are evenly split, 41% to 42%. So far polls asking who should succeed Blair have always shown Brown to be far and away the most popular candidate, but this suggests that the reason is because there is no obvious younger alternative to Brown for opposition to focus upon. If one were to emerge Brown could potentially face a problem (in terms of public preference at least, Labour MPs or members are obviously a different matter). ICM also asked who people saw as Tony Blair’s natural sucessor - 46% said Brown, but 40% said Cameron.
Finally there is a BPIX poll in the Mail on Sunday which shows a continuing Labour lead - CON 37%, LAB 38%.
The Conservative party has finally chosen a leader and normal politics has resumed. Sky have released the final opinion poll of the Tory interregnum, conducted by YouGov. With the last few days newspapers having been an orgy of Cameronia, it is rather unsurprisingly a good poll for the Tories - for the first time since the beginning of the general election campaign it shows the parties neck and neck: CON 36% (+1), LAB 36%(-1), LD 18% (-2).
The change from the last poll is well within the margin of error and, if repeated at a general election, these shares of the vote would still give Labour an overall majority. However by the time of the next election Gordon Brown will be Labour leader, not Tony Blair. A separate question asked respondents how they would vote at the time of the next election assuming that the party leaders are Charlie Kennedy, David Cameron and Gordon Brown. Far from Brown increasing the Labour vote, the Conservatives took a 5% lead: CON 38%, LAB 33%, LD 18%. Of course - the same caveats that I used to attach to polls asking hypothetical questions about voting intention under potential Tory leaders apply to questions about potential Labour leaders as well - it may be a long time until we know what effect a Gordon Brown leadership would really have on Labour support.
YouGov also asked about how the three present party leaders and Gordon Brown were seen by the public. Cameron was seen as having an attractive personality by a greater proportion (23%) of people than any other party leader, and significantly more than Gordon Brown on only 6%. He was also seen as less out of touch with people’s problems than Brown or Blair and, while 29% of people said they didn’t really know what he stood for, similar numbers of people said the same about Brown. Cameron’s lowest score was the proportion of people who thought he was more honest than most politicians - only 9% compared to 16% for Blair, 20% for Brown and 29% for Kennedy.
Gordon Brown had better ratings than Tony Blair on every count, except upon having a likeable personality where he trailed badly. Finally Charlie Kennedy as usual scored very highly across the board - he was the leader who people though least out of touch with people’s problems, the least unclear about what he stood for and far and away the most honest. The only places where he was beaten by other party leaders were being seen as likeable by fewer people than Cameron, and as having good ideas by fewer people than Brown.
There is what really amounts to a Conservative leadership exit poll in tomorrow’s Telegraph. It was conducted between Thursday and Friday and over 80% of Tory members polled told YouGov they had already voted - the actual turnout may well be lower than this since CCO’s turnout figures won’t take into account situations like members who died (i.e. on CCOs turnout figures they’ll count as a member who didn’t return a ballot paper, however dead people are very unlikely to fill in YouGov surveys saying they didn’t vote) and ballots lost in the post.
The figures for members who have voted are David Cameron 67%, David Davis 33% - unchanged from the last YouGov poll of Conservative party members. Taking those people who told YouGov they were still intending to vote makes no significant difference. Cameron led in every single demographic split, though his lead was greatest amongst younger members.
YouGov’s poll of the last Conservative leadership contest was precisely correct. This one won’t necessarily be as bang on as that in 2001, a poll of 661 party members has a margin of error of about 4%, so we could be looking at actual splits between 63/37 to 71/29, but either way, Cameron has won the election and is going to be the next Tory leader.