In the eight seats polled, the Conservative Party has a lead of 8% compared to an actual lead in May 2010 of 2%. This swing of 3% is much smaller than national opinion polls show. The vote share figures are:

Conservative 39% (-2% on May 2010)
Liberal Democrat 31% (-8%)
Labour 19% (+6%)

Con lead 8% (+6%)

Points to consider when interpreting these figures:

• The seats polled were Camborne & Redruth, Harrogate & Knaresborough, Montgomeryshire, Newton Abbot, Oxford West & Abingdon, St Albans, Truro & Falmouth, Watford.
• In the party’s internal polling during previous Parliaments, the level of support in held and target seats has often fallen significantly during the Parliament before recovering sharply as the next polling day nears. On that basis, these figures are comparable with previous situations the party has been in.
• A major part of the story previously has been squeezing the third-party vote as polling  day nears. Looking at these figures there is plenty of scope for squeezing the Labour Party vote, but that may be harder in 2015 than it has been in any other general election fought by the Liberal Democrats.
• In seven out of the eight seats, the Conservatives gained the seat in 2010. Therefore their new MPs should be building up personal votes based on incumbency. That makes the 2% fall look very poor for the Conservatives as their vote share has been heading in the wrong direction. However, it also means there may be more scope for the Conservative vote to increase during the rest of this Parliament.
• Despite this incumbency advantage, across the seats people reported consistently having had more campaigning contact with the Liberal Democrats than the Tories in “the last few months” (polling was carried out in August). For example, 21% had been door-knocked by the Lib Dems compared to 16% by the Conservatives and on leafleting the Lib Dems lead 54% – 47%.
• I have taken for the voting figures the question “Thinking about your own constituency and the parties and the candidates who are likely to stand there, which party’s candidate do you think you will vote for in your own constituency at the next general election?” as, on past experience that is a better guide to marginal seats than the generalised “if there was a general election tomorrow… ” voting question. On that question the voting figures were Con 41%, Lab 26%, Lib Dem 18%.

The bad news

• Nick Clegg’s popularity has taken a hit: from a net positive of +8% a year ago, to a net negative of -29% today. Worth noting, however, that this is primarily due to Nick’s toxicity with Labour supporters, with whom he has a rating of an astonishing -79%! Both Lib Dem (+51%) and Tory (+17%) supporters have net positive views of the Lib Dem leader.
• There is greater opposition to the Coalition than a year ago. In September 2010, 43% supported it, while 46% opposed it (net -3%): today the split is 34%/57% (net -13%). Interestingly, among the group identified as ‘lost Lib Dem voters’ — ie, those who voted for the party in 2010 but no longer would — 29% support the Coalition, while 63% oppose it.
• Voters lack clarity what the Lib dems stand for. 56% agree with the statement, ‘I’m no longer sure what the Liberal democrats stand for’ (including 1-in-5 current Lib Dem supporters). The same proportion also agrees that ‘the Lib Dems have sold out their principles by going into Coalition’, while 63% agree the party has ‘broken their promises and betrayed their supporters’. However, in these latter two questions a majority of Lib Dem and Tory voters disagree: it’s Labour voters who overwhelmingly ensorse these views. As Anthony Wells notes, the data suggests ‘some of the public are starting to view the party through less of a prism of betrayal, some of the hostility is starting to fade.’

The inbetween news

• Here’s an interesting, somewhat contradictory, finding… More voters believe now than did in 2010 that the Lib Dems are contributing nothing to the Coalition: 40% today compared with 34% last year. HOWEVER, more voters overall be lieve the Lib Dems have helped make the Coalition: more moderate and centrist (22% now, 20% last year); more interested in the lives of the worse-off (20% cf 15%); more focused on fairness (16% cf 15%); and more interested in civil liberties (15% cf 12%). This suggests to me attitudes to the Coalition are hardening a little, with supporters recognising the Lib Dems contribution to it, and opponents viewing it as little more than a right-wing government.

The good news

• ‘Lost Lib Dem voters’ are not necessarily lost for good. I noted above that many of those who voted for us in 2010 but no longer say they would vote for the party do actually support the Coalition. 39% of this group also believes the party wields influence within the Coalition; 32% of them believe the Lib Dems offer different and distinctive policies to Labour and the Tories; 37% of them believe the Lib Dems have made the Coalition more moderate and centrist; and 39% agree the Lib dems did the responsible thing by entering government at a time of economic crisis. The big issue for the party with this group of voters at the moment is 1) the Lib Dems’ breach of trust on tuition fees, and 2) a fuzziness about what the Lib Dems stand for. It’s unlikely we can win back all those who voted for us in 2010. But the polling suggests we have the opportunity to persuade many of them over the next 3.5 years.
• More voters think the Lib Dems have influence within the Coalition than think we don’t. A plurality of voters, 48%, believe the party has a lot or a little influence, against 44% who reckon the Lib Dems have hardly or none. Both Lib Dem and Tory voters overwhelmingly believe the party is influential; Labour voters take a contrary view.
• There is much greater confidence the Coalition will last a full term. A year ago, just 18% of voters expected the Coalition to govern until 2015; 28% of voters believe it will now. However, more voters still expect it to last only 1 or 2 years: 32% think 2012/13 will see the Coalition expire (significantly down from 43% last year).
• There is a solid core of potential Lib Dem supporters. There are still significant numbers of voters willing to give the party a fair hearing. For example: 26% of voters think the Lib Dems have shown they are a sensible party of government; 27% of voters think that by entering the Coalition the party has managed to get real Liberal policies put into action; 25% of voters believe the Lib Dems offer different and distinctive policies; 33% of voters believe the party has made the Coalition more moderate and centrist; and 43% of voters agree the Lib Dems did the responsible thing when forming the Coalition. These figures show there is a base of support for the party: we now need to translate that into something more tangible in the years ahead.

Though there is a smattering of references to polling results from other firms, the great strength of the MORI data is that many of the questions have been asked regularly for decades, allowing the story of 2005-2010 to be put into a consistent historical context and polling results judged against previous ones that led up to victory or defeat. It also means that (as with Deborah Mattinson’s excellent book, Talking to a Brick Wall, based on focus groups rather than polls) it is an account of politics in which the views of the public dominate rather than the machinations and words of politicians, who usually take centre stage in post-election accounts.

The book is bulging with facts that make it hard to summarise them beyond “go read the book”, though a few do particularly stand out. The authors conclude that “the nature of electoral support in Britain has changed, probably permanently … the culmination of years of steady change … British voters are … less tribal … and less polarised”. Yet geographic division, especially the decline of the Conservative Party in Scotland, has hardened even as other divisions have softened.

Somewhat paradoxically the authors also very successfully model vote share in individual seats based on 17 different characteristics drawn from 2001 census. Factors such as the number of two or more car households are very influential in explaining the Conservative Party vote share, whilst factors such as the proportion of single-parent families do the same for Labour. Some factors do seem to divide even if the old patterns no longer have the same power.

In addition, “the old habit, whereby a predominant belief among voters that the economy was moving in the right direction was enough to ensure a government’s re-election, no long holds. So, despite having convinced an extraordinarily high proportion of the public that the economy was on the upturn … Gordon Brown could not muster the votes he needed”.

The authors also point out that Gordon Brown’s ratings as Prime Minister, whilst very low, followed a simple extrapolation of Tony Blair’s declining figures though his time as Prime Minister. The problem wasn’t that Brown worsened the long-term trend; it was far more that the decline had set in the moment Blair became Prime Minister and at election time Blair was up against unpopular Conservative Party leaders whilst Brown was up against David Cameron, far more popular than his three predecessors.

Indeed, the book points out that on their overall bundle of measures of leader image, Gordon Brown was in a slightly better position in May 2010 than Tony Blair had been even pre-Iraq was in April 2001. But William Hague was no David Cameron.

At times the authors skirt with over-playing the determinism of Labour’s long-time decline in popularity during its term in office. After all, John Major – a Chancellor succeeding a three-times winning Prime Minister too – did pull off a slim victory against the odds. However, the authors do also point out that the final result was by such a fine margin (not many extra Labour seats would have transformed the possibilities of a non-Conservative coalition) that small events might have tipped the final outcome one way or the other.

As it was, Labour went down to defeat with for the first time in its history with, as the book points out, “more middle class voters than working class voters”.

This book includes a useful introduction to how polls are conducted and how they are often misreported, with the warning to “think of polls as being like a barometer – barometers don’t predict the weather; they measure something that is helpful to know if you want to predict the weather. But for that purpose, rather than relying purely on voting intentions the many other measurements that the polls regularly provide may be far more useful in developing an impression of what the future may bring”. Wise words from a good book that ends with a very welcome appendix – a survey of the political cartoon during the 2010 election, an often overlooked form of commentary.

You can buy Explaining Cameron’s Coalition: How it came about – an analysis of the 2010 British General Election by Robert Worcester, Roger Mortimore, Paul Baines and Mark Gill from Amazon here.

One is the similarity in many of the findings between YouGov’s poll and the Liberal Democrat Voice surveys of party members, a similarity which we’ve found before. That’s good news – and reassuring too, given how often our surveys are now quoted by the media as being ‘what Lib Dems think’.

The other is that it means the YouGov poll mirrors both our own findings and my own experience talking to Lib Dem members in many different parties – and that is the popularity of Vince Cable. If you’ve been asleep or incommunicado for the last nine months you might wonder why I’d comment on Vince’s popularity – because after all, he’s Vince, isn’t he?

But in that intervening period there was the matter of tuition fees.

And it’s not as if that’s an issue that is over, done and forgotten.

Nor is it an issue that Vince was absent from. Far from it, he was at the centre of it in Parliament, in the media and in the party.

Yet the YouGov poll gave him a net +57% score on how well/badly members think he’s doing and the last Lib Dem Voice survey gave him a net +51% on how effective/ineffective members think he is.

It’s arguable that members could rate him as effective whilst still disagreeing with what he’s doing, but his score on that measure did plummet during the height of the tuition fees debates before then recovering – whilst of course YouGov’s wording is different.

Hence the question: why is Vince so popular with Liberal Democrat members? The comments thread awaits you…

In its favour, Political Communication in Britain brings together a strong cast of journalists and politicians who were active participants in the election, with six of the nineteen chapters coming from insiders such as Sky’s Adam Boulton, the Labour Party’s Greg Cook and the Liberal Democrat peer Chris Rennard. Even so, much of the content is familiar to anyone who has read even only a small sample of the post-election analysis, whether in book form or not.

Compared to the books which appeared last year, the contributors to this volume have had extra time to collate and analyse evidence, as is shown by the blizzard of statistics about the TV debates. Not all questions, however, have been helped by extra time for, as the book says on the question of why the final polls got the level of Liberal Democrat support so wrong, “the [polling] companies’ own investigations and those of the academics has been, so far, inconclusive and to some extent contradictory”.

More illuminating are the chapters from Ivor Gaber on the media (which captures how much the old structure of daily press conferences and regular press releases has disappeared) and one on constituency campaigning, which presents the results of MORI polling in Labour/Conservative marginal seats.

In the final week of the election, 56% of people said they got most of their news about the election from the TV, unsurprisingly. But closely grouped way behind TV were newspapers (16%), the internet (13%) and radio (10%). Nearly everyone (95%) had received at least one leaflet in the last week, with 62% receiving direct mail. Just under one in five had been personally canvassed (18%) – the same figure as had visited a website looking for political information. Fractionally less (17%) had seen a political party mentioned on a social network, ahead of the 10% who were phoned by a party.

In other words, whilst TV and leaflets still dominate, the internet is firmly established as one of the most important of the second tier methods of communication. Party’s own official online channels were less popular than other sources of online information however, with 10% visiting official party websites and 8% having received an email from the party.

It is these sorts of detailed results that, alongside the insider perspectives, make the book a good read. Even if you have already read all the others published about the general election this one offers some new material, and if you have not yet read any this is a good one to put on your short-list alongside the best of the rest.

You can buy Political Communication in Britain, edited by Dominic Wring, Roger Mortimore and Simon Atkinson from Amazon here.

We have a YouGov poll, taken from 396 Lib Dem members and 118 former members, on the programme tonight. It found that 52% of (396) members sampled thought the coalition wouldn’t run the full five years, though 63% thought it should. The poll suggests 35% think Nick Clegg shouldn’t lead the party into the next election (against 45% saying he should) – worth remembering he only won the leadership election narrowly. The membership splits 50/50 on whether the Deputy Prime Minister is performing well or badly. Interestingly, on policy issues, 73% of the party members YouGov polled think that the Coalition is handling the NHS badly (that’s a similar figure to the 77% who think the government handled tuition fees badly and way above any other policy area in the disapproval stakes).

A little naughtily, though, Channel 4 News led on a seemingly more sensational finding: Exclusive: a YouGov poll for Channel 4 News finds more than half of Lib Dem supporters believe the Coalition will collapse before a general election.

When I first saw this, I was surprised. One of the most consistent findings from our own surveys of Lib Dem members has been the confidence in the Coalition lasting til 2015: in our last two surveys of 500+ members 72% each time have said it will last the full five years.

But then I looked at the options offered to Lib Dem members by YouGov, and the breakdown shows that 42% think it will last the full five years, and 33% think the Coalition will ‘end just before the 2015 election’. That last option seems to me a false choice: what does ‘just before’ mean, and would it be by mutual consent of both the Lib Dems and Tories?

The finding doesn’t seem to justify Channel 4′s spin of Lib Dem members thinking the Coalition will ‘collapse’. The most that can be claimed is that some 75% of current and former party members believe the Coalition will continue for at least another three-and-a-half years.

Public views on Nick Clegg

On satisfaction (or not) with Nick Clegg, by the way, I was interested in this slide from Ipsos-Mori, who’ve just conducted a poll, The Coalition’s First Year: the public’s verdict.

What’s interesting about it is that it separates out public perceptions of party from those for the leader: it’s quite possible to (dis)like a politician because of their party label, or in spite of it. Most polls about how the public rate political leaders ask something along the lines, ‘How do you think X is doing in their job as leader of Y’ — which mixes up what respondents think of Person X and Party Y.

What the Ipsos-Mori findings show is that Nick Clegg is overall better liked than Ed Miliband, but less well-liked than David Cameron. Perhaps more importantly when judging his effectiveness as party leader, the poll indicates Nick is liked just as much as the party. In contrast, Labour is liked more than Ed Miliband, but David Cameron is liked more than the Tories.

That 51% of the public now likes neither Nick Clegg nor the party is an odd position for Lib Dems to be in: we have grown used over the years to being generally liked by most people, in part because of what we stand for, but also in part because we’ve never had the power to do things that either seriously pleases or antagonises the public. Now that we are in government, the public is taking a stance.

Overall, I think the poll’s findings back up the view I’ve expressed here before — that the Labour/media line that Nick Clegg is universally unpopular isn’t backed up by the evidence.

What is more the case, I think, is that he is divisive in a way that’s unusual for Lib Dem leaders: there is deep antipathy to him among staunch Labour voters, and some current and former Lib Dems; he remains generally popular among moderate Tories and at least half Lib Dem voters.

As with all polls, what follows comes with caveats. Four of the polling companies – YouGov, Ipsos-Mori, ComRes and Angus Reid – ask questions specifically to find out the public’s views of the party leaders. And each asks variants on the basic question – do you think Clegg/Cameron/Miliband are doing a good job – to come up with their figures, so comparison ain’t easy. For that reason, I’m taking a 3-month rolling average which isn’t very statistically ‘pure’, but will give us a rule of thumb. Besides, we don’t indulge in polls that often, so here goes …

• Cameron 41% approve, 51% disapprove (net -10%); Miliband 34%, 41% (-7%); Clegg 30%, 59% (-29%)
  (Angus Reid: Do you approve or disapprove of of (name)’s performance as Y…)
• Cameron 37% good, 46% bad (net -6%); Miliband 22%, 35% (-13%); Clegg 28%, 49% (-21%)
  (ComRes: Do you think X is turnng out to be a good leader of Y?)
• Cameron 42% satisfied, 50% dissatisfied (net -8%); Miliband 33%, 42% (-9%); Clegg 24%, 55% (-31%)
  (Ipsos MORI: Are you satisfied or dissatisfied with the way X is doing his job as Y?)
• Cameron 43% well, 51% badly (net -8%); Miliband 33%, 47% (-14%), Clegg 27%, 64% (-37%)
  (YouGov: Do you think (name) is doing well or badly as (position)?)

Which gives us an average net popularity – and, yes, I know how unscientific such averages are – as follows (compared with our averages last month):

David Cameron -8% (-6%); Ed Miliband -11% (-10%); Nick Clegg -30% (-25%)

As for what I think of all this, I refer the honourable reader to my assessment of the party leaders last month: I’ve little to add…

So let’s instead look at the detail of one of YouGov’s findings, focusing on leaders’ characteristics (compared with the last polls before the May 2010 general election):

“Sticks to what he believes in”
Nick Clegg: 6% now (27%, May 2010)
David Cameron: 25% (22%)
Ed Miliband: 17% (n/a)

“Honest”
Nick Clegg: 14% (32%)
David Cameron: 19% (20%)
Ed Miliband: 16%

“Strong”
Nick Clegg: 5% (16%)
David Cameron: 20% (23%)
Ed Miliband: 9% (n/a)

“In touch with ordinary people”
Nick Clegg: 14% (37%)
David Cameron: 10% (20%)
Ed Miliband: 22% (n/a)

“Good in a crisis”
Nick Clegg: 4% (6%)
David Cameron: 15% (10%
Ed Miliband: 4% (n/a)

“Decisive”
Nick Clegg: 6% (17%)
David Cameron: 23% (24%)
Ed Miliband: 9% (n/a)

“A natural leader”
Nick Clegg: 6% (17%)
David Cameron: 20% (26%)
Ed Miliband: 6% (n/a)

“Charismatic”
Nick Clegg: 14% (45%)
David Cameron: 25% (40%)
Ed Miliband: 7% (n/a)

Overall, it’s not a happy picture for Nick Clegg. His ratings have dropped, sharply, compared to almost a year ago. Though David Cameron’s ratings have also slipped in sme areas, in others they have increased — so this is not just about being in government of itself, but specifically about how Nick Clegg is perceived in government.

Looking back over the polling figures for the last 9 months, it’s clear the tuition fees U-turn was especially toxic for Nick. It may turn out to be the equivalent for him of Iraq for Blair: a moment when voters’ minds were made up, and faith in their trustworthiness were fatally undermined. But that is not inevitable. Memories do fade (if there’s one tactically smart thing the Lib Dems did do with tuition fees, no matter what you think of the policy, it was to make the tough choice early on, rather than defer it); and Nick still has another four years to demomstrate to voters his ability to advance his core beliefs.

There are perhaps two brighter (or less dim, depending on your disposition) elements to the leaders’ ratings, above. First, Nick does at least lead David Cameron in one respect: being in touch with ordinary people. Indeed, it’s notable that this is the one characteristic where the Prime Minister’s sure-touch has otherwise deserted him.

The second is that Ed Miliband fares little better than Nick. To an extent, this is unsurprising: Ed is still largely unknown to the public, Labour leader for just over six months. He’s plenty of time to make his mark. And yet given Labour’s curently high poll ratings, 40%+, Ed might have hoped some of the party’s popularity would have rubbed off on him. Though Nick Clegg has undoubtedly disappointed many, it seems Ed Miliband has failed to impress on pretty much the same scale.

Here are the April averages for the parties across the six polling companies which conducted surveys:

• Con 31%, Lab 42%, Lib Dem 11% (Angus Reid, 1 poll)
• Con 35%, Lab 39%, Lib Dem 10% (ComRes, 1)
• Con 35%, Lab 37%, Lib Dem 15% (ICM, 1)
• Con 40%, Lab 40%, Lib Dem 9% (Ipsos-MORI/Reuters, 1)
• Con 36%, Lab 40%, Lib Dem 11% (Populus, 1)
• Con 36%, Lab 42%, Lib Dem 9% (YouGov, 19 polls)

All of which produces an average rating for the parties in April (compared with March) as follows:

Conservatives 36% (n/c), Labour 40% (n/c), Lib Dems 11% (n/c)

Let’s take a look at the figures from each of the main parties’ perspectives…

Conservatives…

It continues to be the case that the Tories have most to be cheered by looking at the current polls. Though the economy is growing only sluggishly, and the party is embarking on drastic cuts in public spending, they remain within touching distance of the Labour party. Compared to the 1980s, when Margaret Thatcher trailed the Labour party in the polls between elections by substantial margins, David Cameron is faring well (though opinion polling has also become more sophisticated).

And yet it is also the case that the Tories, at least on current polling figures, would not win an election if it were held tomorrow. That’s fine for now… there isn’t going to be a general election tomorrow. But Conservative supporters are going to become more agitated if the polls continue to show their party in a near dead heat situation with Labour. Parties rarely become more popular the longer they are in government, so if the Tories’ aim is to govern alone they will be needing to break that 40% ceiling. Their ability to achieve that will depend on the economy.

Labour…

Ed Miliband’s party continues to benefit from its status as the sole mainstream opposition to the Coalition, hovering either a little above or below the 40% mark according to pollster. If, as expected, Labour performs strongly in the English local elections on Thursday night, Mr Miliband’s position will be bolstered, and there may be a post-5th May bounce. As John Curtice observes in The Independent:

Labour will certainly crow, if as expected, it gains control of Sheffield where Nick Clegg is an MP. But this and other possible gains in the North, such as Bolton, Oldham and perhaps even Leeds, will make less impressive headlines than gains further south, and especially gains made at the expense of the Tories. However, the party is so weak in much of the South that such prospects look rather thin. But if outside chances of gains in Tory-controlled Gravesham and Thanet were realised, the party would reckon to have given David Cameron a bloody nose.

And of course the fillip of those gains in England may be offset by the potential failure of Labour in Scotland to curtail the cult of the SNP’s Alex Salmond.

Liberal Democrats…

Well, on the bright side, the party’s ratings have yet to plummet to the 5% famously envisaged by one of our cabinet ministers last summer when the Coalition was enjoying still its honeymoon. But the Lib Dems are only just in double figures (and not even quite there if YouGov is your polling Bible) — nor have we enjoyed what used to be a grand April tradition: a small, short boost to Lib Dem poll ratings as vast tracts of the country are festooned with Focus leaflets.

Not this year: our role as junior partner in the Government means not only do we now ‘enjoy’ year-round publicity, but we now kop the flak rather than being seen as the nice-and-safe repositories of none-of-the-above voters. It also means we’re contesting fewer seats than in the past, and therefore our message isn’t reaching as many voters.

What will this mean for this Thursday’s elections? Well, the party looks to be in for a bloody nose in Scotland and Wales (though the proportional voting systems may protect the party somewhat from total wipeout), and quite possibly in the north of England, too. The one thing which may help the party’s narative is the media’s obsession with the ‘expectations’ game.

The party is predicted by Rallings’ and Thrasher’s latest local government projections, based on their model using local by-election data, to gain 17% of the national vote on 5th May; well above our national poll ratings, but well below where we were in 2007 (24%), when these seats were last contested. If so, we will lose some 400 of the 1,800 council seats we are defending: a hefty blow for a party which lives and breathes localism.

If there were local council elections in your area on May 5th, how likely would you be to vote in them, where 0 means you will definitely not vote, and 10 means you definitely will vote?

10 – will definitely vote: 52%

This poll is not unusual in showing more people saying they will certainly vote than seems credible – and polls before previous elections (i.e. where we know the actual subsequent turnout) have often shown the number of people saying they’re certain to vote exceed the number who do. Where research has compared such results against the marked register, there is a relationship – the more likely people are to say they will vote, the more likely they actually are to vote, but even so a fair number of those “certain” to vote in reality aren’t.

This poll, by the way, was an online survey so the possible peer pressure from talking to a fellow human being and giving the answer you feel you should does not apply.

As with all polls, what follows comes with caveats. Five of the polling companies – YouGov, Ipsos-Mori, ComRes, ICM and Angus Reid – ask questions specifically to find out the public’s views of the party leaders. And each asks variants on the basic question – do you think Clegg/Cameron are doing a good job – to come up with their figures, so comparison ain’t easy. For that reason, I’m taking a 3-month rolling average which isn’t very statistically ‘pure’, but will give us a rule of thumb. Besides, we don’t indulge in polls that often, so here goes …

• Cameron 44% well, 50% badly (net -6%); Miliband 33%, 46% (-13%), Clegg 28%, 63% (-35%)
  (YouGov: Do you think (name) is doing well or badly as (position)?)
• Cameron 41% approve, 51% disapprove (net -10%); Miliband 34%, 41% (-7%); Clegg 32%, 58% (-26%)
  (Angus Reid: Do you approve or disapprove of of (name)’s performance as Y…)
• Cameron 40% satisfied, 52% dissatisfied (net -12%); Miliband 36%, 41% (-5%); Clegg 33%, 56% (-23%)
  (Ipsos MORI: Are you satisfied or dissatisfied with the way X is doing his job as Y?)
• Cameron 47% good, 42% bad (net +5%); Miliband 30%, 43% (-13%); Clegg 33%, 51% (-18%)
  (ICM: Do you think X is doing a good job or a bad job?)
• Cameron 38% good, 43% bad (net -5%); Miliband 22%, 35% (-13%); Clegg 28%, 49% (-21%)
  (ComRes: Do you think X is turnng out to be a good leader of Y?)

Which gives us an average net popularity – and, yes, I know how unscientific such averages are – as follows:

David Cameron -6%; Ed Miliband -10%; Nick Clegg -25%

David Cameron

I suggested in yesterday’s that it was the Tories who had most to be pleased with from the current polls. Well, today I’d also say Mr Cameron is sitting most comfortably, the most popular least unpopular of the three party leaders. Though his personal figures are negative, he is consistently scoring +40% ratings, no small feat for the man presiding over the biggest public spending cuts in recent history.

Nick Clegg

It is instead Nick Clegg who is bearing the brunt of the public’s Coalition kicking, with a net negative rating of -25%. For the man who less than a year ago was more popular than Churchill it’s some comedown. However, it’s worth looking behind the headline figures because what’s clear is not that Nick is universally reviled, but that he’s a divisive figure.

Put simply, he’s popular with most Tory voters, and a majority of Lib Dem voters — and deeply unpopular with Labour voters. ICM’s figures show 63% of Tory and 51% of Lib Dem voters reckon Nick is doing a good job (compared with 27% and 41% who think he’s doing a bad job) — but 76% of Labour voters think he’s doing a bad job, more even than think David Cameron is doing a bad job! (It’s an irony probably not lost on either of them that Cameron is more popular with Lib Dem voters than Nick is.)

Ed Miliband

And what of Ed(ward) Miliband? Well, truth be told, he’s not enjoyed a great start. Six months into the job — his honeymoon — and though three-quarters of the public have made up their minds they are breaking narrowly but decisively against him.

This failure to connect is being picked up by the Westminster commentariat, but more worryingly for Labour also by the public, with 40% believing he’s not up to the job (compared with 27% who think he is).

That Mr Miliband’s notorious Hyde Park speech coincided with the violent minority offshoot of last weekend’s ‘March for the Alternative’ was bad luck; the same could’ve happened to Charles Kennedy in the 2003 anti-Iraq war protest. What should worry Labour more is the three-fold impression being cast in the minds of voters that:

1) Labour is interested only in defending its core public sector interests but has nothing to say to those in the private sector (see the Economist’s Bagehot on this);
2) it has no alternative — or if it does, it differs very little from what the Coalition is doing (after all Labour’s cuts would simply have taken place over 8 years rather than 5, the financial equivalent of pulling a plaster off your knee more slowly: spreading the pain rather than getting it over and done with); and
3) Mr Miliband is a follower not a leader — he owed his election victory not to ordinary Labour party members, but to trade union barons, and now he’s rowing-in behind the UKUncut alliance. Though it may pain we Liberals to admit it, the public wants strong leadership more than it wants to like its leaders.

Mr Miliband has many factors still in his favour. First, he has a poll lead and a generally united party (albeit united against Coalition policies rather than in favour of their own). Secondly, that poll lead, combined with years of disastrous local election results, will mean Labour makes hefty gains this May which will help make him look a winner. Thirdly, there is no mechanism within the Labour party (unlike either the Tories or Lib Dems) to get rid of an unfit leader. And finally, any leader takes time to grow into the job, and it is far too soon to judge him a success or a failure: he is what everyone should expect a party leader to be 6 months in — a work in progress.

A total of 35 polls were published during March. Now, as our readers know, LDV doesn’t cover them with the same breathless excitements as other parts of the media. Most poll movements are within the margin of error, so it is only looked at over a period of time that you can detect whether there has really been any significant movements between the parties. With those caveats in place, let’s succomb to the inevitable and start poll-obsessing…

Here are the March averages for the parties across the seven polling companies which conducted surveys:

• Con 33%, Lab 41%, Lib Dem 10% (Angus Reid)
• Con 36%, Lab 41%, Lib Dem 12% (ComRes)
• Con 37%, Lab 36%, Lib Dem 16% (ICM)
• Con 37%, Lab 41%, Lib Dem 10% (Ipsos-MORI/Reuters)
• Con 35%, Lab 37%, Lib Dem 11% (Opinium)
• Con 35%, Lab 41%, Lib Dem 11% (Populus)
• Con 36%, Lab 43%, Lib Dem 10% (YouGov)

All of which produces an average rating for the parties in March as follows:

Conservatives 36%, Labour 40%, Lib Dems 11%

Let’s take a look at the figures from each of the main parties’ perspectives…

Conservatives… I’d say the Tories have probably greatest reason to be satisfied by current polls. True, they are trailing Labour (except according to ICM), but the margins are modest considering the stark nature of the arguments about public spending cuts. David Cameron is the best rated of the party leaders, and Cameron and George Osborne are more trusted than Eds Miliband and Balls to run the economy. As UK Polling Report’s Anthony Wells notes:

… if we look back at 2006-2007 when the opposition Conservatives had a comparable single-digit lead over the Labour government, David Cameron was pretty much neck and neck with Tony Blair as best PM, the Conservatives and Labour were pretty much neck and neck on who would run the economy well and Cameron had a positive approval rating.

Labour… If Labour look only at the headline figures, they may well feel content: in the lead in almost every poll, they have bounced back from their electoral drubbing of less than a year ago with no sign (yet, at any rate) of the civil war that bedevilled Labour in the early 1980s. And yet… True, they lead the Tories, but they trail the combined vote shares of the two Coalition parties.

Moreover, they are losing the economic argument on two fronts: first, the public backs the cuts (or even thinks they should go further) by 57% to 35%; and, secondly, the public pins the blame for the economic crisis on the previous (Labour) government rather than the current (Coalition) government by 49% to 26%. If the Coalition holds til 2015, and if the economy is still recovering steadily, Labour could face a potent double whammy — blamed both for the mess, and for opposing the measures needed to sort out their mess.

Liberal Democrats… Well, what can I say? The polling figures speak for themselves, the one bright(ish) ray of sunshine being ICM’s consistently higher rating for the party: 18% in February, 16% in March. Traditionally, ICM have always been a little more generous to the party than other pollsters; and generally speaking this has been justified by the eventual results. Some wise words from Anthony Wells, who examines this discrepancy here:

… in terms of saying whether ICM are right on the Liberal Democrats … or whether the other companies are, there is no easy answer since we don’t know what is causing it. I expect, in practice, most people will tend to believe the results they want to.

On a national level, and assuming the next general election is still more than four years away, current polling figures are of little significance: the party will be hoping/expecting to be in a much stronger position in 2015, having helped deliver a strong, moderate, reforming government. But of course there are national elections in Scotland and Wales, and local elections in most of England, before then.

In these elections the party’s current standing will matter, and it looks like the Lib Dems will be in for a tough night. In Scotland, latest polls suggest the party winning just 5 seats (down from 16); in Wales, a survey suggests we could win 5 (down from 6); and in English local elections a YouGov poll reckoned the Lib Dems could lose 700 of our 1,850 defending councillors and 11 of our 25 majority control councils.

The Lib Dems are in an unusual position. For years we’ve been largely ignored by the public and media for being on the margins of power; now we are in power and having to take responsibility for government we’re having to toughen up, fast, and get used to the fact that the public/media now has strong views about us. And we’re also having to get used to the fact that government unpopularity — from which we’ve grown used to benefiting — is now impacting on us.

Overall it shows the Conservatives the least liked party, Labour (despite its voting intention poll ratings at the moment) only marginally in the positive and the Liberal Democrats in the negatives, but with still a very healthy chunk of the population liking the party.

For the Conservatives and Labour these figures reinforce comments often made about them – that the detoxification of the Conservative brand never fully succeeded and that Labour’s apparent popularity at the moment risks turning out to be similar to some of Labour’s periods of high poll ratings between 1979 and 1992, namely hiding deeper weaknesses that need tackling if the party isn’t to fall back when it comes to the crunch.

For the Liberal Democrats the figures reinforce the comments I’ve heard several people make around the country – which is that when they can persuade colleagues to get out canvassing the results are often far better than those reluctant colleagues expected.

For all the vitriol in some quarters, there are still many people who take a completely different view of the party.

It’s also notable that when I’ve chatted to Liberal Democrats about these poll figures in the last few days, those who are most surprised by them are by and large those who have done the least talking to the public on doorsteps in the last few weeks.

These figures are, of course, only part of the story – but they do hint towards local election results in May that vary greatly from one ward to another, particularly depending on how motivated local teams are to get out and talk to the public rather than judge the local political scene through prisms such as the Guardian letters page.

Here are the details of the MORI figures:

Like the party (whether like leader or not):

Conservative 37%
Labour 45%
Liberal Democrat 40%

Do not like the party (whether like leader or not):

Conservative 56%
Labour 42%
Liberal Democrat 51%

Net figures:

Conservative -19%
Labour +3%
Liberal Democrat -11%

The cross-party Committee, which I chair, has been considering proposals for a wholly or mainly elected second Chamber. The Government will publish a draft Bill shortly, which will then be subject to pre-legislative scrutiny. The Government hope that that will be carried out by a Joint Committee of both Houses.

Our readers’ poll results are as follows:

“Senate” was the most popular choice, followed by “House of Lords” -

Senate 183 (31.18%)
House of Lords 138 (23.51%)
Upper House 48 (8.18%)
Second Chamber 29 (4.94%)
Council of Peers 15 (2.56%)
Legislative Council 10 (1.70%)
National Council 9 (1.53%)
House of Elders 7 (1.19%)
The Chamber 4 (0.68%)
First Chamber 3 (0.51%)
Others 141 (24.02%)

Others (suggestions supplied by participants) included:

The Other Place 7
Commons II: This time it’s personal 31
Rubber Stamp 8
Last Chance Whips Saloon 6
House of Scrutiny 17
Chamber of Peers 12
Chamber of Horrors 7
Supreme Soviet 26
Redundant 27

Answering questions in the Commons on Tuesday, Clegg said:

The cross-party Committee, which I chair, has been considering proposals for a wholly or mainly elected second Chamber. The Government will publish a draft Bill shortly, which will then be subject to pre-legislative scrutiny. The Government hope that that will be carried out by a Joint Committee of both Houses.

It’s very likely that the second chamber will be renamed, to reflect the constitutional changes.

Upper Houses around the world have a wide variety of names.

What should this country’s proposed “wholly or mainly elected second chamber” be called?

Vote now: the poll’s in the sidebar to the right of this post.

1. Will the opinion polls prove accurate?

Opinion polls in by-elections have a notoriously patchy record — unsurprisingly, as the pollsters are unable to refine their techniques over time and measure their snapshots against actual results as they are able to with their general election predictions. For example, pre-by-election polls in Glasgow East (2008) and Blaenau Gwent (2006) showed the wrong winners.

They are also one-off surveys, and the pollsters can quite reasonably point out that their findings were accurate at the time, but that subsequent campaigning and/or the ‘get out the vote’ operation affected the final result.

That we have three opinion polls — two of them by long-established pollsters, ICM and Populus — all pointing to the same order of the parties (Labour first, Lib Dems second, Tories trailing) suggests we can have some confidence that the current order of the parties is accurate.

However, one of the reasons pollsters in previous by-elections have found it hard to assess the situation is the difficulty of predicting turn-out (usually far lower in by-elections) compared to general elections (where you can assume c.65% turn-out).

By-election success is dependent on two factors united by a common theme: which party can best motivate (i) its activists, and (ii) the voters — because it’s the work of the activists on the ground who will determine how many of the party’s identified voters are knocked-up on polling day.

There are two encouraging aspects of the by-election campaign for the Lib Dems.

First, that the party has had no difficulty in persuading activists from all over the country to travel to Oldham East and Saddleworth, with an estimated 250 out in force yesterday. No matter that many loyal party members are still smarting from the party leadership’s U-turn on tuition fees, they still want the party to win. Such enthusiasm is going to be crucial if the party is to buck the national polls at the English local, and Scottish and Welsh national, elections in May.

The other encouraging, closely related, aspect is this: the party still knows how to mount an effective local campaign. According to Lord Ashcroft’s poll for the Sunday Telegraph, reported here at ConservativeHome, voters are well aware of the the Lib Dems’ campaign: in 6 out of the 7 measures of contact with voters (leaflets, posters, phone, etc) it is the Lib Dems which have the best contact rate. Only on actual door-knocking are Labour in the lead, and then by just 2%.

2. Will any of it matter?

If the polls do prove accurate, Labour are heading for a win, with the Lib Dems second and Tories in third. And if that’s the case, it’s hard to see Oldham East and Saddleworth being a by-election that’s long remembered — after all, how often do governing parties defeat opposition parties in by-elections?

There are two-and-a-half ways in which it might prove a ‘game-changer’.

The first is if the Lib Dems defy the polls and grab a spectacular victory (still possible).

The second is if the Tories defy the polls and relegate the Lib Dems to third place (extremely unlikely) — given the Tories appear to have tried their best not to split the anti-Labour vote, it would’ve been highly embarrassing for the Lib Dems not have been at least runners-up.

And the half is this: if the scale of Labour’s victory were to be off the Richter scale — ie, a swing from the Lib Dems to Labour of 25-30% or more, the kinds of swing we’ve seen governing parties suffer in the past. The ICM and Populus polls indicate a swing away from the Lib Dems of c.8-10%. Would Nick Clegg and the party be happy with that? Of course not. But compared to what commentators have been forecasting is happening to the Lib Dem vote, there would be some measure of relief, too.

Want to prove the opinion pollsters wrong? There’s still time! The last week of the campaign will prove crucial — click here to do your bit to help the Lib Dems’ campaign.

ICM for Mail on Sunday: Labour 44%, Lib Dem 27%, Conservative 18%
Populus for Lord Ashcroft / Sunday Telegraph: Labour 46%, Lib Dem 29%, Conservative 15%

UPDATE: New pollster Survation (who are applying for membership of the trade body, the British Polling Council) makes it much closer with Labour 31%, Lib Dem 30% and Conservative 6% (don’t knows not excluded, hence the lower figures all round).

First, because it’s not true — though I recognise that’s rarely a reason for a newspaper not to run a story. Those who doubt my word can read Anthony Wells’ UK Polling Blog post, pithily titled: Lib Dem support NOT at all-time low.

And, secondly, because even if it were true it’s not really news — we all know Lib Dem poll ratings have taken a battering. We also all know how fickle have been the opinion polls over the past 12 months. A year ago, many were writing off the Lib Dems’ chances because we were regularly polling below our 2005 general election figure. The came ‘Cleggmania’, and our ratings rocketed — only to subside by polling day itself. And since then they’ve been on a downward trend.

What will be the position by May 2011? No-one really knows. Our opponents and pessimistic supporters will assume we should get used to low ratings; those who are optimists among our ranks will look forward to our ratings increasing.

These are tricky days for the Lib Dems: none of us doubt that. We knew the risks well enough when we entered into Coalition, that the value of our investment could go down as well as up. I’m not complacent enough just to assume that there will be an upward trend sooner or later. But our party has been written off so many times by the media, always to bounce back again, that it may take more than a dodgy Indy headline to persuade me that this time we’re all doomed.

That quote, from a voter in a Liberal Democrat held seat, neatly summarises a view that is both held passionately by many Liberal Democrat voters but also irritates many Liberal Democrat members – for the obvious riposte is, “How can you both say we shouldn’t be dogmatic and also insist we rule out one party regardless of circumstances?”

It comes from a set of focus groups commissioned by Conservative peer Lord Ashcroft, along with two opinion polls – one of people who had voted Liberal Democrat in May and one of people who had seriously considered doing so, but in the end didn’t vote Lib Dem. Not all of the analysis is as rigorous as it should be, such as the discussion of the number of people who voted Liberal Democrat for negative rather than positive reasons as if everyone who votes for other parties only votes for them for positive reasons.

Also unmentioned is that consistently over the last several general elections, only around half of those who voted Liberal Democrat at one general election then voted Lib Dem again at the next. In that context, the numbers of people who say they voted Lib Dem but will not next time are not necessarily significantly new; perhaps the question is more about why the sources of new support which have more than compensated for those switches away after previous elections are largely drying up this time. Ashcroft’s research does not throw a light onto this.

What it does show is that nearly two thirds (62%) of Liberal Democrat voters say they would have still voted the same way if they had known the outcome would be a coalition with the Tories, though it is just under half (49%) who say that going into government with the Conservatives was the right thing to do. Just over half (55%) of those who thought about voting Lib Dem but didn’t in the end also think that forming the coalition was the right thing to do.

Looking to the next election, less than a third (28%) put a continuation of the coalition as their preferred outcome, only slightly higher than the quarter (24%) who want to see a Labour/Lib Dem coalition.

Considering what the party stands for, ‘fairness’ was the most common answer from the focus group members though many people struggled to give a full answer to the question. However, a majority of both Lib Dem voters and those who thought about voting Lib Dem rejected statements such as that the Lib Dems “don’t really have any principles, they are just going along with what the Conservatives want in return for some jobs in the government”.

In most policy areas, more people thought the party had made no difference than had made policies better or worse. Welfare reform and the environment see the biggest leads for those who think things have been made better over those who think policies have been made worse by Liberal Democrat involvement (37-19 and 32-21 amongst Lib Dem voters and 33-17 and 29-7 amongst Lib Dem considerers). Defence and tuition fees are the two with the largest leads for those who think policies have been made worse (17-26 and 11-49 amongst Lib Dem voters and 12-27 and 13-18 amongst considerers).

In the focus groups, several said they thought the Lib Dems had a general moderating influence on the Conservatives or had “softened the blow” of spending cuts, but few were able to name specific examples. Two-thirds of Lib Dems backed the overall plans to cut spending and the deficit, but many are concerned about the speed of the cuts.

For more on the polling, see the ConservativeHome report.

According to a YouGov poll a few days ago, those who say they’ll vote for the traditionally internationalist and pro-European Lib Dems are clearly in favour (58-36) but – what’s this?

Even more in favour are Conservative voters, by nearly two to one (it’s 61-34 with 5% don’t knows).

I wrote a few days ago that whether we approve of a policy has far more than we’d like to admit to do with whether it comes from the party or faction we support.

I wonder how many Conservative voters would have been in favour of this plan to share our military sovereignty with the French if it had come from Labour.  And whether more Labour voters would have favoured it.

The poll conducted by YouGov on 2nd-3rd November 2010 found 48% of all voters favoured the plan, with 40% against.  Conservative voters were 61-34 in favour, Lib Dem voters 58-36 in favour and Labour voters 47-44 in favour.

The Market Research Society Code of Conduct (to which YouGov subscribes, along with other British political pollsters), states that “researchers shall be … honest” and “researchers shall protect the reputation and integrity of the profession”. However, when clearing YouGov of all complaints from other people on a wide range of matters, the MRSB also cleared it of a complaint I had lodged over the use of a polling question which falsely stated that Nick Clegg has taken money from “a criminal on the run”. This is untrue (though the party under a previous leader, Charles Kennedy, did take money from someone who subsequently was convicted of fraud and went on the run).

As a general principle, the MRSB ruled that it was ethical to ask a question about false allegations which had been publicly aired prior to the poll in order to see what the impact of those allegations was on public opinion. Many people are likely to see such actions as contrary to protecting “the reputation and integrity of the profession”, but such polling can at least be defended on the grounds that it is researching what the impact is of something already in the public domain.

However, not only did the MRSB not attempt to draw any limits around the circumstances in which such polling of false allegations is acceptable (e.g., by saying that only those affected by those allegations can poll to see their impact but not opponents whose interest may be to try to exploit the false claims), the MRSB also in practice further decided that the false allegations need not previously have been made in public at all.

That is because the MRSB ruled YouGov’s polling acceptable on the basis that, “All the statements has [sic] appeared in the media prior to the project. (The “criminal on the run” claim had been made by Mr Cameron during the first leaders’ debate on 15 April 2010)”.

Yet the transcript of the first debate shows that David Cameron’s statement in the first debate was in fact about the Liberal Democrats taking money from a criminal – a reference to the donation the party received from Michael Brown. That donation was in fact received when Charles Kennedy was party leader and at a time when Nick Clegg was not only not party leader but also not in any other post, such as treasurer or cheif fundraiser, which could count as having ‘received’ the money.

On this discrepancy being queried, the Market Research Society has stuck to its ruling, insisting that the failure of the debate transcript to reflect the wording of the polling question is no reason to rethink its ruling. In other words, it is ethical in its eyes to take a past fact about a political party, rewrite it into a false statement about the party’s current leader, and then put that statement in a public opinion poll – and it is still ethical to do so even if no evidence is presented of the rewritten false claim having been made in public by anyone.

The MRS may view that as ethical, and YouGov were cleared of all complaints, but that is the sort of verdict which should cause leading figures in the industry to scrabble to rewrite their rules.