Four polls published tonight:
- YouGov in the S.Times … CON 35%(+1), LAB 27%(-1), LIB DEM 28%(nc)
ComRes/ for the S.Mirror/S.Independent … CON 38%(+2), LAB 28%(-1), LIB DEM 25%(-1)
ICM in the S.Telegraph … CON 36%(+3), LAB 29%(+1), LIB DEM 27%(-3)
Angus Reid in the S.Express … CON 35%(+2), LAB 23%(nc), LIB DEM 29%(-1)
These are an improved set of polls for the Tories, all showing a slight boost, perhaps helped by the favourable media coverage of David Cameron in the final televised debate. The Lib Dems have dropped slightly in three polls, and seem consistently to be in the high 20%s, ahead of Labour in two, behind Labour in two.
In addition, there are two polls published by companies not registered with the British Polling Council, both of which have better figures for the Lib Dems. There’s BPIX in the Mail on Sunday showing CON 34%(nc), LAB 27%(+1), LIB DEM 30%(nc); and OnePoll for The People with CON 30%, LAB 21%, LIB DEM 32%.
The News of the World has an interesting ICM survey “conducted across the 96 political constituencies which are currently held by Labour where the Conservatives require a swing of between 4% and 10% to win the seat”. By cunning sleight-of-hand (aka misleading readers) the paper argues this shows the Tories on course for a majority of 4 seats; though in fact it shows a hung parliament. And they also assume on the basis of a 6.8% Lab-Con swing that the Tories will also win all their Lib Dem targets, a doubtful proposition.
Perhaps more interesting is the ICM detail:
- one-in-five of voters in these seats classify themselves as ‘floating voters’;
- 21% believe the Lib Dems have the best policies on taxation and public services (cf 23% for the Tories and 25% for Labour);
- only 12% believe the Lib Dems have the best policies on the NHS – we score lower than that only on transport;
- 19% of voters think the Lib Dems have the best policy on immigration – ahead of Labour on 16%, behind the Tories on 26%;
- the Lib Dems are most trusted of the parties on Afghanistan;
- the Tories are behind Labour as the party felt best able to deal with Europe (the Lib Dems are third);
- Nick Clegg is rated the best Prime Minister by 27%, compared to 23% for Gordon Brown and 33% for David Cameron;
- almost one-third of voters in these seats think a hung parliament would be the best result.
NB: remember the voters polled above are in Labour/Tory marginals, not seats where the Lib Dems are strongest.
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15 Comments
We need to go after the Tories and hurt their vote. I’d suggest that the Lib Dems remind the voters that the Tories plan to cut spending by more than any government since the 2nd world war.
Drag this one up and repeat it mercilessly until polling day. That could well soften the Tory lead as people get nervous.
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Well, you’ve posted this in the nick of time Stephen, I was just about to wash up after the mug of Horlicks and then put my head in the oven. Then I read that we are leading in the opinion poll in The People…
I’m not sure what to make of these…but here are two additions to Stephen’s poll watch:
BPIX/Mail on Sunday (30th Apr-1st May) CON 34%(nc), LAB 27%(+1), LDEM 30%(nc)
and
OnePoll conducted for the People LD 32%, CON 30% and LAB 21%.
Trying to scare people about the scale of the Tories’ spending cuts while at the same time claiming we’ve been more honest in spelling them out is not going to wash. It would also be fundamentally disingenuous, since the difference between the Tories’ planned 80:20 split between cuts and tax rises and our planned composition (roughly 70:30) is hardly night and day.
Whoever wins the next election is going to have to cut spending in real terms drastically. The problem in this election is that all three parties have ducked the big questions about where the axe will fall (and no, scrapping ID cards, Trident and marginal adjustments to tax credits does not pass muster).
So whoever wins will lack a strong mandate to do what is required, meaning that there is likely to be any even bigger backlash than there would otherwise be and widespread public cynicism about why the full implications and choices were not spelt out before the election.
All the parties are guilty on this front, but – as the IFS argued – the prime responsibility lies with the government for cynically postponing its spending review on the bogus grounds of uncertainty.
I think its vital that we do not slip further. The Tory press will use every opportunity they can to try to maginalise (or bad-mouth us). In the remaining days we must push the point that a vote for the Conservatives is a vote for more of the same old Tory party that is stuck in the past. We must stress that this is the chance to do things differently and give a real voice to the people who really need us–those on the margins of society.
I never thought I’d see the day when I’d hope that the Labour vote remains high enough to make the prospect of PR possible, but it now may be our best hope of securing electoral reform this generation. The thought of Cameron grinning from ear-to-ear outside No. 10 is a frightening prospect for democracy and for progress in the UK. Sometimes I’m glad I now live in Australia!
The last week will see a boost for the Lib Dems as people realize that the Tories might win, and with the Guardian’s endorsement of Clegg.
Lib Dems will poll above 30%
Lib-Lab coalition with Clegg as PM and PR reform.
“Trying to scare people about the scale of the Tories’ spending cuts while at the same time claiming we’ve been more honest in spelling them out is not going to wash. It would also be fundamentally disingenuous, since the difference between the Tories’ planned 80:20 split between cuts and tax rises and our planned composition (roughly 70:30) is hardly night and day.”
I think this hits the nail on the head.
It’s interesting to speculate how this election campaign would have turned out if the Lib Dems had gone into it as the only one of the three parties with a credible programme to deal with the deficit – unavoidably a tough programme, but one that would demonstrably protect core public services and the weakest in society.
Cynics may say that would have resulted in the party being slaughtered at the polls, but I’m not so sure. In a sense the party is fighting with one hand tied behind its back – it can’t point to the huge cuts the Tories are going to have to inflict, because the obvious retort is “You would have to do the same”.
@ Alex – the difference is that the Tories – and perhaps some deficit hawks in our own party – WANT to cut public services. Fortunately the party at large is committed to maintaining them wherever possible.
perhaps you could change the headline, given that One Poll tells a different story.
Anthony,
>>>It’s interesting to speculate how this election campaign would have turned out if the Lib Dems had gone into it as the only one of the three parties with a credible programme to deal with the deficit – unavoidably a tough programme, but one that would demonstrably protect core public services and the weakest in society.
>>>Cynics may say that would have resulted in the party being slaughtered at the polls, but I’m not so sure. In a sense the party is fighting with one hand tied behind its back – it can’t point to the huge cuts the Tories are going to have to inflict, because the obvious retort is “You would have to do the same”.
It is good to be able to agree with you, on this at least!
Best Regards,
Paul McKeown
Good move by Vince Cable dragging up the inheritance tax issue again. The Tory’s say we are:
‘all in it together’
Well unless you are extremely rich that is.
On OnePoll, it’s worth bearing in mind the comments Anthony Wells made about their last survey:
“I do not have any information on whether OnePoll surveys use proper sampling or appropriate weighting, so cannot vouch for whether this is meaningful at all.”
http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/?p=2636&cp=all
Stephen (and Anthony), there are some interesting views/suggestions from Mike Smithson about how to put OnePoll and other recent results in polling context. Anyone interested in Mike Smithson’s full comment can go to politicalbetting.com.
Mike gives the latest figures (May 1) and their previous figures (April 24) for OnePoll in The People as
CONS 30% (down 2 from 32%)
LIB DEMS 32% (no change from 32%)
LABOUR 21% (down 2 from 23%)
What is particularly interesting is what Mike has to say about possible factors influencing Labour’s poll rating in OnePoll and others polls.
MS: “Like the other online pollsters – Harris, Angus Reid and Opinium – OnePoll is showing very low Labour shares – 21% is the lowest campaign share of all them.”
Pollsters, including YouGov, are believed to be operating weighting and invitation amendments to their methodologies. ICM, ComRes and Populus are also operating arrangements that compensate/adjust Labour (specifically a don’t know allocation system).
Mike Smithson gives the example of ‘today’s ICM marginals poll for the News of the World [which had] C36-L32-LD23 before the “adjustment” and C35-L35-LD22 afterwards’.
And Mike’s conclusion – one to be taken very seriously in my view: ‘Who knows whether online will beat phoning? My guess is that the actual Labour share will be closer to the uncorrected phone figures than the headline figures from those firms.’
Terry, it’s not about wanting to cut public services, it’s about facing up to the reality of our fiscal position so we prevent – which in my view we still can, just – being swept up in the sovereign debt crisis that is now threatening to become a contagion in the eurozone.
Failing to do this would mean being forced into much tougher austerity measures which would be crisis-driven and indiscriminate, whereas if we face up to the situation now we might be able to follow the better, more rational and more humane route the Canadian Liberals did in the 1990s.
I regret that we didn’t come clean with the public and, as Anthony suggests, I think we would have received more credit if we had done so. We would then have had a much more credible statement of our priorities that would have exposed the shallowness and dishonesty of the other two parties’ approaches.
Instead we have only been able to do this to a very limited extent – although I do accept, as I said above, that the root of this cross-party cowardice was the government’s cynical decision to postpone the spending review. That made it more difficult, but certainly not impossible, to set out detailed plans of our own.
We have reasonable costings for most areas of government spending, so for example if we had said – as Vince suggested in his Reform article last September but the party did not adopt – that we would means-test or tax child benefit, it would have been perfectly possible to quantify the savings from this.
Pretending that just by ignoring the deficit problem, or warning about savage cuts under the evil Tories, will make it go away would be irresponsible, juvenile and a cruel deception of the public. (I’m not saying the party has done this, but it is being urged to do so by some posters here in a bid to give us a late polling boost…)
Restoring fiscal responsibility is not about wanting to cut public services, any more than it is about wanting to raise taxes. It is, rather, the means of ensuring that we have the stable economic backdrop that alone will allow us to maintain a decent level of public services and keep a lid on taxes in the medium and long term.