Regular readers will know that I do not “do” polls, however I couldn’t resist tapping off a quick e-mail to the Guardian after seeing this morning’s offering:
“The claim in Wednesday’s Guardian/ICM poll that a Brown premiership would cause two percent of Liberal Democrat voters to defect to the Conservatives in disgust was, in itself, enough to raise eyebrows. However, I fear your coverage missed the main point.
“If, as your graph suggests, the Liberal Democrats go down two points and the Conservatives go up three points while everyone else stays the same, the only way Labour can avoid dropping a point is to change the laws of mathematics so that percentages add up to 101.
“If this truly is Gordon Brown’s plan, the case for an independent office of national statistics has surely never been greater.”
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5 Comments
Assuming no rounding errors, perhaps Don’t Knows drop by 1%?
Unless this is specifically what the poll says, the Guardian is wrong to just ascribe such a change to some previous LibDems voting Tory; some anti-Blair LibDem voters will switch to Labour, but this is offset, for Labour, by former (pro-Blair) Labour voters switching to the Tories.
I’m looking at a graph that definitely adds up to 101…
That’ll be rounding errors then. As evidenced here.
It is always a massive mistake to assume that the only people who move are the 2 (or is it 3) per cent implied by the figures.
It’s like that old chestnut that “We’d have won the election if it hadn’t been for the Greens”, assuming that all Green voters are predictable and would vote Lib Dem if there was no Green choice.
People vote for complex reasons and a change of one party leader can shift the ground fundamentally. David Cameron, for example, attracts women voters, whom our Chancellor repels. I think one needs to take the poll in the round rather than assume a Labour leadership change pushes Lib Dems to defect to the Tories.
Mind you, if there is a suggestion that people will leave the Lib Dems because they think we’ll prop up a minority Labour administration, perhaps it is a warning to us that we should put clear (blue?) water between ourselves and that hopelessly incompetent and illiberal Government.
The UK Polling Report blog agrees with Will:
“There is normally a consistent pattern of an increase in the Conservative vote at the expense of the Liberal Democrats, probably the result of some voters disillusioned with Tony Blair returning to Labour from the Liberal Democrats, while at the same time some voters switching from Labour to the Conservatives.” (link)
Although like Rob, I try to ignore national polls as they often have little to do with opinion in the 15-20% of seats that actually matter for us…