No early election now, I think.

The news agenda seems to be moving very quickly at present I think it may settle down. Last week Cameron had a good week in terms of coverage, this week doesn’t look so good and Brown is having a good week. My guess is that polls sampled this week will be better for Labour.

But the volatility of the polls (coupled with the coverage the Tories and LDs would get in a campaign) means that Brown will more than likely not risk an early GE

WMA 35:38:16 - so the Brown Bounce lead has deflated by 3.6 points in 5 days. The question is: where will it settle? I never thought an Oct election was on the cards, and I think Brown is finding governing a lot harder than manouvering.

Paul: ‘Brown is having a good week’

Not when people link the Tube strikes to PFIs he forced on London.

And it is only Tuesday…

If the polls are good news for the Tories, surely the fact that they were leaked, thus putting the end to any chance of an early election, is bad news for them…

…unless the Tories themselves prefer an election next year instead…in which case Brown would be better to go now before things get any worse…which is exactly what he’s not going to do…

Ah…at least Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have fixed 4-year terms.

It is noticeable that the bullish efforts by some Labour supporters to “bounce” their leader into calling an early election have become rather more muted in the last day or so.It is not just the re-emergence of awkward issues like crime which have dampened expectations and poll ratings-it just is’nt convincing to go round as Brown has saying that we need a new style of government when you have been part of government for the last 10 years.The honeymoon is not over yet especially if Brown can manage a good speech at the party conference but it has clearly peaked. There will be no October election.

The problem for Brown is that while he may be competent his team is poor. Also he is falling prey to traditional Labour problems such as strikes. The unions think as a traditional Labour man Brown will do what the unions tell him to. Blair was immune to this sort of thing.

Nick,

The polls were never that strong if you excluded the headline grabbing YouGov polls, and now people are wondering why he hasn’t called an election.

If the polls continue to point to a Hung Parliament, particularly factoring in marginal seats, then Brown certainly won’t want to go next year. 2009 or 2010 will be increasingly likely. Why trade a working majority for (at best) a coalition deal with the Lib Dems?

There are certainly far more online Tory pundits calling for an early election now than Labour ones.

The risk of being the shortest serving prime minister in history means there was never any chance of an early election.

Anthony , re the change in methodology . Logically IMHO it ought to improve SNP and Plaid marginally and reduce the general Others total with the difference going to the 3 major parties pretty much in proportion to their poll standings . I have sent Populus a message whether they can tell from the detailed figures what the poll would have given without the change - awaiting a reply .

The Tories never wanted an election in October even though they would have done well - that was all speculation . The Tories know that they will get a much better result the longer Brown is in control and his true left wing ideals are seen by the British public .

He had 2 months to come up with new radical policies - we have seen NONE ! Only Cameron has faced the media backlash and held steady - and has come up with policies on CRIME / IMMIGRATION / EDUCATION / SPENDING POLICIES .

Brown is no different to Callaghan or any other Labour leader - he will hang on till the bitter end - 2009 / 2010 and i have said this from day one of the Brown inauguration .

Marginals

Any data on Labour/Lib dem and Conservative/Lib Dem marginals, the info given seems to focus on Labour Conservative

“Only Cameron has faced the media backlash and held steady - and has come up with policies on CRIME / IMMIGRATION / EDUCATION / SPENDING POLICIES”

surely the policy commissions have come up with policies, none of them seem to have been endorsed by Cameron yet and the tax commission and the environmental one seem to be contradictory as does the commitment to honour Labour’s spending plans. I have no idea where the party now stands on selection at 11 and grammar schools. Crime - Cameron is going to be tough on hoodies while hugging them and reducing prison numbers - what exactly are these policies?

I doubt whether there are enough people polled to make the results meaningful even in Con/Lab marginals let alone Lab/LibDem and Con/LibDem . Anthony says they have aggregated the results from the last 3 Populus polls to get the swing in the marginals . That represent a total of circa 4,500 people questioned . Depending on the definition of marginal there are perhaps 120 Lab/Con marginals so the sample is only around 900 and would be much and very much less for Con/LibDem and Lab/LibDem marginals .

Paul - the data on marginal seats applies to the 120 most marginal seats held by all parties, including the Lib Dems. It shows the Lib Dems down by -6.4% (enough for them to lose all the seats they hold with that degree of marginality). I would urge caution though, I’m very dubious about whether such polls pick up tactical voting properly.

Mark - Unless they’ve done some test polls with split samples using the different versions of the question (which they might well have, Populus tend to be quite thorough with this sort of thing) they won’t be able to tell. It’s a difference in the actual questions asked, not the weighting or processing, so you can’t tell how people would have answered if they had been asked a question they weren’t asked. For what it’s worth I agree with you on what the likely effect should be, but equally it should be very minor.

Mark Senior: I totally agree.

Amalgamating sub-sets of polls from the marginals in polls is hardly a reliable poll in itself. And it should also carry the usual caveats whenever polling data from Scotland/London/whatever region is separated from the rest of the poll: It will not be balanced. Have these 3 amalgamated sub-sets seen the right mix of men/women, young/old etc - almost certainly not.

So nice to see a Tory boost in the marginals, but just because it looks nice on a partisan basis. Its statistically irrelevant I’m sure.

Anthony , from my reading of the change the main change is the inclusion of Don’t Know as an option in the 2nd question . They should therefore know exactly how many people are now considered as Don’t Knows whereas in previous polls they would have been counted as Other Others .

Anthony , I doubt whether the data is good enough to work out whether the 6.4% fall in LibDem support is say a 10% fall in Lab/Con marginals and only 2% in LibDem/Con marginals .

Yep, andrew can tell you how many people typically fall into those groups, but we don’t know if the different wording resulted in people giving different answers. The other change is that the first question doesn’t prompt people with the option of saying they might not vote at all. Either way, I expect we’re quibbling over very small numbers of people who probably don’t make a percentage point’s worth of difference anywhere.

Anthony , yes I agree the change is probably very small in impact which was why I was puzzled by Peter Riddell’s comment on the effect .

PAUL SMITH :-

The 4 announcements are all on subjects that are important to the British public - whether the policies have been ratified yet or not - it still shows that the Tories are looking at these subjects and cannot be accused of being inactive . I quote again that nothing after 2 months from Brown about any subject that the British are concerned about - just photo opportunities with statues and foreign leaders (reminiscent of Blair - the spin goes on) .

Mike - Do you ever make any reference to any of the polls.Somehow you are allowed to come on here and ignore them completely,then post Conservative propaganda.

Do you actually read the findings??

Isn’t the sample (some 500) in these seats too small to be really take as accurate?

A Q? for Anthony is what is the ideal sample size ?

An odd adendum at the end of the polling results on the Populus website.

It states,

Populus interviewed a random sample of 1506 adults aged 18+ by telephone between 31st August 2007 and 2nd September 2007. Interviews were conducted across England and the results have been weighted to be representative of all English adults. Populus is a member of the British Polling Council and abides by its rules.

Was this a poll across England or a poll across the entirety of Britain? Why is there nota regional breakdown?

John’s comments about Mike - I had to warn people last week. The comments here are not intended as a venue for partisan argument, comments here should be made in the spirit of non-partisanship. I’m sure everyone will lapse from time to time, but I expect people to at least follow the spirit of the site. I gnerally do not moderate comments on this part of the site at all, and in general everyone eventually understands what it’s about and posts in the spirit intended. To date I’ve only had to ban one poster, but if people don’t even bother playing lip service to the comments policy…

Jake - the sample size isn’t enough to be confident about a difference as small as 0.45%, so not really no.

Brian - there won’t be regional breaks until Populus put the full tables up, which should be in a day or two. I strongly suspect that the England thing is a typo, unless 3% of people in England are voting for the SNP.

JOHN CRAIG :-

I think that if you read my comments they are all based on the polls , the subject matter on the heading of the discussion and previous comments . My reasoning behind each poll result is given - this cannot be said of all the other participants on the site .

Anthony,

given the number of people south of the border who regularly say they

” Want shot of the whinging Jocks”,

maybe 3% would vote SNP…..

Peter.