A new YouGov poll for the Sun tomorrow has topline figures, with changes from their last poll, of CON 49%(+5), LAB 23%(-3), LDEM 17%(nc). This is the first poll conducted wholly after both the local election results and Boris Johnson’s victory in London, though Populus’s poll was partially conducted after the mayoral results.
The 26 point lead is obviously in a different league to every poll that’s gone before, on a uniform swing it would produce a Conservative majority of 272 (though obviously, in the vastly unlikely event that such a lead occured at a general election all bets would be off and who knows what freakish result would actually occur). It’s the sort of lead that ICM - the only pollster whose figures from back in 1992-1997 are comparable to their figures today - was recording for the Labour party when the Conservative party was flat on the canvas back in 1995.
As ever, we need to be cautious about any poll that shows large shifts of support. This one is explicable - big election victories like the local elections last week often have a halo effect, the winner suddenly has the aura of victory about them, the loser the scent of defeat. Another good example are the polls from straight after the Lib Dem victory in the Brent East by-election back in 2003, when the aura of success about them briefly saw them leap to joint first place in the polls on 31%.
They soon fell back, and if that’s what’s going on here the Tories will fall back too; I personally find it hard to believe they’ll stay at quite this level anyway. Alternatively, the local election defeat may have been the trigger for a real change in public attitudes towards Labour, confirming an image of them as past it and ready to be kicked out.
A third possibility of course, is that this is just a freak result. Remember Populus’s poll earlier this week showed no such similar jump in the Tory lead. YouGov normally show the largest leads, so I doubt other companies will match the scale of this lead, but we’ll have to see if they show the same trend towards even larger Conservative leads.
UPDATE: The Sun says this is the lowest Labour have ever sunk in the polls since records began. Is it? As far as I tell it equals their lowest rating ever. There was also a Gallup poll in December 1981 that put them on 23%.
UPDATE 2: Seems it’s even lower than December 1981. Apparently that Gallup poll actually had Labour on 23.5%, so this really is the lowest since records began.
Populus’s monthly poll in the Times, with changes from their last poll (conducted for the Daily Mirror in the middle of last month), has voting intentions of CON 40%(nc), LAB 29%(-1), LDEM 19%(nc). The poll was conducted between the 2nd and 4th May (Friday to Sunday).
This is the first poll since the local elections and the mayoral election and is practically unchanged since Populus’s last poll, suggesting no obvious aura effect from the Conservative victory. That does not, of course, change the fact that the poll is awful for Labour. The Populus poll a fortnight ago was already Populus’s worst ever poll for Labour, and this is a point worse.
The rest of the poll has similarly awful news for the government. The Times concentrates on 55% of Labour voters agreeing that the party would do better if Brown made way for a “younger, fresher, more charismatic alternative” which seems to me a somewhat pointless question: would the party do better with a better leader? Well - er, yes, almost by definition they would.
Other findings are just as bad though - Gordon Brown’s average rating out of 10 has dropped to a frankly embarrassing 4.08, which as far as I can tell is the lowest any leader has ever recorded in the period Populus have asked this question - worse than IDS’s or Ming Campbell’s lowest scores. David Cameron’s meanwhile is up at 5.36, the highest Populus have ever recorded for a Tory leader. On the economy 40% now trust Cameron and Osborne most to deal with economic problems compared to 30% for Brown and Darling.
During the last week or so of the London mayoral election campaign when my attention was elsewhere there were also a couple of Scottish opinion polls, so here’s a catch up:
Westminster election
TNS System Three - CON 17%, LAB 39%, LDEM 10%, SNP 31%
YouGov - CON 17%, LAB 34%, LDEM 14%, SNP 30%
Scottish Parliament
Constituency vote
TNS System Three - CON 12%, LAB 31%, LDEM 11%, SNP 45%
YouGov - CON 13%, LAB 31%, LDEM 15%, SNP 36%
Scottish Opinion - CON 13%, LAB 33%, LDEM 10%, SNP 40%
Regional Vote
TNS System Three - CON 12%, LAB 29%, LDEM 12%, SNP 41%
YouGov - CON 13%, LAB 28%, LDEM 13%, SNP 37%
The YouGov poll has a range of other questions apart from voting intention. As one might expect given the high polling ratings for the SNP, there were positive ratings for the Scottish administration (net approval of plus 25) and Alex Salmond as first minister (net satisfaction of plus 20). In contrast Wendy Alexander had a net score for doing a good job of minus 39. The other two party leaders, Annabel Goldie and Nicol Stephen both had notably high don’t know ratings (39% and 45% respectively), suggesting people are largely unaware of what they are doing. Of those who did express and opinion, Goldie’s ratings were far better than Stephen’s (plus 21, as opposed to minus 1).
The Cameron effect doesn’t seem to be penetrating north of the border. 13% of respondents said they were more likely to vote Conservative with David Cameron as leader…but 14% said they were less likely. Questions like this aren’t perfect, since people may become more positive or negative towards a party because of the actions of the leader or the way he has changed the party, without ascribing the change directly to the leader himself - but the Westminister voting intention figures in the polls back up the finding, showing no significant increase in Tory support in Scotland since the last general election.
YouGov also asked where the blame lay in recent disagreements between Holyrood and Westminster. Respondents were pretty evenly split between thinking the arguments were being deliberated created by Alex Salmond to show London in a bad light and how Scotland would be better off independent (38%) and between blaming the Westminster government for being insensitive to Scotland’s needs (35%). The split was identical when respondents were asked if London was bullying the Scottish exective - 35% agreed, 38% disagreed.
On YouGov’s normal tracker question on how people would vote in a referendum on Scottish independence 59% said they would support the status quo, with 25% saying they would vote for independence. As we’ve discussed here before, different ways of asking this question show markedly different results, and YouGov’s question which specifies that voting no still retains the Scottish Parliament normally results in less support for independence, but compared to previous YouGov/Telegraph polls using the same wording, the balance of opinion is moving away from independence.
Fun over, here’s the sensible grown-up look at how the final polls in the London race compared to the result. The final result and the final polls from each of the three pollsters who carried out regular polling in the race (ICM’s single poll was very early in the campaign) are below:
| CON | LAB | LD | |||
| Final Result | 1st May | 43 | 37 | 10 | |
| YouGov | 30th Apr | 43 | 36 | 13 | |
| Ipsos MORI | 24th Apr | 38 | 41 | 12 | |
| mruk | c. 24th Apr | 43 | 44 | 9 |
The accuracy of the polls was thrown into unusual prominence for a couple of reasons - firstly because, rather than the usual politican’s response to unfortunate polls (”I never look at polls” or “the only poll that counts is on polling day”), Ken Livingstone spent much of the campaign viciously attacking YouGov’s methodology, criticism that was picked up in some of the papers and which has resulted in a narrative in some quarters of the race not just being Johnson vs Livingstone, but also being YouGov vs MORI.
A second reason was the closeness of the race. In 1997 and 2001 some pollsters actually performed very poorly, but it didn’t receive much coverage because they all got the right winner. If the polls predict a comfy Labour win, and Labour do indeed win comfortably, no one is too fussed that the polls showed their lead to be rather comfyier than it actually was. Here we had one pollster showing Johnson comfortably ahead, while rival pollsters showed Livingstone very marginally ahead. When pollsters show different winners the difference suddenly becomes very apparent.
The result, of course, is that YouGov’s final poll was almost spot on with Johnson and Livingstone’s shares of the vote, though they overestimated the level of support for Brian Paddick and slightly underestimated the level of support for “others”. The reaction will be that YouGov have been vindicated.
Rather less positive will probably be the reaction to Ipsos MORI, who have been painted into the role of YouGov’s opponent. Their final poll was outside the margin of error for Livingstone and Johnson, but in fairness was conducted over a week before polling day. It is possible that there was a swing towards Boris Johnson in that final week and that MORI were not wrong at all - a poll is but a snapshot in time and there can be no guarantee that people won’t change their mind before they actually cast a vote. That is one possible explanation, but of course, it’s also possible that there are other reasons, dealing with turnout, a sample that is too Labour, a shy-Boris supporter effect or something else entirely.
I expect MORI will also point out that even they didn’t expect turnout as high as it was in their poll and that they published a paper a day or two before the election making predictions about how, with a lower level of turnout they would expect Boris to be marginally ahead. The question will be whether these perfectly good points will be enough to defend their reputation in the court of public (or in this case, commentariat) opinion.
UPDATE: Ben Page of Ipsos MORI has left the comment below: “At Ipsos MORI we will be reviewing our political polling methodology to look at lessons learned and publishing our conclusions and any changes we make in a few months’ time” (more below). In my opinion that’s the best thing to do. There is nothing to be gained from just blaming a result that looks wrong on a late swing, the right thing to do is to look in detail at the figures, try and work out what if anything did go wrong, and see how it can be put right.
I’m off to a wedding this afternoon so I’m not around to see the results of the London mayoral election (I’m going to be an even sadder version of those people who have to keep popping out of wedding receptions to check the football scores, popping out to check election results). It matters not just for the parties and for who runs London, but in this little parochial corner of the internet, for the reputation of the polling companies.
I’m not about, so please use this thread to discuss the results as they come in.
YouGov’s eve-of-poll figures for the London election - the only pollster to produce a true eve-of-poll effort with fieldwork within a few days of actual voting - has topline figures of JOHNSON 43%, LIVINGSTONE 36%, PADDICK 13%. Minor party support is split Green 2%, BNP 2%, UKIP 1%, Alan Craig of the CPA 1% and Lindsey German of the Left List 1%.
After second preference votes have been re-allocated Boris Johnson is projected to win by 53% to 47% for Ken Livingstone. This suggests that the second preference votes have broken in favour of Ken Livingstone.
Several people including Nick Sparrow and Mike Smithson have rightly pointed out that polling figures for how second preferences split aren’t particularly useful to us because of the small sample - if you’ve only got 170 people saying their are voting for Brian Paddick, the margin of error on how they divide between Ken and Boris is huge. Still - if Boris Johnson does have a 7 point lead on first preferences, the second preferences would have to break in favour of Livingstone to an absurdly unrealistic degree for him to overcome it, given the number that are unused or given to minor candidates.
Voting intention in the assembly stands at CON 40%, LAB 33%, LDEM 14%. Others include the Greens on 4%, BNP on 3%, UKIP 2%, Christian Choice 1%, Left List 1%, Respect 1%, Abolish the Congestion Charge 1%. In an earlier YouGov poll the assembly question was asked about only the constituency vote, not the more interesting list vote. I’ve sadly no idea which these were asked about.
Only one day to go till London and the local elections, but let’s have a quick break to discuss Crewe and Nantwich, the by-election for which is to be called on the 22nd May.
On paper Crewe and Nantwich is quite a distant target for the Conservatives. On its existing boundaries it requires a swing of just over 8% for the Conservatives to gain it, that’s the equivalent of a thirteen point lead in the national polls, so around the level some of the pollsters are indeed showing the Tories at in recent polls.
Historically we’ve seen bigger swings in by-elections than one sees at general elections - governments normally do badly in by-elections and pull back when it gets to actual elections. On paper, therefore, this should be a Conservative gain, no problem. In practice there are a couple of hurdles in the way of that.
While the regional breaks in individual polls aren’t reliable enough to tell whether a party is doing better or worse in a particular region, pollsters do occassionally publish aggregated results which give us a firmer picture of how the parties are performing in different regions and they’ve consistently shown the Conservatives performingly most strongly in the South and somewhat less so in the North. The pattern is similar to some degree in local elections - though there is it Yorkshire where the Conservatives are manifestly not performing as well as elsewhere, there are plenty of places in the North-west where they have produced some strong showings. Either way, if the Conservative’s aren’t doing as well in the North as in the South Crewe and Nantwich looks a somewhat harder task. On the other hand, Gwyneth Dunwoody was a particularly respected MP, so past elections probably include a strong personal vote for her which will now be up for grabs.
Secondly there is the strong Conservative track record at being hopeless at by-elections. To some degree that is because they haven’t had many good opportunities, very few by-elections have occured in seats where the Conservatives have a realistic chance of winning, but even in by-elections in their own seats they have shown themselves inept (Bromley and Chislehurst anyone?). In contrast the Liberal Democrat machine is finely honed. In by-elections in government held seats where the electorate wants to give the government a kicking the campaign is often about the parties positioning themselves as the best party to deliver it. Since the Lib Dems have a reputation for pulling off spectacular by-election gains, and the Conservatives - to put it kindly - don’t, this is somewhat easier for the Lib Dems.
In this case the Liberal Democrats are in a distant third place and while the Conservatives look almost certain to keep their existing candidate Ed Timpson, the Lib Dems previously selected candidate has stood down (as I understand is the norm for Lib Dem candidates in seats where a by-election occurs) and - since he lived in Derbyshire giving opponents an open goal to shoot at - I expect they’ll pick someone new to carry the flag. This time the Conservatives do at least have a head start in making sure they are recipients of anti-government votes, but we shouldn’t underestimate the Liberal Democrat’s skill at by-elections and the Conservatives’ weakness.
Who does win this by-election is important. One party or the other will already have their tails up from taking or retaining the London mayoralty. If the Conservatives win it will be a huge boost to them, give them great momentum and will be painted as a groundbreaking achievement after 26 years without a by-election gain. If they lose their opponents will say that it proves they aren’t doing well enough to win a majority at the next election, they aren’t doing well enough outside the south and their support in the polls fades away when people get to the ballot box. This one will undoubtedly be built up as a big test for Cameron, so it he fails it it will dent his momentum.
For Labour, if they hold the London mayoralty and then hold Crewe and Nantwich it will be building into a nice perception of fighting back. If they loose both they are going to really look as though they are on the ropes. Finally for the Lib Dems, unless they chose to build them up themselves there shouldn’t be any expectations for them to live up to - they are in a distant third place and needn’t risk their reputation on this one. The problem is that by-elections are the life blood of the Liberal Democrats, the elixir that gives them publicity, momentum and show that Lib Dems can indeed “win here”. Everyone that they don’t win is a missed opportunity.
UPDATE: The Lib Dems have announced their candidate, she (and other candidates as they turn up) is on the Crewe and Nantwich page here. Another thought, the writ for the by-election was issued on Wednesday and, 15 days afterwards ignoring bank holidays and weekends, polling day on the 22nd May is the earlier day possible to hold it. What this means is practice is that the Conservatives won’t be able to call the Henley by-election on the same day - the soonest it could be done is the following week.
The Electoral Commission have released a study by NOP into how many people in London aren’t actually registered to vote. NOP found 20% of people in London between 18 and 25 weren’t registered and 27% of people between 25 and 34 weren’t. In comparison, only 5% of over 65s and 8% of 55-64s are unregistered.
It looks as though these are mostly likely to be disproportionately votes that would otherwise go to Ken Livingstone. Older people are the most pro-Boris group and registration also tends to be lower amongst people in rented accomodation and people from ethnic minorities - a mainstay of Ken’s support.
Some polls - most notably Ipsos MORI’s last poll for Unison - did ask whether people were registered to vote and excluded those who weren’t, but this doesn’t actually go that far to addressing the question because it assumes people who aren’t on the register know they aren’t. The NOP study cross-references the answers they got with the electoral register, and found that 16% of respondents who thought they were registered weren’t actually on it.
Two days to go. Candidates, as ever, are here and polls are here