Tag Archives: opinion polls

Lib Dems overtake Labour in poll

By The Voice | Thu 19th September 2019 - 2:02 pm

Yes it is just one poll, but a good sign after people have seen our very clear intention to stop Brexit.

Westminster voting intention:

CON: 32% (-)
LDEM: 23% (+4)
LAB: 21% (-2)
BREX: 14% (-)
GRN: 4% (-3)

via @YouGov

— Britain Elects (@BritainElects) September 18, 2019

Posted in News | 62 Comments

Lib Dems top Westminster voting intention poll

By Caron Lindsay | Thu 30th May 2019 - 10:41 pm

If I were the sort of person who used profane language, the air would be royal blue around me tonight.

Westminster voting intention:

LDem: 24% (+6)
Brex: 22% (+4)
Con: 19% (-5)
Lab: 19% (-5)
Grn: 8% (+2)

via @YouGov
Chgs. w/ 17 May

— Britain Elects (@BritainElects) May 30, 2019

Posted in News | Also tagged bloody hell and liberal democrats | 25 Comments

Some good news for the Liberal Democrats from Lord Ashcroft

By Lord William Wallace | Tue 28th May 2019 - 1:30 pm

Lord Ashcroft, nowadays a relatively detached observer of British politics, usefully spends some of the money he used to give to the Conservative Party on opinion polling. He has just published his post-voting analysis of the European elections – and it has some encouraging information for Liberal Democrats.

‘The biggest single chunk of Lib Dem support in the European elections came from 2017 Labour voters (37%), with 31% coming from previous Lib Dems and 24% coming from 2017 Conservatives.’

52% of Conservatives who had switched to voting for the Brexit Party said that they intend to stay with the Brexit Party at the next general election; while…

‘Conservatives who switched to the Lib Dems say they are even more likely to stay put: 61% now say they will vote Lib Dem again at the general election, with only 22% saying they expect to return to the Tories. Overall, only 43% of 2017 Conservative voters who turned out in the European elections say they will vote Tory at the next general election.’

‘Half of Labour-Brexit Party switchers said they expected to stay with their new party at the next general election, with only just a quarter saying they expect to go back to Labour. Just over half (51%) of Labour-Lib Dem switchers currently say they will stay with the Lib Dems. Just over half (56%) of 2017 Labour voters say they will back Jeremy Corbyn’s party for Westminster.’

He doesn’t provide a breakdown of respondents by age, social class or education; and he doesn’t provide comparably detailed information on voters who switched to the Greens, which would have been useful. But this gives us some useful targets to go for: to hold onto our new voters, through continuing contact, and through getting across to them where we stand on policies other than on Brexit.

Our leadership campaign should help us to get other policies across, as the media (at last) give us more coverage for a contest likely to be far more constructive and less bloody than the parallel Conservative race. Both Ed Davey and Jo Swinson have done well in post-European election media comments, and we can hope for more media attention as the other two parties’ agonised arguments over what went wrong spill over.

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged european elections 2019 and lord ashcroft | 15 Comments

European elections poll puts Lib Dems in second ahead of Labour

By Caron Lindsay | Fri 17th May 2019 - 8:15 am

The most recent YouGov opinion poll puts us in second place in the European elections ahead of Labour.

From a sample of over 7000 people, YouGov (for The Times) found::

Second place! 🕺🏻🕺🏻🕺🏻
YouGov/The Times Euro mega poll

BXP 35% (+1)
Lib Dems 16% (+1)
Lab 15% (-1)
Greens 10% (-1)
Tories 9% (-1)
CUK 5% (nc)
UKIP 3% (nc)

YouGov interviewed 7,192 between Sunday and Yesterday. #RemainBacklash #VoteLibDem @LibDems 🔶🔶🔶

— Alex Cole-Hamilton MSP🔶🇺🇦 (@agcolehamilton) May 17, 2019

From The Times (£)

The Lib Dems appear to be picking up support from Labour and Green voters after Sir Vince Cable argued that opponents of Brexit should vote for his party.

YouGov interviewed 7,192 British adults between Sunday and Thursday this week. When asked whom they would support in the European elections, 35 per cent said the Brexit Party, up 1 point on the week before.

Lib Dems were on 16 per cent, up 1, Labour on 15 per cent, down 1, Greens on 10 per cent, down 1, Conservatives on 9 per cent, down 1, Change UK unchanged on 5 per cent and Ukip unchanged on 3 per cent.

The decline of the Conservatives into single figures is likely to increase the panic in the party’s high command, with 62 per cent of Tory voters in the 2017 general election now saying that they will vote for the Brexit Party in the European elections. Only one in five who backed the party at the last general election is sticking with the Tories in the European elections.

It’s only one poll, though. To go along with the couple at the weekend the one that had us on 19% and the other couple this week.

Posted in News | Also tagged european elections 2019 | 31 Comments

European election poll puts Lib Dems ahead of the Conservatives

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 11th May 2019 - 8:06 pm

There’s a sentence I never thought I’d write.

Don’t get too excited, but look at this…

European Parliament voting intention:

BREX: 34% (+6)
LAB: 21% (-7)
LDEM: 12% (+5)
CON: 11% (-3)
GRN: 8% (+2)
UKIP: 4% (+1)
CHUK: 3% (-4)

via @OpiniumResearch, 08 May
Chgs. w/ 23 Apr

— Britain Elects (@BritainElects) May 11, 2019

It is only one poll.

Although another by the same company on Westminster voting intention yesterday gave us a similar rise and the Tories a similar fall.

Westminster voting intention:

LAB: 28% (-5)
CON: 22% (-5)
BREX: 21% (+4)
LDEM: 11% (+5)
GRN: 6% (+2)
UKIP: 4% (-)

via @OpiniumResearch, 08 May
Chgs. w/ 23 Apr

— Britain Elects (@BritainElects) May 11, 2019

Let’s hope that we are starting to build momentum, because the size of the Brexit Party vote is scary.

It is quite incredible that we have a poll in which the two main parties only command a third of the vote between them.

Posted in News | Also tagged european elections 2019 | 76 Comments

Dutch opinion poll: Dutch Government coalition supports Second Referendum

By Bernard Aris | Mon 8th April 2019 - 11:30 am

For the past few decades, pollster Maurice de Hond (our Professor Curtice) has published his political opinion polls every Sunday. Now that the possibility of a No Deal Brexit looms as of next Friday, it is interesting to see what Dutch political parties think of the present Brexit situation and what should be done.

First of all, there is a broad Dutch consensus, the parliamentary and procedural shenanigans in the Commons since December having convinced many Dutchmen that the structures and culture of British politics are totally wrong for solving existential questions like Brexit-or-Remain. The winner-takes-all mentality instilled by the …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged brexit | 5 Comments

What do the local elections tell us about Lib Dem prospects?

By George Potter | Tue 4th December 2018 - 12:39 pm

When it comes to local election results, punditry usually heads in one of two directions. Either the local elections will be held up as an ironclad prediction for the next general election result or they are an utter irrelevance which tells you nothing about how people will vote in national elections.

Strangely, which of the two positions punditry tends towards seems to be very much linked to whether the local elections have been bad or good for the party backed by the pundit in question.

As you might expect, of course, the truth lies somewhere in between – and the data can actually tell us something useful about Liberal Democrat prospects at the next general election, whenever that may be.

For decades various teams of political scientists have been working out National Equivalent Vote Shares (NEVS) based on local election results. That is, they take the raw figures and make adjustments to take account of the fact that local elections take place in different parts of the country each year (for instance, most of the councils which had elections in May this year won’t have elections again until 2022).

This means that the NEVS is, broadly speaking, a reliable snapshot of support for each party UK-wide at the time of the local elections.

However, this does not mean that a NEVS is the same thing as how the party will perform in a general election. In the case of the Lib Dems, we have routinely underperformed our NEVS from the previous year in a general election.

The table below shows the Lib Dem performance in each of the past six general elections as well as our NEVS in the year before’s local elections. As can be seen, typically the Lib Dem vote has dropped by 1 to 7 points between the local election and the general election – and the two general elections with the lowest drop were dominated by the Iraq War and Cleggmania respectively, making them fairly atypical.

	GE Result	Year Before’s NEVS	Difference
1997	17%	24%	-7
2001	19%	26%	-7
2005	23%	27%	-4
2010	24%	25%	-1
2015	8%	13%	-5
2017	7%	14%	-7

So, given that the typical drop has been 6 or 7 points, what does this tell us about Lib Dem prospects at the next general election?

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged general election, local elections and voting behaviour | 20 Comments

A wander around the opinion polls

By Caron Lindsay | Fri 19th January 2018 - 10:23 am

Lib Dems are still waiting for a bounce in the opinion polls. So far this year, we’ve had Westminster voting intentions at 6, 7 and 9%.

However, there are some very interesting things coming out of current polling generally.

Scotland

There was a very interesting YouGov Scottish poll this week which showed that we are not just hanging in there, but making progress as the SNP and Labour slip since the last poll in October Lib Dems show a slight rise in voting intention for Westminster and Holyrood constituency and regional votes. The Tories are holding their own at Westminster, despite a deeply unpopular (floating at around -50 across the two polls) leader. Ruth Davidson is Scotland’s most popular leader with an approval rating of +15, yet her party has lost ground since the Holyrood elections. While they have gained slightly in this poll to the mid twenties, they achieved 31% two years ago. Perhaps that’s because people see Scottish Conservative MPs troop meekly into the voting lobbies behind Theresa May rather than stand up for Scotland’s interests, particularly with regard to the devolution aspects of the EU Withdrawal Bill.

Jeremy Corbyn is a massive loser in this recent poll. He was +20 in October and now he’s -3. Perhaps his Brexit stance is not going down so well in a country that predominantly voted to Remain.

Scotland is neutral on its first minister who continues with a neutral approval rating. It’s only a couple of years since she was given a rock star welcome everywhere she went.

Scottish Lib Dems are getting some attention in the media on housing, health, justice and our stance on Brexit. There is still a lot of work to be done and this first non-election year since 2013 provides a good opportunity for the party to develop a longer term strategy. Willie Rennie held a strategy day with key party stakeholders in November which was described by an observer from south of the border as one of the most constructive party events they had ever seen.

Referenda

Posted in News | 45 Comments

Tim Farron tops the leaders’ popularity poll

By Caron Lindsay | Thu 17th December 2015 - 8:33 pm

IPSOS-MORI have released their monthly Political Monitor and it has a double dose of good news for the Liberal Democrats.

This is probably the month in which Tim Farron has had the most exposure since his election as leader. His speech in the Syria debate was highly commended and he’s been on both Have I Got News for You and Russell Howard’s Good News. The fact that he’s ended up as the most popular leader in Britain speaks for itself. Before we all get too excited. his rating is only -7, compared to Cameron’s -14 Corbyn’s -15 and Farage’s -15, but he has a lot of don’t knows, 45%, to win over.

Posted in News | Also tagged tim farron | 3 Comments

Lib Dems on 22% in ICM poll – from our archive

By Paul Walter | Wed 19th August 2015 - 11:00 am

Liberal Democrat Voice has a fantastic archive of posts going back to our establishment in 2006. Here’s an interesting article from our Founding Editor, which was published in October 2006. You can read the post in its original form, with the title “There is no news today”, with comments, here. Rob, our Founding Editor, made a thing about not writing about polls. So, in his amusing way, he didn’t do this poll, but, er, he did do it. Anyway, it is quite eye-watering to look back and see us on 22%!

Guardian 3 There is no news today on account of the fact that I do not do polls.

Someone do something. Please.

Posted in From the LDV Archive | 12 Comments

#Libdemfightback: What do the polls say?

By Stephen Ruffian | Sun 26th July 2015 - 10:25 am

View image | gettyimages.com

Obviously we’re all a little wary of using the polls since the General Election, but it should be remembered that while the polls then underestimated the Tories and over-estimated Labour, they got our tiny percentage pretty much spot on. The only problem was that, because the Tory vote was higher in actuality than predicted, that we ended up losing a few more Tory/LD marginals than we’d ever expected to.

But Pollsters have been amending their weighting…and the ‘Shy Tory Voter’ doesn’t really seem to exist anymore. They’re out and proud! So I’ve been having a look at what the polls have been predicting for a General Election held today.

The Method

My reading of the polls uses averages to fill in the gaps on the days when there aren’t polls, and then to run seven day rolling figures based on both those averages and the polls themselves.

The model I use is modelled heavily on that of Martin Baxter’s Electoral Calculus model, as featured often in the press. The idea is that one takes the ‘base’ vote of each constituency (i.e. Southport 2010 36% Con, 9% Lab, 50% LD etc), place that against the GE figure for that year (i.e. 37 Con, 30 Lab, 24 LD) and then see how the constituency figure moves with regards to latest polling (i.e. the final poll pre 2015 GE of 33 Con, 33 Lab and 9 LD) and then see how the initial constituency figure moves (in this case to 33 Con, 12 Lab and 35 LD) thus showing how John Pugh kept his seat.

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged featured | 24 Comments

Opinion: Has the polling got out of hand?

By Judy Abel | Mon 20th April 2015 - 2:50 pm

In this run up to the election we have been bombarded with opinion polls on who is going to win the election – or not to win it, as it now seems. Looking at the May2015.com website, which tracks polling results, in the month to 18th April, 53 polls were published, an average of almost two a day. On 9^th April for example five separate polls were published. I don’t know if the same people have been asked several times, but the results seem amazingly consistent!

I, like some others, have some concerns about this plethora of polls. Firstly, if two or three polls are published every day, quite frankly, what is the point? They completely lose their impact and are quickly discounted because new opinion polls – and betting odds! – appear the very next day.

Posted in Op-eds | 22 Comments

Nick Clegg top British politician in Mumsnet poll

By Caron Lindsay | Fri 20th February 2015 - 10:25 am

Nick Clegg is the leading British politician on a Mumsnet poll. Sadly, it’s not for voting intention. The Mirror has the story:

Over at Mumsnet, one user started a thread asking “Am I being unreasonable to ask which politician would make the best lover?” There were over 400 replies and we added up the mentions of each name for you. The results are in…

American President Barack Obama beat all local politicians to come out top with 22 votes.

Nick “Clegg-over” Clegg makes a close second, showing he’s kept his sex appeal since 2010 despite the battering his political reputation has taken.

Perennial sex favourite Gordon Brown (he’s Scottish, the accent is kind of sexy) is third.

Posted in News | Also tagged nick clegg and the mirror | 9 Comments

Opinion: it’s no good counting on those rose-tinted spectacles

By Richard Morris | Fri 18th January 2013 - 2:16 pm

We’re a generally an optimistic lot aren’t we, looking on the brighter side when the world and his wife thinks we should be walking around with our heads in our hands. I even wrote a piece about how genuinely cheerful we are for the New Statesman the other day…

But whisper it gently… and just between us… you don’t think we’re fooling ourselves do you?

I say this because we seem to be taking it as read that the mid term polls are generally where we are now. “It’s always this bad’ seems to be the general gist…

Problem is – it’s …

Posted in Op-eds | 150 Comments

Why there isn’t a British Nate Silver

By Stephen Tall | Thu 8th November 2012 - 8:22 am

A skim-read of Wednesday morning’s headlines might have left folk confused as to who had been declared the victor of the US presidential election: Barack Obama or Nate Silver.

For those who don’t know Nate Silver, he’s the analytical guru behind the FiveThirtyEight blog (named after the number of electoral college votes), now housed at the New York Times, which scrutinises and filters opinion polls. He first rose to prominence four years ago after predicting the winner in 49 of the 50 US states during the Obama-McCain presidential contest, …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged featured, john rentoul and nate silver | 17 Comments

Lord Rennard: “There’s no substitute for democracy”

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 1st August 2012 - 6:59 pm

Liberal Democrat peer and campaigning guru Chris Rennard went on Radio 4 yesterday to respond to the Earl of Glasgow saying that we should back down on Lords reform.

Lord Rennard said that there have been plans for an elected Lords were not Nick Clegg’s alone and that there had been efforts to reform the upper House for 50 years before Nick Clegg was born.

He took a mild swipe at his Liberal Democrat colleague Lord Steel when asked about the latter’s plans to limit the reforms to allowing voluntary retirement and sacking those peers who don’t attend. Those things, said Rennard, …

Posted in News | Also tagged chris rennard, constitutional reform, david steel, house of lords, lords reform, nick clegg and the earl of glasgow | 2 Comments

Opinion: Exploding the tuition fees polling myth

By Nick Tyrone | Tue 10th July 2012 - 12:03 pm

It is generally assumed knowledge – within the Liberal Democrats as well as in the wider political world – that our party’s poll numbers took a big nosedive right after the coalition government voted (excepting rebels) to change the way tuition works in England by raising the limit on what universities can charge students per year to £9,000.

For instance, a common answer I get when I ask fellow Lib Dems how many points they think we lost post tuition fees is “about 8%”.

What I want to do here is not to discuss the pros and cons of the 2010 Higher …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged yougov | 35 Comments

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

By Stephen Tall | Sun 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…

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 | Tue 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 and nick clegg | 44 Comments

Disaster for Labour as one in five desert the party

By Iain Roberts | Tue 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 | Tue 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 and the guardian | 15 Comments

Poll gives Lib Dem/Con coalition 60% approval

By The Voice | Fri 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 | Sat 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 and Polls | Also tagged david cameron, gordon brown and nick clegg | 2 Comments

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

By Stephen Tall | Fri 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 and Polls | 2 Comments

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

By Stephen Tall | Tue 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 and philip stephens | 4 Comments

Poll hints hung parliament could be vote winner

By Iain Roberts | Tue 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 | Sun 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 and Polls | Also tagged cheadle | 8 Comments

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Tag Archives: opinion polls

Lib Dems overtake Labour in poll

Lib Dems top Westminster voting intention poll

Some good news for the Liberal Democrats from Lord Ashcroft

European elections poll puts Lib Dems in second ahead of Labour

European election poll puts Lib Dems ahead of the Conservatives

Dutch opinion poll: Dutch Government coalition supports Second Referendum

What do the local elections tell us about Lib Dem prospects?