Tag Archives: opinion polls

LDVideo: Understanding how opinion polls work, Yes Minister-style

By Stephen Tall | Published 7th August 2011 - 5:55 pm

Are for the re-introduction of national service, or against it? In this clip Yes Minister explains how you can hold both views simultaneously…

(Also available on YouTube here.)

Posted in YouTube | Also tagged yes minister | Leave a comment

Tim Farron writes: Enough doom and gloom, we have the greatest opportunity in the history of our party

By Tim Farron MP | Published 24th May 2011 - 12:53 pm

I don’t know if you noticed, but the elections on May 5th weren’t all that good for the Liberal Democrats. There was that business of the referendum defeat too. In much of the country we got an absolute pasting.

Journalists and non-political friends keep coming up to me with pained expressions, asking if I’m all right, speaking to me as if I’ve just suffered a bereavement. I smile back and tell them to get stuffed – I’m used to 2 things as a Liberal this last 25 years 1) losing stuff 2) not giving up!

So I for one am not prepared …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged community politics, ed miliband, nick clegg | 44 Comments

Disaster for Labour as one in five desert the party

By Iain Roberts | Published 7th September 2010 - 2:25 pm

The anti-Lib Dem meme of choice on the opinion polls has been of voters deserting the party. Our opinion poll ratings are down compared to 6th May and it must be a disaster for the party which would, if many Labour activists’ fevered fantasies were to come true, disappear for good.

Except that idea’s looking more and more stretched.

The Independent runs a ComRes poll today showing the party’s poll rating up two percent to a very respectable 18%. If the poll is accurate, hundreds of thousands of voters have switched from the other parties to the Lib Dems …

Posted in Op-eds | 47 Comments

Marks out of ten for the coalition?

By Iain Roberts | Published 27th July 2010 - 11:20 am

The Guardian is running the latest ICM poll today.

The overall story is good for the Lib Dems – up three points to 19% (both Labour and the Tories are slightly down against the last ICM poll), and the Coalition remains stubbornly popular, still in the 55-60% range.

But this is just one poll (and there are others both significantly better and worse for the party), so let’s not worry too much about the headline figures.

More interesting is the line the Guardian takes and the “marks out of ten” for the Coalition Government.

First the line taken in the article. If …

Posted in Polls | Also tagged icm, the guardian | 15 Comments

Poll gives Lib Dem/Con coalition 60% approval

By The Voice | Published 14th May 2010 - 5:48 pm

A YouGov poll suggests that the Lib Dem/Conservative coalition has the approval of 60% of the public – almost exactly the combined vote of the two parties in last week’s General Election.

Of course, the reality is slightly more complex than this, with a significant minority of Labour voters approving and not every Lib Dem or Conservative voter being in favour.

Here’s what YouGov say:

The British public broadly approve of the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition that, under Tory David Cameron, now forms the Government at Westminster. 60% of the British public say they approve of the Conservative-LibDem coalition, following an unprecedented week

…

Posted in Polls | Also tagged coalition | 40 Comments

Pollwatch – State of the Leaders: Clegg +18%, Brown -27%, Cameron +5% (March 2010)

By Stephen Tall | Published 3rd April 2010 - 4:45 pm

Yesterday, Pollwatch looked at the state of the parties in March; today it’s the turn of the party leaders.

As with all polls, what follows comes with caveats. Only three polling companies – YouGov, Angus RS and Mori – this past month asked questions specifically to find out the public’s views of the three main party leaders. And each asks variants on the basic question – do you think Clegg/Brown/Cameron are doing a good job – to come up with their figures, so comparison ain’t easy. But, still, we don’t indulge in polls often, so here goes …

Here, in chronological order, are the results of the four polls published in March asking the public to rate the three major party leaders:

Posted in Op-eds, Polls | Also tagged david cameron, gordon brown, nick clegg | 2 Comments

Pollwatch – State of the Parties: Lib Dems 19%, Labour 31%, Tories 38% (March 2010)

By Stephen Tall | Published 2nd April 2010 - 4:45 pm

March may have 31 days, but it saw an extraordinary 39 polls conducted. So frenetic has been the activity, we at Lib Dem Voice even published a mid-month report to keep track of their findings. And despite all the hyped-up headlines – both in print and online – of minor fluctuations signifying some grand new trend which will transform the electoral arithmetic, the reality is that remarkably little changed in March.

As you can see from the full list of polls conducted in March, in chronological order of publication:

Posted in Op-eds, Polls | 2 Comments

Was 6th October the day it started going awry for the Tories?

By Stephen Tall | Published 16th March 2010 - 7:40 pm

The opinion polls are up-and-down day-in-day-out at the moment, making it almost impossible to say with any confidence whether we are firmly in hung parliament territory, or whether the most likely result is still a Tory victory at the coming general election. But one thing is beyond doubt: the last six months has seen a substantial narrowing in the Tories’ opinion poll lead.

In October 2009, the Tories were polling at around 42%, Labour at 28% – a convincing Tory lead of 14%. Last month, the Tories were at 39%, Labour at 31%, a 3% swing from the …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged bagehot, conservative party, david cameron, george osborne, nick clegg, philip stephens | 4 Comments

Poll hints hung parliament could be vote winner

By Iain Roberts | Published 16th March 2010 - 11:40 am

As the election draws closer and the polls seem firmly stuck in or near hung-parliament territory, the latest Guardian/ICM poll suggests that the prospect of no one party having an absolute majority isn’t scaring voters as much as Labour and the Conservatives might like.

As the Guardian reports:

Voters remain unconvinced by the Conservative alternative, with 29% thinking a clear Tory victory would be best. Only 18% think Britain would be best served by a strong Labour win this spring. Both groups are outnumbered by the 44% who want a hung parliament in which the government works with smaller parties such

…

Posted in News | 5 Comments

What the pollsters think will happen at the general election

By Stephen Tall | Published 24th January 2010 - 9:45 am

Forget data sets, interquartile ranges and margin of error. The Guardian recently reported the collective wisdom of the wet-fingers-in-the-air of the UK’s pollsters, who met this past week “to refine their methods ahead of the election, and ended with off-the-cuff predictions for the final result.”

And here’s what they came up with:

Statisticians from most of Britain’s main polling companies attended the session, organised jointly by the British Polling Council and the National Centre for Research Methods.

Four of them were brave enough to come up with predicted vote shares for the main parties. Put together they average a shade under 40%

…

Posted in General Election, Polls | Also tagged cheadle | 8 Comments

Tag Archives: opinion polls

Search

Poll