ICM Voting Intention
ICM’s monthly voting intention figures are out - these are from the same poll that was reported on Tuesday buit have been held back two days for some reason. The topline figures with changes from the last ICM poll in the Sunday Telegraph are CON 39% (+3), LAB 35% (nc), LDEM 17%(-1). The vote changes referred to in the Guardian, incidentally, are drawn from comparisons with the last ICM poll in the Guardian, slightly earlier than their Sunday Telegraph poll.
Whereas once the four main polling companies used to have their polls spread out nicely across the month, they seem to have all grouped in the first and last weeks of the month, meaning that this poll is actually the first measure of voting intentions we’ve had since Populus at the start of the month, before the trouble in Lebanon, the arrest of Lord Levy and David Cameron’s “hug-a-hoodie” speech. The re-appearance of the loans for peerages issue and the effect of their stance on Israel do not appear to have damaged support for Labour (or in the case of Lebanon, at least not yet). The Conservatives appear to have gained support, possibly as a result of falling support for “others”, who appear to have dipped below 10% again.
The level of Lib Dem support is the lowest for over four years in an ICM poll, despite the fact that Ming Campbell’s own ratings did appear to be rising. A foreign affairs crisis is seen by many as an opportunity for Campbell, who is considered an expert on foreign policy, to shine - but yet the Lib Dems are down to 17%. I had thought that the figures in the ICM poll last month, which showed the Liberal Democrats on a lower level of support than during their leadership crisis in January, was likely to be a blip - it simply seemed unlikely that they would be in worse position now than when they were leaderless and embroiled in sex scandals and infighting - this poll however does support ICM’s findings last month.
Without any other recent polls with which to compare trends it unwise to read too much into a single poll - YouGov’s monthly poll should be out on Friday and will allow us to see if there are similar trends there.
Filed under: ICM, Voting Intention
It seems as if the Conservatives have taken support from the Liberal-Democrats and minor parties. This could be very helpful to the Conservatives in winning back seats in the South West region of Great Britain due to the Lib-Dems loosing the majority of their seats. But this result simply shows that people are still rather content with the Labour government (the poll would mean just 1% lost by Labour in comparison with the last General Election). I feel that evaluating all of the recent polls you would only find big Conservative gains in England & quite a few in Wales but Scotland seems to be a ‘no-go’ Conseravtive region apart from the rural seats. The Conservatives will need to strive ahead at a much greater pace if they really do stand a chance of winning power. But if the Conservatives won 310 seats lets say, if Labour asked the Lib-Dems to join up with them, they still wouldn’t have enough seats to be larger than the Conservatives so by the looks of things, the Conservatives would havge ‘the upper hand’.
Martin Baxter’s Electoral Calculus site turns these poll figures - without accounting for tactical voting - into very bad reading for the Lib Dems, cutting their seat total down to just 10. Whilst the Tories gain most (winning a total of 285 seats), Labour still comes in at just 2 seats short of a majority at 322, perhaps confirming Phil’s point that the Tories will not win sufficient seats in Scotland, Wales and the North of England all the time Labour can command around the same support it had in May 2005.
Crude swing modelling often copes very poorly with the Lib Dems. Remember, many Lib Dem seats are held through personal votes and are in areas less affected by the national swing (the celtic fringe).
The one thing that would make a catastrophic crash in the number of Lib Dem seats is if there was a hung Parliament and the Lib Dems had to choose to go into alliance with one of the other parties. Such a deal would immediately scupper tactical vote arguments from the party they had allied with.
As in 1924, if the deal broke down, then there’s a good chance it would kill off arguments from the opposite side as well. If I was a Lib Dem (and thank god I’m not) then I would be hoping for a Parliament with a small majority in 2009/10.
I should take electoralcalculus’s figures with a hefty grain of salt for now, Warren - as it still works on the old constituency boundaries for now, but it does show that despite an appreciable (and sustained) lead in the polls, the Conservatives are still a long way from returning to power.
Who knows, maybe some policies would help them…
I should add that ElectoralCalculus doesn’t use a uniform swing, it uses an adapted proportional swing. In practice this means that the Lib Dems suffer very badly if their vote falls. On a uniform swing if the Lib Dems drop 6 points, then it assumes they drop 6 points in every consistuency (meaning they would lose quite a few seats, but not loads). On a proportional swing it assumes their vote in every constituency falls by the same proportion as their national vote (in this example, 6/23, just over 25% - so in some seats there would be huge swings against the Lib Dems and they lose nearly all their seats)
An adapted proportional swing is even less likely to successfully predict the number of Lib Dem seat defences in the case of a vote collapse - all the psephological evidence is that the Lib Dem vote in a particular constituency has a plateau and once it has reached it, tends to stay around the same area. The main bulk of non-targeted constituencies meanwhile have Lib Dem votes which remain very close to the national share.
Paul D,
The Conservatives have had a lead in the polls for about 3 months only. For the 4 months before that the polls seemed to swing between Labour and Conservative. Before that Labour had strong leads. It could be 3 or 4 years to the next election, with one leader sure to change, 2 almost certain to change and maybe all 3 changing!