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Much scratching of heads tonight among some hacks confused by the latest Populus poll in The Times showing “the Tory poll lead shrinking fast”. Here’s Sky News’s Jon Craig:
Voting intentions, according to Populus, are now Conservatives 37 per cent (down three), Labour 34 (up three) and the Liberal Democrats 19 (up two, despite last week's Lisbon Treaty vote shambles). That's right, the same Populus poll on February 3 was Conservatives 40, Labour 31 and Lib Dems 17, a very different story. That was one of the bigger Tory leads in opinion polls this year.
Except it’s not necessarily “a very different story”. As any fule kno – or at least as any foolish hack should know – opinion polls are accurate only to within a margin of error, commonly +/-3%. Which means that it’s perfectly possible, and certainly statistically possible, there has been no change whatsoever in voting intentions in the last month.
But let’s allow for the possibility that there has been a significant change within the month... to what does Mr Craig ascribe this tightening of the political maths?
[Gordon Brown] has hired new staff in No 10 to beef up the Downing Street operation, he is performing better against David Cameron in Prime Minister's Questions and he appeared more relaxed when he spoke at Labour's spring conference in Birmingham 10 days ago.
Gordon’s backroom reshuffle, moderately better PMQs, and a conference speech. Apparently, according to Sky News, that’s what it takes to shrink a Tory poll lead. It says much (too much) about the claustrophobically introverted microcosm that political journos inhabit that any of these might seriously be put forward as reasons for the Tory downturn.
Two quick questions, prompted by a couple of the results from Ipsos-Mori’s latest survey of political opinion, published yesterday:- Which of the three main party leaders has the lowest overall satisfaction rating with the general public?
- Which of the three main party leaders has the lowest overall satisfaction rating among his own party’s supporters?
If you read the Telegraph (and indeed some of the comments on Lib Dem Voice) you’d assume the answer to be the Lib Dem leader, Ming Campbell.You would be wrong. The answer is Tory leader David Cameron.Here comes the science: The question was the same for each leader: Are you satisfied or dissatisfied with the way Brown/Cameron/Campbell is doing his job as leader of the Labour/Conservative/Liberal Democrat Party?Among all voters:- Gordon Brown: 43% satisfied, 23% dissatisfied; 34% don’t know = Overall +20%
- David Cameron: 29% satisfied; 39% dissatisfied; 32% don’t know = Overall -10%
- Menzies Campbell: 23% satisfied; 32% dissatisfied; 46% don’t know = Overall -9%
Among party supporters*:- Gordon Brown: 63% satisfied; 7% dissatisfied; 29% don’t know = Overall +56%
- David Cameron: 52% satisfied; 32% dissatisfied; 15% don’t know = Overall +20%
- Menzies Campbell: 53% satisfied; 24% dissatisfied; 23% don’t know = Overall +29%
(* This comes with an even larger health warning than most opinion polls should more prominently carry, as the sample sizes were pretty small.)None of this means that we as Lib Dems, or indeed Ming Campbell himself, should be complacently happy with this state of affairs. Overall Ming has a negative satisfaction rating among the public, which cannot be a good thing. Yet the poll’s finding that almost half the electorate has yet to make up its mind about his leadership suggesting the ball remains in his court - he has time to convince the public he’s got what it takes. And the vast majority of party supporters - 53% - appear to want him to have that chance. That, combined with the mandate he secured in a democratic leadership contest just 18 months ago, should mean an end to the public backbiting that achieves nothing except to undermine party activists’ hard work.The really bad news is for the Tories and Mr Cameron. It is clear that despite the metropolitan media’s love affair with David Cameron, the wider public is much more sceptical. Mr Cameron is not the talismanic, moonshine-touched vote-winner the Tory party thought it was voting for - and that is beginning to feed through into high levels of dissatisfaction among Tory voters.
For the last few months, no opinion poll of voting intentions worthy of the name has been complete without the inevitable tagged-on question, ‘And how would you vote if Gordon Brown were Labour leader?’ To which the answer of Labour-inclined voters has invariably been: less likely than if Tony Blair were still Labour leader. Anthony Wells, at the indispensable Polling Report website, has recorded the figures of the pollsters’ beloved anticipatory question. None of the 26 polls conducted since David Cameron became Tory leader have projected a Labour lead on the presumption that Mr Brown succeeds Mr Blair. The average Tory lead in the nine polls conducted in 2007 would suggest Mr Cameron should be some 10.5% ahead the moment Mr Brown formally moves into No. 10. This has led to all sorts of silly speculation in the media that Mr Brown is a vote loser for Labour. And it has sparked an amusingly unmerited degree of triumphalism among Tories, who somehow imagine they will cruise to a general election victory merely by virtue of having elected a leader who manages, in contrast to most of his colleagues, to look and sound relatively normal.Yesterday’s opinion poll in The Observer, showing a 3% Labour lead just as Mr Brown accedes to the premiership, has poured a bucket of cold water over the heads of those who, rather foolishly, had taken too much to heart the pollsters’ misleading findings. As opinion pollsters will be the first to point out, their findings present only a snapshot of public opinion. Moreover, the question they ask to solicit the public’s views is a hypothetical one: how would you vote if there were a general election tomorrow.
Those who are asked the question (1) know there isn’t actually a general election tomorrow; and (2) have not been subjected to a month-long election campaign which will, in many cases, alter their voting intentions before they finally cast the only ballot that actually counts. This inevitably distorts the findings in quite unquantifiable ways. To add, as the newspapers who commission the polls insist the pollsters do, an extra layer of hypothesis - how do you believe you will vote in an imaginary general election when a man who is not yet Prime Minister becomes Prime Minister - is a step too far.
The public which answers this question knows full well that what they are really being asked is: what do you think of Gordon Brown? And those who are sceptical about him will take the pain-free opportunity to voice their objections in their answer. This, too, distorts the findings in quite unquantifiable ways.Finally, you must factor in the statistical fact that opinions polls can only predict with 95% probability to within a margin of error of +/-3% the headline figures which the newspapers will brandish on their front pages with cast-iron certainty. So the Observer poll which I’ve used as evidence in this article may just as well point to a Tory lead of 3% as it does a Labour lead of 3%. Or it could be one of the 5% of opinion polls which is complete bollocks outside the margin of error. You pays your money, you takes your choice...Like many observers of the British political scene, I expect Mr Brown to enjoy a poll bounce over the summer, and that Labour will continue to be tied with, or build a small lead over, the Tories. How long this lasts will, rightly, depend on the success or failure of Mr Brown’s government. In part, this will be because Labour has, contrary to all the pundits’ predictions (including my own), accomplished a bloodless transfer of power. It will also be because the media, believing their own rogue polls, and the Tories, believing their own anti-Brown propaganda, have so far lowered expectations of our PM-to-be that he cannot help but clear the low hurdles he has been set. Indeed, so successful has this ‘dampening down’ strategy been, it’s almost tempting to believe that Mr Brown, a man of native political cunning, may secretly have commissioned some of those polls himself.
It’s a sunny day, and I’m nicely rested after a few days’ holiday - so let’s celebrate some positive stories.
First up - Ming Campbell’s challenge to Prime Minister-select Gordon Brown to a televised debate was a cute way of (i) giving the Lib Dems a fresh angle on a stale story at a time when our bipolar media traditionally eschews giving the party any air-time; and (ii) highlighting just how little we know (or expect) of the Labour Party’s newly-minted leader’s views across the whole gamut of national and international issues he will be leading this country on.It was also a real advance on Ming’s previous attempt to grab a headline, when he rather lamentably called for a snap general election, having apparently confused the UK’s parliamentary system with a presidential system - as noted by Lib Dem blogger Jonny Wright here.
Secondly, it’s good to see the Lib Dems taking a lead in the campaign to stop the Labour/Tory alliance in the House of Commons from watering down Freedom of Information legislation, with a new petition today launched to defend the public’s right to know what our Parliamentarians are up to. James Oates’s Cicero’s Songs blog has the full roll-call of dishonour of those 96 Labour and Tory MPs who are happy to create one law for our legislators and another for the rest of us.
This rather squalid episode has cast a revealing light on the mindsets of those MPs who clearly feel they have something to hide, and that their affairs exist on a higher plane than everyone else’s. It’s times like this we can, and should, feel proud to be members of our party, the only one which truly understands how destructive sectional interests - whether of class, wealth, ethnicity or nationality - are to society.
Finally, last week saw a bit of negative publicity among some sections of the media about Ming Campbell’s leadership of the Lib Dems. Clearly now Gordon Brown has been acclaimed leader by his own party, the media is anxious to have another personality-fuelled tussle to fixate on - anything to avoid actually having to report the dull daily grind of politics. Sorry, but it bores me: it’s Heat-style journalism for Guardian readers.
But I did see some poll figures which did intrigue me. They were by Communicate Research for Newsnight - and clearly they did not fit the programme’s agenda at the time, or else were too complicated for them to feel able to report.
What they show is that the Lib Dems have become a much more credible political force in the eyes of the public since 2002 in virtually every regard. In particular, it is fascinating to see the Lib Dems are apparently the party most people see as being trustworthy on immigration. Which suggests there is a liberal vote out there into which the Lib Dems need to tap more loudly than we have in the past. It’s only fair to note that the party’s rises are paralleled by the Tories’ recovery - but forgive me for sticking to the good news for the Lib Dems on this blog.
What is also interesting is that the Labour Party’s figures, while dipping, have not collapsed. This appears to back up what has been found in the last few years’ local elections - each time a rout has been predicted for Labour, each time they have (just about) avoided imploding. Their support has proved - in the circumstances - to be pretty resilient.
So, there you have it - a dose of optimism for a Tuesday afternoon.
Exactly a month ago, I made my prediction for the projected national share of the vote for today’s set of Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly and local council elections based on ICM's polling data:Con 42%, Lab 25%, Lib Dem 25%, Others 8%.
(This would equate to a 6% swing from Labour to the Tories and a 4.5% swing from the Lib Dems to the Tories.)
I have no reason to resile from this guesstimate… at least not yet. How this plays out in terms of seats won and lost is outwith my psephological capacity. A couple of weeks ago, Sean Fear, a Tory activist who writes pretty impartial analyses of local election results for PoliticalBetting.com, estimated the following:I believe the Conservatives will gain around 750 seats, net, the Liberal Democrats will be broadly unchanged, and Labour will lose around 850 seats. The difference will be made up by gains for minor parties, principally the Greens and BNP.
These seem, to me, to be credible figures. However, three points need to be borne in mind:1. Much depends on the distribution of the seats won. The Tories do not want to be piling up more Council seats in places where they already have MPs to the exclusion of making significant inroads in areas with key marginal seats. Election guru John Curtice identifies Ipswich, Gravesham and Bury as bellweather councils for the Tories in today’s Indy. Equally, the Lib Dems may be rather more sanguine about losses to the Tories in the south of England (except in those area where there is an incumbent Lib Dem MP) if they are partially or wholly compensated by gains from Labour in the north, bringing more target Parliamentary seats into realistic focus. This will matter rather more than the precise number of net gains or losses.2. Looking at any one night’s local election results only ever gives a snapshot. I prefer trends. And there are trends-a-plenty to be garnered from this rather wonderful research paper, Local Elections 2006, published by the House of Commons Library. The Tories currently have c.8,500 councillors, 39% of the total number. For David Cameron to draw level with Margaret Thatcher at this equivalent stage in the cycle - 43% of all councillors were Tory in 1976 - he will need to add 900 councillors to his party’s tally tonight. At this stage in the electoral cycle, in 1994, Margaret Beckett was Labour’s leader, and Labour held 38% of all council seats. By the following year, 1995, with Tony Blair in charge, 46% of councillors were affiliated to Labour. Therefore, Mr Cameron will need to help get elected over 1,500 councillors to draw level with where Mr Blair found himself after a year as leader. This illustrates the scale of Mr Cameron’s task, and indicates why 750 net gains today is a minimum requirement to demonstrate a Tory recovery.Another trend that’s clear is the stability, and gentle increase, of the Lib Dems’ councillor base. Here are the figures for councillors’ party affiliations in the past five years:2002 - 32% (Con) 37% (Lab) 20% (Lib) 11% (Other)2003 - 35% (Con) 33% (Lab) 21% (Lib) 12% (Other)2004 - 37% (Con) 30% (Lab) 21% (Lib) 12% (Other)2005 - 37% (Con) 29% (Lab) 22% (Lib) 12% (Other)2006 - 39% (Con) 28% (Lab) 22% (Lib) 12% (Other)It is interesting to note that, though there’s a perception the Lib Dems have been on a slight downward curve since the dizzy heights of the 2003 post-Iraq War 'bounce', the reverse is in fact true. However much Tory and Labour activists might wish to believe otherwise, the Lib Dems are continuing to grow - which makes it even harder for either of them to win a majority at the next general election.3. Finally - these are local elections. Results will vary: each party will have something to cheer by the end of the night, each will have something they’d prefer to forget. Though many of the public will vote according to their perception of national politics, a large proportion will be voting to show displeasure with their local council on a range of parochial issues. Incumbents everywhere are more prone to a kicking which could buck national trends, and will signify absolutely nothing about whether Mr Brown or Mr Cameron will be living in Number 10 after the next election. That doesn’t, pace Daniel Finkelstein, mean we should ignore today’s results - demoralised local parties do not make for enthusiastic foot soldiers, and all parties rely on the sheer slog that their volunteers are prepared to undertake during general elections. But it does mean we should be cautious in our interpretation of the welter of data which will be presented by all sides in the next 24 hours.
About this time last year, I wrote an article for PoliticalBetting.com, attempting to predict the parties’ shares of the votes based on their ICM opinion poll ratings. And, if I say so myself, I didn’t do too badly. I guesstimated Con 39%, Lab 25%, Lib Dem 29% - but noted in the comments thread that followed: “my instincts are that Lab and Lib Dems will be slightly closer together than my extrapolated figures”. And so it proved. The BBC’s projected share of the national vote was: Con 40%, Lab 26%, Lib Dem 27%. Respected psephologists Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher projected: Con 39%, Lab 26%, Lib Dems 25%. So I’ve updated my workings from last year to see if it points towards this year’s result...The figures below show the projected national share of the parties’ votes in that year’s local elections compared with the ICM poll rating (in brackets) immediately prior to those elections:1998: Con 33% (31%), Lab 37% (48%), Lib Dem 25% (16%)1999: Con 34% (28%), Lab 36% (50%), Lib Dem 25% (17%)2000: Con 38% (32%), Lab 30% (45%), Lib Dem 26% (15%)2002: Con 34% (29%), Lab 33% (45%), Lib Dem 25% (18%)2003: Con 35% (30%), Lab 30% (42%), Lib Dem 27% (21%)2004: Con 38% (33%), Lab 26% (38%), Lib Dem 29% (22%)2006: Con 39% (34%), Lab 26% (32%), Lib Dem 25% (24%)The Tories have added between 2-6% to their ICM national rating in recent local elections; Labour have dropped 6-15%; and the Lib Dems have increased 1-11%.If this pattern were to repeat itself in 2007 – using the most recent ICM poll (19th March), with the Tories on 41%, Labour 31% and the Lib Dems 18%, as our bench-mark – we might extrapolate the following shares of the vote this May: Con 45%, Lab 21%, Lib Dem 24%.Hmmm, well I don’t know about you, but I’ve not convinced me. Despite Tony Blair’s best efforts in the last six months to destroy the party he helped re-build by clinging onto power far beyond his political utility, I cannot see Labour’s vote dipping to 21% this year.
Nor can I see the Tories scaling the dizzy heights of 45% - which would exceed what Tony Blair managed in 1996 - though I may, of course, be proved wrong. My wet-finger-in-the-air projection gives: Con 42%, Lab 25%, Lib Dem 25%Seems plausible to me. We’ll see. Incidentally, the final half of my original article stands the test of time (I think) - and even bears repetition: ***The stubborn refusal of the third party to lie down and quietly die points to a wider trend: what has been termed the de-alignment of British politics.If we look at the combined, average general election vote shares of the two big beasts of post-1945 politics, the Tories and Labour, and compare them with the combined, average vote shares of the Lib Dems and other parties for each of the last five decades, the fragmentation of voter loyalties is clear:1950s: Con/Lab 92%, Lib Dem/Other 8%1960s: Con/Lab 89%, Lib Dem/Other 11%1970s: Con/Lab 80%, Lib Dem/Other 20%1980s: Con/Lab 72%, Lib Dem/Other 28%1990s: Con/Lab 75%, Lib Dem/Other 25%2000s: Con/Lab 70%, Lib Dem/Other 30%Voters no longer identify tribally with one political party based on their self-perception of class or religious interest (or their parents’ views). In 1964, according to the British Election Study, 48% of Tory voters identified strongly with their chosen party, compared with 51% for Labour. By 2001, the figures were 14% and 16% respectively.As voter turn-out has declined, transforming the electorate into a selectorate, the remorseless march of the de-alignment process has continued apace. The cosy Tory/Labour duopoly is coming to an end.And, however much Messrs Brown and Cameron might prefer to ignore such a reality, this is the new politics with which all parties are going to have to deal.***
Two headlines from today's papers:
Of course opinion polls matter. But let’s recognize there’s as much art as science involved.
I’m a self-confessed opinion poll-geek, as regular readers may have garnered. But I have had my fill of ‘what if’ polls making psephologically spurious claims to predict what might happen if/when Gordon Brown faces up to David Cameron and Ming Campbell.The latest (I’m sure you’ve seen) dominates today’s Grauniad front page - the headline screams, Brown v Cameron - exclusive poll puts Labour 13 points adrift. The question which prompts this hyperbole asks how the public might vote if Mr Brown led Labour, the Tories are led by Mr Cameron, and Sir Menzies leads the Lib Dems. Astute readers will have noticed a small flaw: one of these people currently does not lead his party. What ICM are in fact asking is: how well do you think Gordon Brown might do a job he’s not currently doing? To read anything into the answer, other than that the Chancellor currently suffers a PR deficit, is plain silly. Opinion pollsters often defend their claim to represent a science by pointing out (quite rightly) that all they can do is take a snapshot of public opinion; that they can’t predict the future. But they do their art no good by asking questions which seek to anticipate the future. Especially when they know such polling will be spun by newspapers with their own agenda.
Today’s Grauniad editorial, ‘Liberal Democrats: In search of adventure’, is a critical but generally fair analysis of the party after its annus horribilis, noting that:- Poll ratings are dipping from low 20s to high teens;
- Ming has not found yet a defining issue to make his own, as Paddy Ashdown did with Bosnia or Charles Kennedy did with Iraq;
- The party is not yet daring to be radical enough on key issues, such as Afghanistan or Trident; and
- The next year will be critical to Ming’s standing as leader.
Some of this is merely the ephemera of here-today-bored-tomorrow journalism. Until Tony Blair finally resigns, and Gordon Brown’s had six months as Prime Minister, it is silly trying to read anything much into opinion polls showing movements within the margin of error. Speculation is fun; but it is no more than speculation (and often not much fun). What we can confidently assert is that the ‘Cameron effect’ is nowhere near as potent as the ‘Blair effect’ was in the mid-1990s.
In the year before Tony Blair became Labour leader (August 1994), the Lib Dems’ average ICM poll rating was 25%. In the year after, it was 17%, a drop of 8%. Perhaps fortunately for Paddy Ashdown, polling was still under a dark cloud following the debacle of the 1992 general election, and the 365x24x7 rolling news agenda was not as hyper-intense as it is today. In the year before Mr Cameron became Tory leader (December 2005), the Lib Dems averaged an ICM rating of 21%. In the year since, the party has also averaged 21%.
That does not mean the Lib Dems should confidently dismiss Mr Cameron, or complacently assume he will implode. But, equally, the media might attempt to add just a little context and perspective before writing up any one poll as a triumph for the Tory leader or a disaster for the Lib Dems. It’s certainly the case that Ming did not get off to a flying start as leader. A couple of early faltering performances in the House of Commons, and local election results which fell short of expectations (even if those expectations were perhaps too high) allowed an easy caricature to take root of a decent man who is now past it.
That’s unfortunate and, in many ways, unfair. But such is politics. The real test of Ming’s leadership will be for him to overcome that perception, for the party’s sake as well as his own.And though the Grauniad identifies two issues on which the Lib Dems should stake out some distinctive ground - Trident and Afghanistan - the editorial is notably vague in offering policy prescriptions. Which is fair enough: there aren’t easy answers to either. And it smacks a little of sophistry for the Lib Dems to be accused by the Grauniad of political opportunism, and then to urge the party to determine our policies according to the level of “public disquiet” felt about Mr Blair’s defence and foreign policies.
This is rather typical of the Grauniad’s wish to see the Lib Dems act as its (and Labour’s) political conscience - but never, of course, to support the party because we “lack credibility”. A case of having your Christmas cake, and eating it.
One year into the job: how’s David Cameron doing? Though there’s much I could say, I’m clearly not the most impartial observer. So I thought I’d let some figures do the talking instead.
The graph below illustrates how Mr Cameron and Mr Blair compare after their first year as leader of the opposition, against their parties’ previous general election results.
Mr Blair took over in July 1994, just over two years after Neil Kinnock’s defeat at the hands of John Major in April 1992.
In the 12 months that followed, Labour’s ICM poll rating averaged 49%, up 14% compared to their general election performance.
Mr Cameron took over in December 2005, six months after Michael Howard’s defeat at the hands of Tony Blair the previous May.
Over the last 12 months, the Tories’ ICM poll rating has averaged 37%, up 4% compared to their general election performance.You can draw your own conclusions. I infer just one: Mr Cameron, you are no Tony Blair.
- According to Mori in the Financial Times (22nd Oct), the Tories trail Labour by 2% - 35% to 37%.
- According to Communicate Research in The Independent (24th Oct), the Tories lead Labour by 6% - 38% to 32% - with the Lib Dems plummeting to 14%.
- According to ICM in thegrauniad (25th Oct), the Tories lead Labour by 10% - 39% to 29% - with the Lib Dems increasing to 22%.
From this we can conclude, within the +/-3% margins of error, that:- The Tories are either more popular than Labour or less popular than Labour, scoring somewhere between 32% and 42%.
- Labour are either more popular than the Tories or less popular than the Tories, scoring somewhere between 26% and 40%.
- The Lib Dems are either losing support or gaining support, scoring somewhere between 11% and 25%.
So that’s all clear then. Question: why do reputable news media outlets and The Independent devote so much space to discussing individual polls which, when viewed in isolation, are about as reliable as a Tony Blair answer at Prime Minister’s Questions?
