A bizarre ICM poll in the Sunday Express - I haven’t seen a copy of the paper, but the PA reports have voting intention at CON 29%, LAB 27%, LDEM 22%, implying that the total “other” vote is up to 22% (including 6% for the Greens, 4% for the BNP and 3% for UKIP).
Reports do not make clear whether this is a general election voting intention question or a local election voting intention question - either way, I’m reserving judgement till I see the tables on the ICM website.
A BPIX poll in the Mail on Sunday has voting intention figures for the local elections. Amongst those respondents who lived in areas with local elections who said they were certain to vote in the local elections, the topline figures were CON 35%, LAB 26%, LDEM 23%, Other 16%. Amongst the others the BNP are at 5%, a figure that will undoubtedly be far lower in real life given the limited number of seats the BNP are contesting.
The council seats up for election this week were last contested in 2002 in London, and 2004 elsewhere. Directly comparable figures from those elections are hard to come by, but to give some sort of context the “national equivalent” votes calculated by Rallings and Thrashers at the two sets of elections were CON 34%, LAB 33%, LDEM 27% in 2002 and CON 37%, LAB 26%, LDEM 27% in 2004. As far as I’m aware national equivalent votes are not a straight sum of the votes in contested seats, but a projection based on seats with all three main parties running, so this is not a direct comparison.
BPIX also asked a normal voting intention question, the topline figures were CON 35%, LAB 32%, LDEM 19%.
On the future of the three ministers currently under fire, 45% of respondents thought that John Prescott should resign (42% would like him to stay), 74% thought Charles Clarke should resign (15% would like him to stay) and 55% thought Patricia Hewitt should resign (27% would like her to stay). Amongst Labour supporters the majority wanted Prescott and Hewitt to stay, but wanted Clarke to resign.
Unpublished in the Mail on Sunday (UK Polling Report has been given sight of the full data set for the poll) there were also a series of questions asking people to say which of a series of positive words (likeable, competent, good leader, caring trsutworthy, etc) applied to particular politicians - once again it underlines the contrasting views of David Cameron and Gordon Brown.
Cameron was seen as likeable by the highest proportion of voters of any of the 11 politicians included - 30% thought he was likeable, the next highest being Tony Blair on 21%. 14% of people thought Gordon Brown was likeable. In contrast, Gordon Brown was seen as competent by more people than any of the other politicians listed - 34% thought he was competent, followed by Tony Blair on 22%. 19% thought Cameron was competent. More people thought Cameron was in touch, but more people thought that Brown was trustworthy.
The public perceptions of the two men who will most likely fight out the next generation already seem to be settling into contrasting images: Cameron as likeable and in touch vs Brown, solid, trustworthy and competent.
A new YouGov poll in the Sunday Times asks about all three of the government ministers under fire and suggests that the public want to see the back of all three.
48% of people said they wanted to see Prescott resign, compared to 31% who would like him to stay. This is the reverse of the ICM poll yesterday, though it’s not clear if the ICM poll was conducted marginally earlier.
In regard of the other two ministers, 53% want to see Charles Clarke leave the government, 21% would like him to stay. Asked about the release of foreign prisoners who should have been considered for deportation, 89% of respondents thought it amounted to “alarming incompetence”. 72% of people thought that the governments general handling of crime and immigration was incompetent.
51% want to see Patricia Hewitt resign, while only 19% would like her to stay. Only 7% of people agreed that Hewitt had been correct to describe the NHS as having its best year ever, 72% of respondents thought she had been wrong. Overall, 62% of people thought the NHS was being run badly, compared to 30% who thought it was generally being run well.
The last week has also damaged the Prime Minister himself - 64% of people think he is doing badly as Prime Minister compared to 33% who think he is doing well, the lowest net score recorded by YouGov for this question. In comparison David Cameron has a net score of +20 (apparantly unscathed by the Chameleon ads) and Ming Campbell has a net score of -1, though still has a large number of “don’t knows”.
On overall voting intention the topline figures, with changes from the YouGov poll for the Telegraph a week ago, are CON 35%(+2), LAB 32%(-3), LDEM 18%(+1). “Other” parties collectively account for 15% of support - the BNP make up 6% of that, marginally (thought not significantly) down on the earlier poll, perhaps because the media spotlight has moved elsewhere.
The rise in the “other” support, the proximity of the local elections and the contrasting Liberal Democrat findings from different pollsters make it difficult to draw any firm conclusions about how party support is fluctating beyond noting that the last week has, unsurprisingly, seemed to give Labour’s support a reasonable knock in the week leading up to the local elections.
The poll also included a list of questions about which party would best handle various issues. Unsurprisingly given the week’s news, the Conservatives had a substantial lead on law and order and immigration. On the economy Labour retain their lead. On education the two parties are neck and neck. The biggest surprise was health - normally it is a rock solid Labour issue, but today’s poll found only a 1 point lead for Labour on which party would best handle the issue (26% Labour, 25% Tories). For all the current media focus on law and order and John Prescott’s love life, if the Labour party lose their reputation as the best party to run the NHS they may be in real trouble.
Populus have published the first opinion poll on the future of Charles Clarke as Home Secretary. The poll, conducted on Wednesday and Thursday, found that 63% of respondents thought that Clarke should resign over the failure to deport foreign prisoners after their sentences, 32% thought he should stay.
A second poll, by ICM for Newsnight, shows 64% want Clarke to resign, while 25% want him to stay. Amongst Labour supporters opinion is more evenly split - 45% would like him to go, 47% would like him to stay. There is better news for John Prescott - only 37% think he should resign, 57% think he should stay.
A Populus poll for the BBC’s Daily Politics suggests that 47% of people believe that David Cameron genuinely cares about the environment more than most politicians, with 41% disagreeing. However, this hasn’t rubbed off on the image of the Tory party itself - 53% of people agreed that “David Cameron may care about the environment but I wouldn’t trust the Conservative Party to implement policies to help the environment”, 38% of people disagreed.
This is becoming a part of a broad trend for the Conservative party - people do like David Cameron, his approval ratings are still impressively positive (especially by the disasterous standards of Conservative leaders), but it doesn’t seem to be rubbing off at all on the Conservative party yet. 43% of people did tell Populus that they thought Cameron’s focus on the environment meant that the Tory party was really changing, but even then they are cynical about rebranding exercises - 62% thought Cameron was focusing on the environment just to make the Tory party more popular, rather than because of a genuine concern, and subsequent newspaper articles (after this poll was published) about Cameron riding his bike to work, while his briefcase and shoes are chauffeur driven are hardly going to improve that figure.
There are unusual findings in a MORI poll in the Sun (presumably MORI’s monthly political monitor). The topline figures are CON 30%(-4), LAB 30%(-9), LDEM 25%(+6), Others 15%. The Sun does not report a figure for the BNP, though it may turn up on the MORI website. The 15% score for the “others” could mean that there been an increase for the BNP in this poll, and indeed the Sun’s report does suggest this.
The change in the Labour vote is obviously particularly extreme for a single month. MORI’s polls are far more erratic than any of the other pollsters. Since the general election the average change in a party’s level of support in MORI’s monthly polls is 3.2 points, compared to 2 points for Populus (who have have changes to their methodology), 1.7 for YouGov and 1.5 for ICM. MORI’s volatility is probably because they do not use any form of political weighting on their samples, weighting which serves to dampen down sample error for the other three pollsters.
While the MORI changes may be quite extreme, the movements do back up movements seen in the most recent YouGov and ICM polls. The BNP are up, Labour and Conservatives are down, and the Liberal Democrats are sharply up. I suspect that there are two separate processes going on here - a rise in BNP support after the publicity they received from Margaret Hodge’s comments (presumably at the expense of the Tories), and secondly a sharp fall in Labour support, for whom the Liberal Democrats are the clear beneficiaries.
UPDATE: The full figures are up on MORI’s website here. The BNP are in fact on 3%, so there is a slight rise but not to the extent reported by YouGov - once again this is not unexpected, people will be less willing to admit to supporting the BNP to an interviewer, as opposed to a computer screen. The poll was carried out between the 20th and 22nd of April, so would have come prior to Patricia Hewitt’s comments on the NHS and, obviously, the revelation that foreign prisoners were not being deported on release.
YouGov have carried out an experiment for Sky News, asking two groups of people if they agreed with a list of BNP policies. The first group were not told they were the policies of the BNP, the second group were. Unsurprisingly, it found that public perceptions of the BNP drove down support for policies when they were identified as being from the BNP. On average 6% fewer people supported a policy when it was attributed to the BNP, and 6% more people opposed it.
The survey found strong support for BNP policies on accepting fewer asylum seekers (supported by 77%, or 74% when associated with the BNP) and giving priority to British families in allocating council housing (83% support, or 77% when associated with the BNP). There was overwhelming support for making criminals serve their full sentences (91% and 87% support). The question of whether all immigration should be halted provided the strongest contrast - 59% supported the policy, but when it was presented as a BNP policy support fell to 48%.
There was a more mixed view on Europe - 35% of people supported withdrawal from the European Union, with 36% opposed (the 1 point gap grew to a 10 point gap once the policy was associated with the BNP).
There was however strong opposition to more extreme policies on race - asked if they agreed that non-white people were inherently “less British”, only 16% of people agreed, with 68% opposed. When identified as a BNP support dropped to 11%, opposition grew to 76%. A majority also opposed the government encouraging immigrants to leave Britain (52% opposed, rising to 58% opposition when associated with the BNP).
Finally, YouGov asked people if they would seriously consider voting for a party that supported all these policies. In the unattributed group, 37% said yes, 48% said no. In the attributed group the figure is lower, 20% say they would seriously consider voting for the BNP (a figure comparable to the ICM survey in JRRT report that found 18% of people saying they might vote BNP), 66% said no.
What does this tell us? Firstly some of the BNP’s policies - particularly on crime and prioritising housing - are very popular indeed. Despite that a majority of people would not consider voting for a party that allied these policies with the BNP’s stance on race and repatriation. If you actually mention the BNP by name, with all the negative connetations that come with it, the proportion of people willing to support it falls even further.
ICM’s monthly poll for the Guardian (a week late, presumably to avoid the Easter bank holidays which make it tricky to get a decent sample) shows a sharp fall for Labour and an advance for the Liberal Democrats. The topline figures, with changes since ICM’s last voting intention poll at the beginning of April, are CON 34%(-1), LAB 32%(-3), LDEM 24%(+3).
Labour’s level of support is one of the lowest recorded in any poll this Parliament (the other being the MORI poll which put the Conservatives 9 points ahead, and which in hindsight was almost certainly a rogue), the Liberal Democrats’ one of their highest. Using their present weighting regime ICM tend to give higher ratings to the Liberal Democrats than any of the other pollsters, when other companies had them falling to the mid-teens after Charles Kennedy’s resignation ICM never reported Lib Dem support below 19%, but even by ICM’s standards this represents a significant advance for them.
There has been little coverage of the Lib Dems in recent weeks, suggesting that their advance is due more to them being the public’s “not Labour” party of choice, gaining support as Labour stumbles. The fall in Labour’s score could be a result of the arrest of Des Smith finally giving some salience to the issue of party funding, or perhaps the first effects of concern over NHS funding. Another poll by MORI for the Sun shows that Labour have only a 3 point advantage over the Tories as the party that “would be most effective in getting good value for the public money it spends”. Given that Labour normally has a solid advantage in any poll asking about public services this poll does raise some questions over whether the question of NHS funding has started to bite.
Of course, as with the vast majority of polls, the changes are within the margin of error and, unless other polls reflect the same trends, it could turn out to be entirely meaningless.
The BNP are up to 2% in the poll - ICM do not normally report the level of BNP support in their monthly polls, but if their previously levels of support were similar to those found by YouGov this is likely to be a slight rise - though obviously not on the scale reported by YouGov last week. This isn’t necessarily a contradiction, the spiral of silence effect that has historically led to Conservative voters being unwilling to admit their voting intention is likely to be far, far stronger for a party with an image like the BNP’s. YouGov polls are self-completed by respondents, which makes respondents more willing to admit to unfashionable or socially unacceptable answers. While ICM adjust for the spiral of silence, their method works on the assumption that some people too embarrassed to admit how they’ll vote will vote in the same way they did last time - it can’t account for people too embarrassed to admit to a new voting intention.
A BPIX survey in the Mail on Sunday has the first signs of how Labour’s “Dave the Chameleon” PPB went down with the public (for those who missed it the ad is viewable here). A straight out attack ad aimed at David Cameron, there has been some debate over whether the advert will backfire, either through being overly negative, through underlining that the Conservatives are changing, or just because the little Dave the Chameleon character is too cute.
The survey suggests that only 1 in 20 people said the advert had made them less likely to vote Tory, while 1 in 7 said it made them more likely to vote Tory. The chameleon itself was just too nice - over a third of people said it was likeable - and the changes it made against David Cameron were too applicable to Tony Blair himself. While 49% of people thought that David Cameron would indeed “do and say anything to win votes”, 68% said it was true of Tony Blair.
Finally BPIX asked respondents which animal they thought politicians most resembles. While this is a valid technique in focus groups as a way of exploring why people think politicians are like particular animals, I’m wary of how useful it is in a quantative poll like this, especially when people are given a list of animals to chose from. Still, it does suggest that the chameleon tag hasn’t stuck on Cameron - only 11% said he most reminded them of a chameleon, coming equal with labrador.
The Sunday Mirror this morning claims to have a poll showing that 45.5% of people in Barking will vote BNP in the local elections - I would treat it with a buckload of salt. It appears that the poll was conducted by the Sunday Mirror itself, rather than by a reputable polling company. This raises of the questions of whether the poll was properly sampled (the article says it was face to face - according to proper quota samples, or just random people off the streer?), whether it was weighted at all, how professional the interviewers were, how balanced the questions were, how was turnout factored into what will probably be a very low turnout election, etc, etc. Add in the fact that the BNP are only contesting 7 of Dagenham & Barking’s 17 wards anyway and you have even more of a problem.
Local newspapers often do the same sort of straw polls prior to elections and are almost always hideously wrong. The chances are this is the same thing (though that said, it could potentially have been carried out by a reputable pollster who the Sunday Mirror has failed to credit - in which case the polls figures should at least be accurate, though you still have the question of dealing with the wards with no BNP candidate).