Two new YouGov polls on the Labour leadership tonight - one of Labour party members for Channel 4, and one of the general public in the Telegraph.
The poll of Labour party members found that 59% wanted Tony Blair to resign before the Scottish, Welsh and local elections next May, with 38% wanting him to step down this Autumn. Gordon Brown was the favoured replacement for 57% of party members. If Blair were to be forced out, 39% of party members said they would hold Labour backbenchers responsible, with only 7% saying they would blame Gordon Brown.
The Telegraph polls have voting intention (with changes from YouGov’s regular poll at the end of August) at CON 40% (+2), LAB 32% (+1), LDEM 17% (-1). The poll was conducted yesterday and today while Labour’s leadership crisis was in full swing. Clearly there has been no immediate collapse in the Labour vote as a result of the infighting, in fact Labour are up a point. This isn’t necessarily an anomoly, despite the disarray surrounding it, it is perfectly possible that putting some form of deadline on Blair’s departure has increased Labour’s support. When Tony Blair announced in September 2004 that he would not contest a fourth general election it resulted in an immediate gain in both Labour and his own poll ratings.
That said, the Conservatives are also up two points (the 8 point lead is the largest yet recorded by YouGov). Perhaps the movements that hypothetical polls with Gordon Brown as leader have shown (some Lib Dem votes moving back to Labour, but some Labour votes moving to the Tories) are already occuring as Blair’s departure becomes more imminent. It’s possible…but of course, movements of one and two points are well within the margin of error and could mean nothing whatsover. All we can say is that Labour’s support doesn’t appear to have collapsed due to the infighting…yet - it may of course take longer for any effect to materialise.
None of the other questions asked by YouGov contained any good news for the Government: 58% of respondents now want Tony Blair to resign this year, including 39% of Labour voters. “Almost two-thirds” think the wheels are falling off the government (including 35% of Labour supporters), and half think Tony Blair is a lame duck. 51% of Labour supporters think that the party is sharply divided.
There is little confidence that Gordon Brown will be an improvement on Tony Blair. Only 20% of people think he will be better than Blair, with 22% thinking he will be worse. Overall 30% of people think Brown will prove a good Prime Minister, with 38% thinking he will be a bad one. Only a third now think that Brown has done a good job as Chancellor, only a fifth think him honest and only a sixth like him. That said, he still has no serious challenger for the position - amongst Labour supporters he is first choice of over 50%, with John Reid second on just 9%.
UPDATE: The full results of the YouGov/Channel 4 poll of Labour party members are now on their website here.
On the leadership, out of the following candidates Labour members said they would vote 57% Brown, 10% Reid, 8% Johnson, 7% Miliband and 5% McDonnell with 12% don’t knows. Brown appears to have an insurmountable lead, but David Davis will vouch for the fact that these things can change. 38% of members are clearly not yet supporting either Brown or McDonnell and could potentially gather around an alternate candidate should one emerge.
YouGov also asked about who members would vote for as deputy leader - Hilary Benn was top on 27%, followed by Johnson 18%, Miliband 17%, Harman 10%, Blears 7%. A surprising victory for Benn who hasn’t been widely touted as a potential deputy leader, marred by the absence from the question of Peter Hain who has.
Finally the poll asked whether it would be desirable for the next Labour leader to bring some former ministers back into the cabinet. The only one who a plurality of Labour members thought it would be a good idea to bring back was Charles Clarke (48% good idea, 40% thought it a bad idea). 40% would like to see Clare Short return (53% against), 38% Alan Milburn (47% against), 36% David Blunkett (56% against) and only 20% Stephen Byers (60% against).
16 Responses
And WMA is 40:32:18 so you.gov seems pretty well spot on (though I did use the Cameron/Brown figues from Populus/Times which seemed, and seem, rather more realistic. Since late April the C share has risen inexorably from 34% to 40% while Lab has dropped from 34% to 32%. This seems not to be driven by short term “bad news” stories but a medium-term underlying trend.
September 8th, 2006 at 4:40 amI have been a true Labour supported all my life from about twelve years old. I for the first time in my life would rather vote Tories then New Labour again. I once wrote a letter to Thatcher and she replied. I tried writing to my MP twice and have never had a reply, sad to think at the next election I will get a phone call demand I vote Labour to ensure a great success it happens every election I am told your an ex party member you have a decision to make Tories or Labour vote Labour, nope mate I will vote Tories. I will at least know I am being destroyed by the enemy
September 8th, 2006 at 5:09 amI smiled at the ‘ToRy Blair’ mis-spelling in the second paragraph Anthony!
September 8th, 2006 at 7:50 amThese figures still show about 11% for “others” which is still quite high. I would be curious to see the breakdowns by age and area, particularly how well Brown goes down in Scotland compared to Blair ( and Reid for that matter).
Partly it’s because I am SNP, but if Brown is a lot more popular in Scotland ( and wales) with the up comming elections it might mean that pressure for Blair to go sooner than next May continues to build.
Peter.
September 8th, 2006 at 9:11 amThe 2 council byelections yesterday did show a collapse in the Labour vote and a little surprisingly the Conservative vote also from a low base to an even lower one .
September 8th, 2006 at 9:55 amNicholas you cannot just select the Cameron/Brown figures for your WMA this month just because they give you a better result . Did you do the same on other occasions and if 1 month they turn out to be not as good as the standard results , I presume you will revert back .
Polls may shwo Labour vote has not collapsed but the 2 by elections yesterday saw 2 Lab seats up for election - and they lost both with the Lab share of the vite dropping by 28% in NE Somerset and 17% in Warrington.
2 by-elections dont make a proper poll but they are both bad results in once safe Labour wards.
September 8th, 2006 at 1:15 pmI suspect- and it would be nice to know the figures - that the more Brown talks about Britishness the more people will turn against him. Yes, its a weakness for him but his answer looks thin. Hed be better creating an alternative vision. Devolution is very solidly here; hed be better dealing with the illogicality of devolution (separate parliaments- and with unequal powers) for 3 of the 4 UK countries but no separate parliament for the largest. Federal systems of governments work well you know — Australia, America, Germany, France Sth Sfrica etc.– and a little bit of constitutional tidy up would be an attractive and radical vision. To pretend, following devolution, that we are all British njust doesnt ring true amongst the people with I work and talk…
September 8th, 2006 at 2:48 pmThe internals do indeed tell a story about Brown/Blair in Scotland and Wales. We’ve written about this here:
http://thedaily.wordpress.com/2006/09/08/yougov-polls-hidden-details/
Essentially, Brown has a huge lead over Blair in Scotland. Harder to tell in Wales, but the Midlands & Wales TV region is the other place where Brown is a lot more popular.
Also, Brown has an 11-point lead over Cameron among Lib Dem voters on a “forced choice” question; but Cameron has an 11-point lead over Blair. So Brown seems to appeal much more than Blair to Lib Dem voters - and they are likely to be more similar to SNP voters than Tory voters.
As for a breakdown of “others” - none available on this one (that I’ve seen) but in August it was BNP 4 UKIP 3 Grn 3 Res 1 Oth 1.
September 8th, 2006 at 11:37 pmAnthony, is there any suggestion thus far as to how a possible Conservative election victory is affecting differential turn-out? (i.e. whether Labour voters are more likely to turn-out now than they were in May 2005) and, if this is the case, any extrapolation as to how it affects the current figures (i.e. more Labour voters in safe seats thus reducing the discrepancy between Lab & Con “wasted” votes.
I ask this because, invariably, models are based on 3 assumptions that we know to be incorrect but they’re the best we have
1) That everyone who voted in the last election will vote next time
2) That they will vote in the same ward as last time (and therefore the theoretical majorities for new constituency boundaries are valid)
3) That there is uniform national swing
If suggestions are that more Labour voters will vote next time, with their party behind in the polls, does this mean that the hypothetical Conservative majority is likely to be higher than postulated - and is there any way of guesstimating the impact?
September 9th, 2006 at 1:24 pmAm I reading the figures wrong or does the poll have the Tories on 29% in Scotland….
If it does it seems an incredibly high figure given that most polls have them between 14% and 17%. Having got just under 16% in May 2005, 29% now would blow away any gains anywhere else in the Country.
Looking at the figures for Brown v Blair it’s easy to see why Labour in Scotland is desperate to see the back of Blair, and the SNP equally hoping he will limp on.
Peter.
September 9th, 2006 at 8:03 pmPeter - remember that the normal splits given in YouGov’s tables are for TV regions, not for the normal government regions. I believe Borders TV covers part of Cumbria as well as part of Scotland, and will be included in YouGov’s figures, bumping up the Tories a bit.
Paul - very hard to compare to the last election. During an election campaign the proportion of people saying they will vote rises, therefore you can’t really compare answers mid-term with answers at election time. If I get time I’ll try and do some comparisons with mid-term figures but realistically, given how poor people are at predicting their likelihood of voting, I’m not sure if it will be useful.
September 9th, 2006 at 8:48 pmCan I just say that all these people who are saying “Brown has a strong lead but remember David Davis!” are themselves forgetting that that was in the Conservative Party. In the Conservative Party the favourite never wins the leadership election. In the Labour Party the favourite almost always wins (1980 is the only clear exception).
September 10th, 2006 at 1:02 amPeter - I suspect that the 29% is outlying results caused by the small sample. YouGov’s August tracker had the Tories at 22% and a 7-point rise in a couple of weeks seems unlikely. YouGov does also tend to underestimate the SNP and overestimate the Tories, partly as Anthony says because their “Scotland” region includes a bit of Cumbria.
Anthony - do you (or anyone else) have a source for what areas the TV regions that YouGov uses actually cover?
September 10th, 2006 at 1:42 pmPoliticalcorrespondent -
It is hard to say. There is a lot of geographical overlap at the boundaries and TV boundaries don’t follow county boundaries nicely. IF you google for TV regions you should find a map, it’s pretty obvious which TV regions fit into each of YouGov’s breaks.
As far as I am aware, the breaks given by YouGov are which TV stations people say they recieve if asked, so they will be geographically fuzzy at the edges. Note that the TV regions are given in the breaks, but that doesn’t mean YouGov constructs samples using TV regions. Postcode is used on the YouGov database to work out the actual government regions that people live in so proper geographical breaks can be obtained. The published tables do not, however, include it as standard.
September 10th, 2006 at 2:15 pmAnthony,
Okay a bit i’ll grant you but from 17% to 29%, because of the inclusion of the Convervative baston of Cumbria. I mean the Tories are hardly a dominant force in the North of England these days.
The Poll for Scotland on Sunday has then on 14% for Holyrood so I think maybe 18% for Westminster. Even with the Cumbria effect i’d think much of 20% would be odd.
Peter.
September 10th, 2006 at 2:27 pmDid some checking and if the Borders TV region is taken to include all of Cumbria down to Barrow, then Labour won all but two seats , with one each for the Tories and LibDems. The Tories did however do well in every seat averaging over 30% of the vote and notching up around 100,000 votes.
Given that the Tories got 370,000 in Scotland, about 16%, then adding another 100,000 could see then poll around 20-21% rather than 16%, but it still makes 29% an odd figure.
Peter.
September 10th, 2006 at 9:43 pm