BNP at 7% in shock poll

[afleitch]

You Gov - Lab 35, Con 33, Lib 17, Other 15

BNP on 7% percent, up from 0.4% in last poll

More soon.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Aren't YouGov polls notoriously awful? I think I heard Al say something along those lines....

[afleitch]

Aren't YouGov polls notoriously awful? I think I heard Al say something along those lines....

I actually like them. They do tend to be spot on, though the methodology is questionable.

[DanielX]

many European countries are going to see the rise of two different kinds of parties:

1. Ones that actively court the Muslim vote (or at least the immigrant vote).
2. Ones that actively court the 'hang dem strangerz' vote.

Quite frankly, I have distaste for both. The BNP falls in the latter category, RESPECT the former.

[Platypus]

We've already had our version, One Nation, whcih giot into the double figures for a while before being wiped out. Of course, part of the reason they were wiped out is that the Liberals and Nationals adopted a large part of their platform...

The BNP won't be a permanent fixture, although it could continue to rise, perhaps even double it's current figures. Realising the popularty of the BNP's stances, one of the major parties will adopt some of the less tasteless parts of it's platform and swallow them up. The thing with the UK is I have no idea which party that would be.

[Ben.]

YouGov have a very good track record, however 7%! for the BNP is surprising to say the least.

I think 7% could be an exageration, after all UKIP was overestimated in '04 by YouGov.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

You Gov - Lab 35, Con 33, Lib 17, Other 15

BNP on 7% percent, up from 0.4% in last poll

More soon.

Two things to bear in mind; 1. margin of error, 2. intensive media coverage over the past week or so. They've actually had a lot more than any of the major parties, and for no good reason. And it's been unusually favourable.
They seem to have taken most from the Tories, which is no suprise. They've been trying to do that for months.

YouGov have a very good track record,

Yes, and no. They have a good track record as far as major parties go, but a tendency to overestimate minor parties.

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You've seen the media coverage this past week. It isn't really very suprising. 7% with MoE isn't actually a lot o/c. Not compared to what the far right is more than capable of polling in most other European countries.

Personally I hope the media don't report this poll much or in the scaremongeringly stupid way they reported the Rowntree survey. Don't feed the trolls as they say...

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Exactly. And that too came after a lot of suprisingly favourable media coverage.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I don't usually read politicalbetting.com, but I decided to do so on this to see if anyone hath any extra stuff on it... they don't, but there was a very interesting comment:

Probably the best read on the contours of BNP support comes from the 2004 elections where the results were published nationwide. I think there’s some fallacious reasoning going on in some of the posts above. Even if one accepts that the BNP vote is substantially ex-Labour (which is a dubious proposition), it is not necessarily a loss to Labour in a given election. If people are ex-Labour and tempted to support the BNP, they are probably so disaffected that if they didn’t vote BNP they would abstain or vote for another anti-Labour party.

The poster who wrote that is Lewis Baston, btw.

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EDIT: the BNP polled 4.9% in the 2004 Euro elections. Statistically speaking, that's the same as in this poll.