I didn’t expect anymore polls this year, but the Sunday Times has a final YouGov poll that shows a recovery for Labour. The topline voting intention figures with changes from YouGov’s previous poll are CON 40% (-3), LAB 35% (+4), LDEM 15% (-1).
It suggests the beginning of a turnaround for Labour, as did the last ICM poll. It is also the first poll conducted entirely after Nick Clegg became Lib Dem leader and, despite the publicity around his appointment, shows a complete absence of any sort of leadership boost. The huge caveat that needs pointing out though is the timing of the poll: the dates are the 20th to the 27th of December. The way that YouGov polls are conducted means that most of the respondents answer in the first couple of days, so actually people would have answered this poll over the weekend before Christmas, very few if any at all would have been filling in their voting intention between opening presents on Christmas morning.
Still, even the weekend before Christmas has the potential to be skewed by the holiday effect, with people travelling to relatives, being out shopping or just generally having better things to do. The fact that only 1566 people took part in the poll, despite it being open for seven days rather than three, does rather underline the effect of the time of year (it could, of course, have been a smaller sample size to begin with, but I suspect it was more likely a low response rate). There’s no obvious reason for this to skew polls in one direction or another, it can just do funny things. With this and ICM there does seem to be a pattern of Labour recovering as the immediate air of crisis which hung about the government in November lifts, but I’d be wary of drawing any firm conclusions until we’ve seen some January polls that aren’t at risk of being skewed by the holiday period.
In what is likely to be the last poll of the year, ComRes’s December poll has topline figures of CON 41% (+1), LAB 30%(+3), LDEM 16% (-2). Like ICM it shows Labour recovering from their worst ratings last month, though as should be obvious, last month’s Labour score was unusually low. The Lib Dems are falling, but the poll was conducted way back between December 14th and 16th, so we certainly shouldn’t expect to see a leadership boost yet.
The other findings in the poll had David Cameron narrowly leading Gordon Brown 39% to 37% as the best man to be Prime Minister, Brown retaining his lead as the best man to take Britain through difficult economic times next year 44% to 36%, Cameron leading Brown 40% to 35% on having the best front bench team and, predictably, Cameron having a large lead on being the more likeable (51% to 31%).
ICM’s (presumably) final poll of the year has topline figures, with changes from their last poll three weeks ago, of CON 39%(-2), LAB 34%(+4), LDEM 18%(-1), suggesting a significant recovery for Labour from the worst of their lows. Unlike in the YouGov poll yesterday, there is no boost for the Lib Dems, but at least some of the poll would have been conducted before Nick Clegg was crowned Lib Dem leader, so we shouldn’t expect to see any boost from the publicity surrounding the new leader yet.
The poll was conducted almost simultaenously with yesterday’s YouGov poll, yet they tell sharply contrasting stories. YouGov had Labour still declining, ICM recovering. The other pollsters don’t give us much help - Populus also had Labour in steep decline, Ipsos MORI had them recovering.
Incidentally, something odd is happening with ICM polls lately. Normally I assume all polls done by the same pollster using the same methodology are perfectly comparable, ignoring considerations like what time of the week the poll was conducted or what paper commissioned it.
Looking at ICM’s polls since the Tories retook the lead in October though, there seems to be a consistent pattern of lower Tory shares in ICM’s Guardian polls compared to the ones for the Sundays. Their first poll to put the Conservatives back ahead was a poll for the Sunday Telegraph that put the Tories up on 43%, the following weekend poll for the Guardian put them down 3 points at 40%. A fortnight later a poll for the Sunday Express had them back up at 43%, the following Guardian poll had them back down to 37%, a week later they were back up at 41% in a News of the World poll, down they are back down to 39%. Until this poll there was a similar up-and-down pattern to the Lib Dem score in ICM polls, with higher Lib Dem scores in polls for the Guardian.
I was pondering whether this difference was due to Guardian polls being done at the weekend, and ICM’s polls for the Sundays which are conducted mid-week. This poll was conducted mid-week though. There is no apparant difference in any of the weightings or adjustments made to the polls ICM do for the Guardian or for other papers, perhaps it is purely co-incidence.
UPDATE: ICM have also updated their analysis of regional breaks in the vote. I always advise people to be wary of the regional breaks in normal polls because they have very low sample sizes, and because polls are only weighted at the national level, so may be skewed within regions. Every now and again ICM aggregate their data from several months of polls to produce regional breaks - this doesn’t necessarily do much to allieviate problems with weighting, but does at least take away concerns about sample size. When they did this exercise back in August they found the Tory advance was largely concentrated in the South outside London, with only modest advances in the Midlands and London and them going backwards in the North.
The latest analysis, based on data collected since October, shows the Tory advance is still strongest in the South, but they are now making strong progess in the North and the Midlands too. Only in Scotland and Wales are they relatively static, suggesting the Conservatives are now making a broader advance.
YouGov’s monthly poll for the Telegraph, and presumably their last poll of the year, has topline figures with changes from last week of CON 43% (-2), LAB 31% (-1), LDEM 16% (+2).
The Conservative lead seems steady, though they aren’t quite up to the 45% they reached last week. While the 1 point drop itself is not significant, this is the lowest YouGov have recorded for Labour since Tony Blair was leader. Gordon Brown’s net satisfaction rating is down to minus 36, with 24% satisfied with his performance as PM and 60% dissatisfied. The lowest Tony Blair ever reached on the same question was minus 38, but it took him 9 years to get there.
It’s also a good sign for the Liberal Democrats from the pollster that tends to produce the lowest figures for them. This poll was carried out between Monday and Wednesday, so almost entirely before the announcement of Nick Clegg as their new leader and the attendent publicity, so they may well get a further boost - ICM’s monthly poll will presumably be out next week and in contrast to YouGov they normally give the Lib Dems their highest scores, so look out for their score there.
Meanwhile, fun little story on the Telegraph’s politics blog. Apparently Labour didn’t bother with daily polling during the Tory conference this year, so while the Conservatives were seeing the polls rapidly reverse as the days went past, Labour were still sailing merrily onwards towards an early election until the weekly polling figures arrived…
A YouGov poll in the Sunday Times has voting intentions with changes from their last poll of CON 45% (+2), LAB 32% (nc), LDEM 14% (nc).
The 13 point Conservative lead is the largest YouGov have ever given them, and matches that recorded by ComRes (who tend to produce larger Tory leads than other pollsters) last month. 45% is their highest level of support since 1992 and the highest for any party since MORI started filtering by likelihood to vote, removing some of the towering Labour leads they used to report as their topline figures. On a uniform swing it would produce a Conservative majority of almost 100.
If the trends in this poll are repeated elsewhere then it would suggest the Conservatives have advanced beyond the 40% or so level they’ve been at for the last few weeks. Meanwhile the Labour party remain at 32% - the same level of support as they recorded in the previous two YouGov polls - despite the immediate air of crisis around the government fading. To say the least, this is not going to help morale within the Labour party.
The Liberal Democrats too are static on 14%. YouGov always tend to show the lowest level of support for them, and much lower than ICM, but across the board the polls suggest the recovery they experienced after Ming Campbell’s resignation has stalled. Next week will see Nick Clegg or Chris Huhne elected as their new leader and Liberal Democrat supporters will be hoping that the attendent coverage boosts their profile and support.
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).
I’m moving house tomorrow so may not be around to write about the monthly Populus poll that should be out on Tuesday or Wednesday. Feel free to use this thread to discuss it when it appears!
There is a sorry absence of Scottish voting intention polls these days. Once upon a time the Scottish press used to commission regular polls, often from TNS System Three. More recently they only really crop up in the run up to elections. All we have to go on are the published results from the SNP’s private polls carried out by YouGov.
As ever, polls commissioned by a political party need slight caution - the methodology should be exactly the same and if carried out by a BPC member the tables will be published, allowing you to check for any funny business with the way the questions are worded. If they are from reputably pollsters you can be confident that they are kosher polls (certainly the SNP have been regularly commissioning these polls from YouGov and they appear entirely legitimate). The one thing you should be wary of is that clients do not have to release all the figures from private polls - the SNP are presumably happy to publish these findings at the moment because they are positive. If somewhere down the line the polls stop being rosy for them, you might find them less ready to publish their findings.
Anyway, the lastest voting intentions for the Scottish parliament are, in the constituency section, CON 12%, LAB 29%, LDEM 13%, SNP 40%. In the regional vote support stands at CON 13%, LAB 26%, LDEM 13%, SNP 34%, Green 9%, SSP 3%. The poll was conducted between 28th and 30th of November, so was prior to Wendy Alexander’s recent funding problems.
Compared the most recent YouGov poll in Scotland that asked about Holyrood voting intentioned, conducted back in August for the Sunday Times, this has the SNP up significantly at the expense of Labour in the constituency section and Labour significantly down, presumably to the benefit of “others” in the regional section. However, I think there may well be significant methodological differences in the way voting intention was asked in the two polls, in terms of the blurb explaining the two votes and in terms of which parties were prompted for (the 9% support for the Greens seems quite high, I suspect YouGov prompted
Job approval for the SNP government in Edinburgh still seems to be riding high, with 63% thinking they are doing well and 26% thinking they are doing badly. The next figure of +37 is marginally up from the last poll at the beginning of October, which had the Scottish government on +33.
YouGov have carried out a survey of political academics for the Political Studies Association and asked who the best Prime Minister we never had was. Previous surveys of PSA academics showed they were mostly Labour supporters, so no surprise to see Labour figures take the top two spots - Denis Healey and Roy Jenkins - followed by Ken Clarke.
The rest of the top ten were Neil Kinnock, Hugh Gaitskell, Aneurin Bevan, Shirley Williams, Michael Heseltine and Tony Benn (as a write-in candidate). Barbara Castle, Rab Butler, John Smith and Charlie Kennedy all got 3%. The highest rated identifiably right-wing figure (as opposed to centrist Tories like Clarke and Hezza) was Enoch Powell on 2%.
The views of the PSA aran’t partially interesting in themselves, but it gives us the excuse to have a fun thread - so who do readers think the best PM we never had was?
On Tuesday Newsnight had an ICM poll showing that 57% of people thought that Gordon Brown was “tainted by sleaze”. We’ve had a flurry of polls showing people think horrible things about Gordon Brown at a time when the government is getting a bad press, so it’s hardly really newsworthy in itself.
The finding that actually caught my attention was that 15% of respondents thought that Vince Cable was was “tainted by sleaze”. This seems quite flagrantly unfair to me - even if you think the Lib Dems are sleazy, poor old Vince has only been filling in for a couple of weeks, and seems to have done in it an entirely blameless fashion. Why do 15% of people think the poor man is tainted by sleaze?
My automatic assumption was that it was down to partisan responses. I am becoming somewhat dubious about the value of questions about party leaders attributes (and for that matter, questions about which party is best on particular subjects) because I think many people answer them in a purely partisan manner. Many people who support the Conservatives will probably give a negative response to any question about Gordon Brown, and vice-versa. They aren’t really saying if they think Cameron is more competent than Brown or vice-versa, they are just saying they support the Conservatives and don’t support Labour.
They only become interesting when you look at the party support breaks and see if it’s all just partisan fluff (or when they are traced over time so you can look at trends). In this case the more worrying figure for Labour is probably that 53% of 2005 Labour voters think Brown is tainted by sleaze, rather than the negative opinion of the 74% of Tory supporters who probably aren’t going to vote Labour whatever happens. The other questions are answered on broadly partisan lines - 79% of 2005 Tory voters think Cameron is cut out to be PM, 82% think he is competent; 67% of 2005 Labour voters think Brown is cut out to be PM, 67% think he is competent.
Going back to the original question though, this doesn’t actually explain the Vince Cable figures. The people casting uncalled for aspersions on poor old Vince aren’t gangs of partisan Tories and Labour voters - even 14% of 2005 Liberal Democrats voters think Vince is sleaze-tainted. The only explanation I can offer is that they are ‘a plague on all your houses’ voters who think all politicians are by definition sleazy!