While Liberal Democrat Voice doesn’t do polls, as regular readers know, news reaches us of a new voting intention poll from YouGov which will be reported in tomorrow’s Telegraph. The poll was carried out at the end of this week.
Here are the headline figures compared with the last YouGov poll:
- LD: 20% (+4)
- Con: 44% (-2)
- Lab: 24% (-3)
This is the highest rating for the Liberal Democrats in a YouGov poll since November 2005 (and YouGov traditionally poll the Lib Dems lower than other companies).
The gap between us and Labour, at four points, is the smallest this Parliament, and you have to go back to the time of the Brent East by-election in 2003 to find a YouGov poll which has put us so close.
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37 Comments
Mike Smithson says: “Would we be on 20% if Vince was leader?”
Or perhaps we should take all opinion polls with a pinch of salt, and suspect most of them are unreliable and that – until at least half a dozen suggest a trend – neither of the last two are worth either falling into depression or cracking open the champagne for?
I will, however, happily take anyone’s bet for £50 if they want to wager that the Lib Dems will poll 12% or less and the Tories 52% or higher at the next General Election 😉
As a professional Lib Dem pessimist, my first reaction is: bollards, must be a rogue! My second reaction is that Labour is toast and no change of leader can save them. My third reaction is, oh goodness the Tories are going to get back in, time to leave the country!!
I don’t know that it’s necessarily a rogue – parties generally get a boost in the polls after their conferences. But it does look as though yesterday’s Ipsos/Mori showing the Lib Dems at 12% (from sampling mostly before the conference) was an outlier on the low side.
What both this and the MORI poll show is that political opinion is very fluid at the moment (MORI’s polls in particular are notorious for exaggerating “mood” by only factoring in people who are ‘certain’ to vote). Frank Luntz also helped to confirm that the big Tory lead at the moment is rooted in despair of Gordon Brown rather than enthusiasm for Cameron. Take it all together and there is plenty to play for still.
One swallow flying high does not a fine day make; nor one raven flying low a foul one.
A flock of swallows would be a different matter. Then we would know that the votes were migrating.
whatever the polls, the real test will be June next year. The Lib dems could again outpoll lbaour in the local elections.
They need to get a significant improvement in the Euro elections too.
By the way, there’s a piece by Bob Worcester on politicalbetting.com which includes a bit that’s supposed to explain that drop to 12% in the MORI poll:
http://politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2008/09/19/bob-worcester-on-the-mori-28-tory-lead/
I don’t understand what he’s getting at. Can anyone enlighten me?
Ha ha – you only do polls when you do well – altho in case you hadn’t noticed this poll would give you about 40 seats in GE!
This poll clearly demonstrates that we go up when we get coverage – and when the media is required to remind people we exist, we poll well. Therefore there is all to play for at the next election. I am far from pessimistic!
Any regular visitor to Con Home will know that they are always espousing the virtues of You Gov polls.
I wonder what they will make of this one?
ideally, we should be looking to go into a general election campaign with a polling average of 20%, so that the usual GE increase we get actually means we poll higher than 2005. that’d be an acheivement and a half, with no Iraq war and a resurgent Tory party. who knows? Labour might just fall apart..
scampi & others – under our corrupt voting system -its not how many votes you get – its where you get them regarding the number of seats won.
I haven’t seen the details of the YouGov poll yet. As soon as it’s up, I’ll take a look. Don’t dismiss polls so quickly. These apparent swings do not reflect such a radical change in public opinion but often changes in PTV. The MORI poll showed a ‘definite intention to vote’ from 51% of LD supporters and 72% of Cons. A small swing of say one in 10 Tory and one in 20 Labour supporters, combined withan increase in PTV from 51% to say, 60%, will easily account for such a large increase as 12% to 20%.
For reasons I will not bore you with, the next poll out for the Guardian might show us on 22%, because their methodology is more favourable (in my humble opinion), but I hope that people underatand that this does not necessarily imply that there have been vast changes in public opinion taking place.
The important piece of news for LD’s is that the old mantra that our leaders flourish when the receive the attention of a GE campaign seems to be true as the conference lift is the only remotely comparable experience we can point to.
This, combined with Luntz, is highly important for the party and should be deeply troubling for the more intelligent Conservative campaigners. By that, I mean those burning the midnight oil at their party HQ, not the infantile fools who so frequently trouble this forum.
I am a betting man and at the moment the picture, for me, points to a small Tory majority, but that’s all. The Tory vote simply has no depth. But then neither does David Cameron.
Martin Land
Whatever “real” changes in public opinion may have taken place over the last week, I think it’s likely that sampling error accounts for quite a bit of the difference between 12% and 20%.
The first reactions of many people to the 12% figure were “is this a freak”? The answer seems to be yes. Maybe the 20% is itself a bit on the high side through sampling error. We’ll have to wait for the next one to get another indication. And then the next one after that …
As a political gambler who bases most of my predictions on YouGov (and none at all on MORI), I consider this very good news for us.
Note that the fieldwork took place immediately after conference, thus reflecting a clear bounce due to the various media coverage received.
An ICM poll is expected in the Grauniad soon (IMO, the most accurate LD predictor), with fieldwork also done soon after conference. Last time we scored 19%, so we should be looking at the low 20s in the next.
Glad we share the same analysis, Julian
The thing to watch here is that we’re in a two party system (due to party funding and the voting system), and it seems that ‘killing’ Labour, is our first task.
Overtaking them in these polls is the first task. Notably out polling them at the euro elections/local elections next year, the next.
Nick Clegg certainly seems to be following this as a strategy. Bury Labour, take on Ashcroft’s Conservatives.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article4749181.ece
Aha, yes indeed Martin – and I confess that laziness meant I hadn’t noticed that you’d already made the same points as me just two posts above. Apologies for repetition, although I suppose at least we’re hammering the points home.
CCF – Martin’s post explains that different pollsters have different methodologies, some considerably better than others. Thus it is not wise to simply judge each and every poll as they come, assuming any surprising results to be “freaks”. We can look beneath the surface, and this is why I suggest paying more attention to YouGov and ICM than to MORI and, say, ComRes.
“CCF – Martin’s post explains that different pollsters have different methodologies, some considerably better than others.”
Yes, I’m well aware of that.
But the point about these two polls is that one shows the Lib Dems down 4 points and at nearly a one-year low, and the other shows the Lib Dems up 4 points and at nearly a three-year high.
I think it’s clear that the difference of methodologies doesn’t explain the difference. The effect of the party conference no doubt explains some of it, but what I’m suggesting is that sampling error (which after all is of the order of 2-3%) probably explains quite a bit of it too.
Con Home are reporting tomorrow’s IOS comres poll which puts us up 4% ON 21%
http://conservativehome.blogs.com/torydiary/2008/09/tories-dip-belo.html
Yes it’s 39 – 27 – 21
Sorry, which means Con -6 Lab +2 LD +4
Probably more significantly, there is a huge poll of voting intentions in marginal seats, with a lot of detailed analysis, here:
http://www.politicshome.com/Landing.aspx?Blog=2939&perma=link
The predicted result for a general election is:
Con 398
Lab 160
LD 44
But obviously there is enough detailed information there to keep psephologists happily chewing over it for days.
Just to add a more detailed breakdown of the seats that are predicted to change hands.
The net loss of 19 for the Lib Dems comprise 18 losses to the Tories and 1 each to Plaid Cymru and the SNP, offset by 1 gain from Labour.
I am not surprised by the improvement in the poll ratings. People are happy to pay less tax. However the second half of the equation has yet to be delivered; what are we going to cut. We can put off saying that, but in the meantime if our opponents decide to take us seriously, they will make their own suggestions, which we will have to defensively confirm or deny.
In the meantime, this Sunday Times article suggests the whole package will go up in smoke; http://tinyurl.com/3f2xys
Anthony Wells of UK Polling Report comments on a poll by YouGov for tomorrow’s Sun:
CON 41% (-3)
LAB 31%(+7)
LDEM 16%(-4)
Does this mean the corner has turned and Labour are pulling things back? It could do – nothing’s impossible – but right now it’s probably more likely to be a passing conference boost. To see how ephemeral they can be we only need to look at the Lib Dem score in this poll. The YouGov poll conducted after their conference put them up 4 points to 20%, their highest score for years. This poll puts them back down at 16%, where they were before the conference season began. We’ll know the real position after all three conferences and all three conferences bounces have come and gone.
The latest Guardian ICM poll tells a similar story:
CON 41% (-3)
LAB 32% (+3)
LDEM 18% (-1)
The changes are since the last poll, conducted in mid-August.
Another poll, which seems to belie the idea that the Clegg-Cable “ticket” will be an unbeatable one, was carried out by ComRes for the BBC’s Daily Politics:
QUESTION: Putting your party allegiance aside, who do you trust most to steer Britain’s economy through the current downturn?
– Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling – 36%
– David Cameron and George Osborne – 30%
– Nick Clegg and Vince Cable – 5%
– Don’t know – 24%
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/the_daily_politics/7637450.stm
CCF: Keep on Trolling… Your Tory friends must love you…
Martin
As I’ve told you, I’m not a Tory. You can confirm this with the site owners if you can be bothered (and if you’re on speaking terms with them). But if you prefer to go on posting (inaccurate) abuse that’s up to you.
If you’d rather not know what the polls are saying, you might be well advised to “look away now” when you see a thread with “YouGov” or similar in this title…
CCF: You may well be a party member, but to me, if it looks like a Tory, sounds like a Tory and thinks like a Tory… then it probably is a Tory.
You may well just be the last person to realise it…
Martin
Considering my essential objection to Clegg – incompetence aside – is that he is taking the party much too far to the right, your point of view is rather bizarre. And pretty insulting – but obviously it was meant to be.
But anyway, here’s an idea. Rather than calling me (inaccurate) names, why not try to write some kind of intelligent comment on what I’ve posted?
For example, can that poll for the Daily Politics be reconciled with the extravagant claims last week that Vince Cable is “the most trusted politician in the country” and so on? I mean evidently Lib Dem members love him, but that doesn’t seem to extend to the electorate in general, does it?
CCF: Please do ignore ML.
Martin: You’re not exactly sounding like a LibDem when you’re flaming people and making judgements about them based entirely on your opinion.
Let’s foster mature debate rather sounding like a re-run of PMQs!
“One swallow flying high does not a fine day make”
African or European?
Neale, when people snipe without giving their real name and details, unlike you and I, then we are entitled to question their motivation and challenge who they claim to be. I have no option but to judge them on what I read and in the case of CCF, I don’t like what I read, I’m afraid.
And by the way, Neale, I make ALL my judgements based on my opinions; how can I do otherwise?
“And by the way, Neale, I make ALL my judgements based on my opinions; how can I do otherwise?”
As I have already pointed out, if you are as bothered about it as you seem to be you can check with the site owners, who can confirm I am not a Tory.
An interesting indication of likely Tory strategy in Lib Dem seats here:
THE Conservative Party high command is preparing to launch an audacious bid to encourage Liberal Democrats to “lend” them their votes at the next general election.
Senior Tories aim to show there is “not that much difference” between the two parties and believe Lib-Dem supporters are tired of simply “holding opinions” without holding power.
Drawing parallels between policies on civil liberties, the environment and social justice, Tory election supremo and Shadow Communities Secretary Eric Pickles told the WMN: “We do recognise we cannot win the election just on Conservative votes. We have got to build a coalition of support.”
…
“These folks aren’t ex-Conservatives – they are Liberal Democrat voters. We have got to persuade them to lend us their vote.
He said there were now many similarities between the policies of the two parties, adding: “If Lib-Dems want to see Lib-Dem policy implemented, the only way is to vote Conservative. You don’t stop being Liberal Democrat but in order to see that policy implemented, you have to lend us your vote.”
http://www.thisiswesternmorningnews.co.uk/news/lend-votes/article-357467-detail/article.html