UK Opinion Polls Thread

[Verily]

Is that green thing in Brighton a Green gain?

Yes; that would be Brighton, Pavilion, where the Greens came third (ahead of the Lib Dems and just a hair behind the Conservatives) with 22% of the vote in 2005. Their candidate isn't running again, but one of their MEPs is, and it is certainly the Greens' best chance at a seat, so they'll be pouring all of their resources in.

There's been talk that the Lib Dems will tacitly endorse Caroline Lucas, the Green candidate (possibly using the argument that proportionally the Greens should have seats), and the Conservatives really can't advance beyond 25% there so tactical anti-Tory voting will be minimal.

It's worth noting that this was once a very safe Conservative seat. Their vote share has declined there in every election since 1979, though they didn't lose it until 1997. The Brighton & Hove Council is NOC with the Greens holding the balance; the Liberal Democrats are somewhat discredited in Brighton because of some scandal when they were in power back in the '90s; they're the smallest of the four parties on the Council. The Conservatives and Labour are stronger in the Hove and Brighton, Kemptown seats, though, while the Greens are heavily concentrated in Brighton, Pavilion.

Brighton and Hove Council
Conservative: 26
Labour: 13
Green: 12
Liberal Democrats: 2
Independent: 1

[Verily]

I'm wondering if YouGov were smoking something in that poll .

The Man From G.O.P.- I'd say the 1983 period, but it's a guess.

Late 1981 to early 1982, when the Alliance was over 50% in the polls, maybe, although some of the polls in 1995 might have had Labour that far ahead.

[Verily]

Let's see how far we've come since I last asked this....



How long till Brown is gone?

I think Labour will stick with him until the election; they don't really have any good replacements, and few will want to put their careers on the line.

[Verily]

Because Labour are a party of the working class, and the LDs are not. And British politics is all about class.

[Verily]

When the Labour percentage goes up and down it's usually turnout (ie; within the various parts of society prone to Labour voting, rather than society as a whole) related. At least when we're in an environment in which the swingers have already swung firmly away anyway (which we are right now. Make no mistakes about that).

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Slightly amusing that of all the polls published over the past few weeks, days even, the one to get the most attention is the one by the company with a very bad record in recent years and which is currently using a largely untested methodology (and much of the bits that aren't untested are a little dubious and tend to greatly magnify swings) Life is funny.

Would you like to be the first to suggest that the poll isn't in the general areas of the public mood?

Well, it's more extreme than the other four polls to come out over the past week. Doesn't make it wrong, but it does make it a bit questionable. MORI is, after all, not the most reliable firm historically, which is pretty established fact.

The other four polls all had the Conservatives at 41-42%, and Labour at 28-32%. (The 32% was an outlier as well; without it they all had Labour at 28% IIRC.) Which seems to me to be a very reasonable projection of the current mood.

[Verily]

It is good to see that Labour's post conference bounce has now vanished. It will be interesting to see how closely the polls match with the result...but that is still a year away.

As way off as the Labour at 55% polls were in 1996, the end result was right - landslide.

There is some credibility to the claim that the polls in 1996 were inherently flawed while the current polls are not. Of course, to some degree there may be tightening once a campaign begins--but the Progressive Conservatives could tell you that an ailing government does not always regain ground during a campaign.

[Verily]

Am I right in thinking 20% is not the ceiling for the Lib Dems... are they really not going to benefit from Labour's horrible numbers.


That graph is really interesting though. Is it possible they could actually intersect at some point? What kind of reaction would that news story get?

It depends on whether it is permanent. In October 2003, in the days of Blair, Duncan Smith and Kennedy, One poll had a 33/33/28 split. Almost a year later one poll had the Lib Dems ahead of Labour by one point (Lab 28, Lib 29) So there were times of madness in the polls in the last parliament. However these soon settled again.

It would take a series of polls of Labour falling behind the Lib Dems for it to make a serious impact. Labour is in a catch 22. It cannot afford to have Brown as leader, or to remove him. They cannot afford to fight an election (yet) as they have serious fundraising problems.

Were there other occasions on which Lib Dems (or Alliance or SLD or anything you want) were ahead of Labour (or Tories) in polls since 1981 ?

There was an ICM poll (IIRC) with a three-way tie at 30% in 2003, or maybe 2004. The Alliance also peaked at over 50% in some polls immediately prior to the Falklands War in early 1982. I would assume the Alliance polled ahead of Labour at least sometimes in the run-up to the 1983 election, too.

[Verily]

Populus and ICM are so strikingly in disagreement that it's hard to know who to believe. The only things they agree on are that Labour is in the toilet, and the Greens are surging for the Euros.

ICM Euro figures are:

Con 29
LD 20
Lab 17
Green 11
UKIP 10
BNP 5

The "third behind the LDs" headline is really tough on Labour, though. It means tactical switchers on the left, the sort who would never vote for the Tories/UKIP and also not the sort for the BNP, from Labour to the LDs (and maybe the Greens for Euros). Could reinforce the decline that has so far been held back a bit by the sense that Labour are the leading party of the left/social liberalism.

[Verily]

Populus and ICM are so strikingly in disagreement that it's hard to know who to believe. The only things they agree on are that Labour is in the toilet, and the Greens are surging for the Euros.

ICM Euro figures are:

Con 29
LD 20
Lab 17
Green 11
UKIP 10
BNP 5

The "third behind the LDs" headline is really tough on Labour, though. It means tactical switchers on the left, the sort who would never vote for the Tories/UKIP and also not the sort for the BNP, from Labour to the LDs (and maybe the Greens for Euros). Could reinforce the decline that has so far been held back a bit by the sense that Labour are the leading party of the left/social liberalism.

ICM tend to 'apportion' Lib Dem votes differently and are often over generous so I agree with you there. For me the real relief is seeing (barring the slip to 39) a Tory 'floor' of 40% which leads me to believe that a Conservative landslide may be in the works. The two 'rules' over on Poltiicalbetting.com is 'Everytime Cameron is on the telly the Tories get a boost' and 'The lowest Labour vote share in any set of polls is most likely to be the correct one.' Whether they will hold true is another matter.

Once again there is talk of ousting Brown if the results next week are severe and there is open hostility towards him on nearly every Labour media source. Any move of that nature would probably force a General Election. To be honest Labour have everything to loose no matter when they call a GE -they may as well go now.

Generally, ICM does the best with the Lib Dem share far away from the election precisely because they ask about local voting intention instead of simply which party you support. This means that they pick up tactical votes for the LDs from both Labour and the Tories in LD marginals as well as popular local MPs holding seats which might otherwise vote Conservative or Labour. Of course, they've shown some very high LD figures in the past, mostly famously the three-way tie at 31% in 2003. But, then again, that was around the crisis time for the IDS-led Tories and at a time when Iraq was very fresh in the minds of everyone, so a high Lib Dem score would have been expected.

I suspect they're quite correct on where the LDs stand right now--but it's very much open to question how well that would hold up if Labour actually ousted Brown and replaced him with Johnson. Probably not well. But will Labour even have the political will to do so? I'm not sure. The timing of the election to the Speakership also makes choosing a new leader very difficult, since an overthrow can't take place before September (Speakership election, then the Parliamentary recess).

[Verily]

I suspect they're quite correct on where the LDs stand right now--but it's very much open to question how well that would hold up if Labour actually ousted Brown and replaced him with Johnson. Probably not well. But will Labour even have the political will to do so? I'm not sure.

People were talking about Brown in early 2007 in the same way they are now talking about Johnson. I personally find Alan Johnson very annoying...that aside however, it's the Labour Party that is damaged. All Johnson may be able to do is save Labour from falling below 30% at a GE. Still leaves room for a Tory victory.

Of course. Johnson would not mean Labour wins the election--at least, I think that very unlikely. But he would save Labour from a true humiliation, maybe to a defeat only on the scale of 1979 rather than 1983 or worse.

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Certainly true, and I agree. But I think the Lib Dems have learned that lesson, especially given the reluctance to support Labour in Wales after the 2007 election (eventually forcing Plaid into that unhappy position).

[Verily]

Of course, the poll is junk anyway because the minor parties would never actually get a result that strong. Maybe 1% for UKIP and 2% for the BNP and Greens are the peaks in the GE--and that's pretty generous to the latter two given that they'll only run in maybe 100-200 seats. (UKIP won't manage to run more than 50 or so candidates next time I would expect, and even if they do much of their 2005 vote will revert to the Conservatives.)

ICM may be giving low "Others" figures compared to everyone else, but theirs are the only ones that are reasonable for a GE. Again, because they ask for local voting intention; everyone else is getting a lot of "This is who I'm voting for at Euros", which is totally unhelpful.

(Note that this isn't an endorsement of the ICM figures otherwise, just the low Others number. 13% is about the peak of what the combined Nats-BNP-Greens-UKIP-NI parties-etc. can hope to get at the next election.)

[Verily]

MORI comes up with:

Con: 40 (-1)
Lab: 18 (-10) !!!
LD: 18 (+4)

MORI has a very strict certainty-to-vote filter that is probably skewing things a bit, but wow...

[Verily]

The ComRes poll is... interesting. Don't what to say about it other than that ComRes is trash. As politicalbetting.com has pointed out, their past vote weightings are all skewed, but even applying the ICM weightings instead just turns it into Con 33, LD 20, Lab 19, which, while not bad for the Lab and LD figures is obviously off for the Con figure--although scaling the Other vote down to 13% or so would make it not far off from the ICM figures, maybe to Con 38, LD 24, Lab 22, or along those lines.

Anyway, ComRes:

Con: 30 (-10)
Lab: 22 (+)
LD: 18 (nc)

[Verily]

YouGov has a new pair of polls for Euros and a GE.

GE:

Con: 37 (-2)
Lab: 21 (-1)
LD: 19 (+1)

Again, Others are ridiculously high; UKIP is at an absurd 8%, and the Greens aren't much better at 5%. 4% Nats is not totally unrealistic, but 4% for the BNP is. Stupid Euros, skewing the GE polls. Anyway, Euros...

Euros:

Con: 26 (-1)
UKIP: 18 (+2)
Lab: 16 (-1)
LD: 15 (nc)
Green: 10 (+1)
BNP: 5 (-2)

[Verily]

Can Yankees watch BBC live for tomorrow on their website? (no the iPlayer does not work for us)

justin.tv

I see... will I search for "BBC" or what?

Remember, Euros will be covered on Sunday when the counting takes place.

And most county councils will not be announcing results until Friday. Only three, IIRC, will release results tomorrow night.

[Verily]

Well, I asked a Briton about it on another forum (back in April), and he said that the reason for Labour overrepresentation was the population decline in Labour-dominated areas since the last census, and that they should be expected to lose ground after 2011.

Marginally, maybe. Institutionally the map favors Labour, but this is because the map is drawn based on population, not voters, and voters in really Labour areas are almost universally less likely to turn out than voters in Conservative areas (really Conservative seats can get as high as close to 80% turnout while really Labour seats can go as low as 50% turnout).

[Verily]

Well, I asked a Briton about it on another forum (back in April), and he said that the reason for Labour overrepresentation was the population decline in Labour-dominated areas since the last census, and that they should be expected to lose ground after 2011.

Marginally, maybe. Institutionally the map favors Labour, but this is because the map is drawn based on population, not voters, and voters in really Labour areas are almost universally less likely to turn out than voters in Conservative areas (really Conservative seats can get as high as close to 80% turnout while really Labour seats can go as low as 50% turnout).

I suppose, but that's true in the US, too, and representation here generally tracks the two-party vote fairly closely, or even favors the Republicans.  I guess it must be because Labour still has a fairly strong rural presence (and the Conservatives a fairly strong urban presence) compared to the Democrats and Republicans over here.

Not true at all. Labour is weaker in the countryside than the Democrats are, and the Conservatives are stronger (much stronger, in some cases) in cities than the Republicans are.

Nor are the differences in turnout nearly so stark in the US. Sure, there are couple of extremes--but bear in mind that the areas with the best turnout are the swing-to-Dem states in the Upper Midwest as well as generally Democratic Upper New England (although uber-Republican Mormonland [Utah and SE Idaho] also has very good turnout).

And the Democrats do well in a lot of wealthy urban areas with very high turnouts, like the white urban seats in NYC, Chicagoland, LA and the Bay Area. All of those places would be Conservative in the UK (a few might be LD, and SF might be Labour, but the point is generally true), yet the Republicans have little to no presence there.

Basically, your core assumptions on this issue are all wrong.