Three national opinion polls published tonight:
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YouGov in the Sun … CON 34%(+1), LAB 27%(-2), LIB DEM 31%(+3)
Harris in Metro … CON 32%(-2), LAB 25%(-1), LIB DEM 30%(+1)
ComRes for ITV/ITN … CON 36%(+3), LAB 29%(nc), LDEM 26%(-3)
The ComRes poll, though the last officially to be published, was the first I heard about (under embargo) – it’s fair to say, I had a slight sinking feeling in my stomach: was this the end of the Lib Dem surge? Well, it may be: but significantly two other polls show the party still at 30% or more. We should remember all the flucutations reported today are within the margin of error, so the ComRes poll may not actually represent any shift at all. It’s trends across severeal polls that matter, not individual ones (whether good or bad).
There’s no change in today’s UK Polling Report ‘poll of polls’:
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CON 34%, LAB 27%, LIB DEM 29%
Two other sgnificant polls of note …
ICM/Guardian poll of Lib Dem target seats
Reported in the Guardian here, this poll reports on the 42 seats in which the Lib Dems came second in 2005 and which it could take on a swing of 6% or less, and finds support for the parties at (compared with 2005):
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CON 35%(-1), LAB 18%(-5), LIB DEM 39%(+4)
The poll is interesting – though because its figures combine the 27 of the party’s top 42 targets which are Tory-held with a further 15 that are Labour-held it’s a little hard to piece together what it actually means. In reality, the party is not expecting large-scale gains from the Tories in this election; but could make impressive gains from Labour, including in many seats where the swing required is considerably more than the 6% cut-off for this survey. Anthony Wells notes that the poll:
… appears to show that the Lib Dem advance in marginals is wholly concentrated in Labour held ones: taken separately, responses in Con-v-LD seats shows no discernable [sic] swing to the Liberal Democrats, but a swing of about 8 points in Lab-v-LD seats. That would result in the Lib Dems taking about 28 or so seats from Labour, but few if any from the Conservatives. If this finding is at all accurate, it will be key to the result.
Metro readers back the Lib Dems
Metro.co.uk reports its poll of “fully employed 18 to 44-year-olds, who read Metro at least three times a week and live or work in a city”, and finds support for the three main parties as follows:
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CON 26%, LAB 22%, LIB DEM 40%
As Jonathan Calder’s Liberal England remarks:
This suggests we are winning popularity among just the sort of people who should be supporting us: young, educated, urban. Those with an historical turn of mind could see it as the re-emergence of Orpington Man. If we are to continue to make progress as a party, we are going to have to strengthen this appeal to the liberally minded.
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19 Comments
The ICM/Guardian Poll would suggests we will wing a lot of seats from Labour (they say 28) and retain most of our seats against the Conservatives. 63 + 28 = 91
Applying the Poll of Polls above through the BBC seat calculator gives Con 271, Lab 256 and us 94, ie uniform national swing on the poll of polls is giving us approximately the same number of seats as the marginal seats poll.
Now all we’ve got to do is go out in the last week of the campaign and covert these predictions into reality. Breaking the 100 mark would be nice, and now looks quite possible. Would 100 seats and 2nd place in vote share “break the mould of British politics”?
“Would 100 seats and 2nd place in vote share “break the mould of British politics”?
Not neccesarily, because Labour would still be the offical opposition, the media will go back to ignoring the Lib Dems and another election could see losses.
On the otherhand, a Cameron Government making a hash of things could see the surge continue
ComRes’s is a rolling poll while the others are not, suggesting that once again they have had some rogue fieldwork which is pushing up Labour’s share at the expense of the Lib Dems (just as they had some very Tory fieldwork last week). Given some of the alleged shenanigans at YouGov recently, theirs is the most encouraging one for us given none of these were done after Brown’s little tete-a-tete with Gillian Duffy yesterday.
“Given some of the alleged shenanigans at YouGov recently …”
Come to think of it, did Stephen ever reveal YouGov’s response to the allegation in a comment on the Political Betting website, that they had made defamatory statements about the Lib Dems? I assume it was just “No, of course not”, but having repeated the allegation it would be fair to publicise the denial.
This election will be decided on election day in the Con/Lib marginals. Unless tonight the Cloggster can scare the living daylights out of people about Tory spending cuts and Labour tax plans, whilst convincing enough of them people of his competence to run the country in an atrocious economic climate, perforce with an austerity budget, we are not going to achieve a parliamentary majority. In that case, the best we can do is to stalemate the Tories. We need to pour all our efforts into the Con/Lib marginals; we can hope Labour will self-destruct.
The point is that the Lib Dems would have more chance to push their reform agenda with 90 seats and Tories short of a plausible minority government, than with 120 seats but a Tory majority. We need to stalemate the Tories.
It would also help enormously if we could get at least one of the papers to call in our favour this weekend. Job for someone savvy at headquarters?
Anthony – if you’d looked, I updated the original thread on YouGov ‘push-polling’ over a week ago:
https://www.libdemvoice.org/are-yougov-and-murdoch-pushpolling-for-the-tories-18997.html
Well, the Indie will presumably favour the Lib Dems. And I shall look forward to getting the Economist this week….
Echoing the point above, the ComRes poll was the oldest of the polls. From Mike Smithson:
“…three new national voting intention polls showing sharply contrasting pictures of Lib Dem support where the differences might be explained by the fieldwork dates. The ComRes survey, based on a new sample of 500 on Tuesday added to 500 from Monday, is showing the same broad trend that we saw in most of the polls last night and has Clegg’s party down sharply. But it is old. ”
http://www6.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2010/04/28/lib-dems-back-in-the-30s-with-yougov-and-harris/
Com Res had published several polls in the last three weeks putting us significantly lower than other polls.
The Guardian key seats poll indicates a slight diminution in Conservative support, contra the position elsewhere in England and Wales.
A couple of points:
(1) It is unclear if the drop in Labour support has taken place exclusively in Labour-held seats, or is partly attributable to further tactical voting in Lib Dem/Con marginals (eg, Eastleigh).
(2) I recall that a similar poll in 2005 showed our support falling in Lib Dem/Con marginals (as it did). Nonetheless, we still went on to win three seats from the Tories.
(3) When we win Labour seats we tend to do so with swings very much greater than the regional average (the poll would not have been conducted in Hull North, the Newcastles, etc).
I’m no expert on polling or how our votes translate into seats, but it seems to me Paul has hit the nail on the head.
If we accept that we are highly unlikely to win the most seats – because in order to do this we would need to secure nearly 40% of the vote, which is surely too tall an order – then the best outcome we can realistically hope for is a hung parliament in which the other two main parties are well short of an overall majority and Lib Dem influence is maximised.
Therefore the key to the parliamentary arithmetic will be the size of the gap between the other two parties.
Recent polling trends put the Tories about 6-7% ahead of Labour, which looks like it would leave the Tories with the most seats but only by a small margin and well short of a majority.
But if ‘bigotgate’ results in a further erosion of Labour support – whether to us or to the Tories – that gap could easily become largte enough to put the Tories into outright majority territory. Ditto if Brown is seen to perform poorly in tonight’s final leaders’ debate.
Even if we gain at their expense, a further implosion in Labour’s support might push the Tories over the finishing line.
To a large extent this is out of our hands of course, but it does illustrate how further progress at Labour’s expense could, perversely, actually threaten our endgame of wielding influence in the next government.
And it emphasises Paul’s point that we can’t afford to lose any more support to the Tories and need a strong performance in Con/Lib marginals to neutralise their advance – preferably a small net gain, but at least holding our current seats.
All in all it suggests the outcome is still balanced on a cliff edge and remains extremely hard to predict. There is certainly absolutely no grounds for complacency and tonight’s final debate on the economy will be crucial to consolidate our support, even if it doesn’t prove the ‘game changer’ that the first debate did.
PS: Stephen, the BBC website (in its ‘numbers crunched’ section) is showing the figures for us and Labour in the latest YouGov poll the other way round – Con 34%, Lab 31%, Lib 27%. I assume this is just a mistake but wondered if it might have affected their ‘poll of polls’ – wishful thinking perhaps!
While a terminal collapse in Labour support could easily push the Tories over the finishing line, it could also embolden many Lib Dem/Con wavers to vote Lib Dem in the certain knowledge that Labour cannot form the next government.
The Metro poll, if at all credible, is good news for Susan Kramer and Sarah Teather, and rather terrible reading for Glenda Jackson, Frank Dobson and Emily Thornberry.
Just to clarify, of course I’m not saying we shouldn’t AIM to win as many seats as possible from whoever holds them now – just that a Labour implosion that benefited us in Lab/Lib contests but the Tories (even by default) in Tory/Lab contests might push the Tories over the finishing line. In that scenario, we might gain more seats than otherwise but paradoxically be marginalised because the Tories would have a working majority.
Fair point Sesenco, although those Lib/Con waverers might still worry about the Lib Dems doing a deal with Labour (even if we were an equal partner and Brown didn’t stay as Labour leader) and if that is their reason for wavering their concerns will not be assuaged by a drop in Labour’s polling figures…
Wouldn’t it be truly ghastly to see 100 or so Liberal Democrat MPs shoehorned into the wings with Nick Clegg standing up at the new PMQs yet again without a dispatch box ? Well, I think it’s going to happen unless the strategy team at Cowley Street find a way for Nick Clegg to much better articulate the complete travesty to democracy of the present voting system. He was left spluttering about a dusty old political system in a C4 interview with Jon Snow when punchy, number-crunching facts would have made his argument unchallengeable. Mentioning that it takes 96,000 votes to elect a LibDem MP might have been a start. How about the Conservatives grotesque margin of spending power including a massive imbalance in campaign resources after 2 weeks campaigning? Add to that, you’ve got 70% of the British press terrifying wavering voters into voting for ‘strong government’ on election day itself.
The British are an essentially fair-minded people but for most of them the curtain hasn’t been lifted and the rug is going to be pulled from under them next week. It shouldn’t be left to the new ‘Independent’ ad.(see it on You Tube and hopefully soon on TV) ) to state the bleedin’ obvious. Perhaps it really is true: “We’re all in this together” ….and the grass really will grow greener ( bluer is too painful) under the Murdoch/Ashcroft jackboot.
Helen said:
>>>Well, the Indie will presumably favour the Lib Dems. And I shall look forward to getting the Economist this week….
Nice, but how about something more mainstream?
Guardian?
Evening Standard, perhaps?
At a real push, The Times (“Although we would recommend our readers to vote Conservative, we do also recognise that people have long memories and understandable reservations. For those readers, our advise is clear: Gordon Brown is not fit to be Prime Minister.”)
Get the rest of the Tory press to say something like that, then anything is possible…
Has anyone seen the Indie ad. ‘The truth about the UK general election.’ ? It’s on You Tube and brilliantly builds the case against the status quo.
Stephen
“Anthony – if you’d looked, I updated the original thread on YouGov ‘push-polling’ over a week ago:”
So sorry not to have spent every waking moment monitoring your various allegations and retractions.
To be honest, it’s difficult to keep track of everything that’s been alleged – and retracted – on various threads. But is it safe to assume you’re no longer accusing YouGov of publishing untrue (or “defamatory”) statements about the Lib Dems? Is it safe to assume that if you had any evidence they had done this, you’d be taking legal action against them, rather than posting the odd snide remark on LDV?