Cameron still hasn’t claimed the centre ground
Today’s Channel 4 news has a new YouGov poll asking people about their perceptions of the party leaders and their parties on a left-right scale (full details here). Obviously it is easy to argue that a left-right scale is pretty arbitary and doesn’t mean much in this day and age, but questions like this are very useful in measuring how close people think parties and politicians are to themselves and who is closest to the “centre ground”. More importantly, since YouGov have previously asked the same question in April 2005 and February and September 2006, it lets us see how perceptions of the parties are changing.
Respondents were asked to rate politicans and parties on a scale of “very left-wing”, “fairly left-wing”, “slightly left of centre”, “centre”, “slightly right of centre”, “fairly right-wing” and “very left-wing”, but YouGov have converted into a numerical scale so we can get average results for each politician/party.
The average respondent puts themself at +1, so almost bang on centre. David Cameron is at +33 (the score YouGov gave to “slightly right of centre”), marginally more centrist than last year when he scored +35 and +34 and significantly more centrist than his predecessor Michael Howard was in 2005 (+53). However, despite Cameron being more centrist, he has barely shifted perceptions of the Conservative party as a whole, who have an average score of +52, compared to +50 and +53 last year. Sadly YouGov didn’t ask the question about the party in April 2005, but still being seen as just as right-wing as Michael Howard was doesn’t suggest perceptions of the Conservative party beyond Cameron himself have moved to the centre!
While perceptions of Cameron and the Conservatives have remained static since last year, views of Gordon Brown and Labour have shifted…or more to the point, they have swapped places. In February 2006 the Labour party as a whole scored an average of -27 on the scale, with Gordon Brown seen as somewhat more centrist at -21. In September 2006 perceptions of Brown and the Labour party in general were almost identical. The latest figures show Labour on an average of -22, but Brown on -26. Strangely enough, Brown is now seen as more left-wing than the Labour party in general are.
Contrasted to Tony Blair of course neither man can stake claim to the centre ground, in February 2006 Blair had an average score of +5. The 2005 election was a contest between a leader bang in the centre of politics against a leader seen out on the right. Now we approach a contest between two leaders seen as respectively slightly to the right and slightly to the left of centre. The difference between them is that Cameron is seen as the centrist leader of a more right wing party, while Brown is seen as slightly to the left of his centre-left party.
Filed under: YouGov
As you might expect I looked at the Scottish results, which despite the normal caveats about sample size and TV regions, show us pretty much what you might expect.
Scotland sees the Tory’s as more right wing than the UK in general (66 to 52), and the Midlands in particular (48), but Labour as less leftwing (-13 to -22) and again most marked against the Midlands and Wales (-29).
Somewhat more strangely they rate the Libdems as -24 as opposed to a national -15, which means that for Scots the Libdems are seen as more left wing than Labour ?????. In London they score only -11 to Labours -21.
Only 2% of Scots say the Labour party is very left wing but 12% think the LibDems are. Best I can come up for for that is there “Green” agenda.
Equally on Brown and Cameron while the UK sees them as -26 and +33, Scotland has them at -17 and +21 ( the biggest difference is with the Southwest -34 and London +38)
This means that for Scots David Cameron is seen as very much more middle ground than in the home counties and so to an extent is Brown. The difference between them for Scots is 38 where as in the South it is 67.
Why this is so I really can’t quite fathom, or how it will play electorally in a general election. If I had to hazard a guess it would be still bad news North of the border for the Tories, sort of
“Nice guy that Cameron and he’s got the right ideas, pity I can’t vote for him because he’s a bloody Tory”.
Of course, as you might also expect from me, this is probably evidence that Scotland is a very different country.
Peter.
I would suggest that a difference between leader and party of 5 “points” is MoE country, whilst 20 “points” corresponds to a political fact.
And the fact - if these things are facts - that Labour is 30 points nearer the centre than the Tories is surely also significant.
Tories like to think that last time was Labour’s “1992″, but life isn’t that neat. Chief Whips would always prefer a majority of 40 to 140 and Brown’s Whip may get a second helping of just that.
And, if they lose, the Conservatives may just have fought their last election as a U.K. party - four sister parties, one for each country, with locally tailored platforms would almost certainly do better than one Unionist one.
Perhaps then if the Conservative party is still seen as Right wing and yet is still consistently ahead in the polls and successful in local elections, the whole Cameron strategy of moving to the centre is pointless and unnecassary.
“The average respondent puts themself at +1, so almost bang on centre”
This doesnt mean that most people are centrist though. The sample could consist of half who are far out on the left and half far on the right and the average would be in the centre with noone actually being in the centre. Or it could be that say 8 respondents give themselves a rating of +10 and 2 give a rating of minus 30, which means a 4 to 1 majority would be centre right but the average would be in the centre again. We need to know how these respendents broke down in more detail really.
Well it might, Peter, but it almost certainly doesn’t. It’s called the “normal distribution” in statistics. If large numbers of people had high scores, whether plus or minus, we’d almost certainly be seeing a lot lot more strikes, demonstrations of various kinds and even less pleasant forms of direct action than we had a generation ago, let alone to-day.
Pete,
if you look at how people ratethemselves compared to the all respondents +1, You see quite clearly that only 6% of Tories see themselves as very right wing and 7% of labouras very left wing.
Women are more left wing than men,( one of the reasons Cameron is trying so hard to seem compassionate), the young more left of centre and uncertain than the old.
However still less than 6% in each put themselves at the extremes ( although that might not mean they aren’t extreme rather that they don’t want to say so),and centre getsthe highest poll
Regionally Scotland seems way out of line with the rest of the UK at -13, the closes being the North at -2. However even here only 5% say they are extremely left wing, although no one is extremely right wing, and only 5% even fairly right wing as compared to 16% in London.
Overall the distributions seem to be pretty much bell curves so the argument you put forward doesn’t hold that much weight.
I do agree with Anthony that the terms right and left wing don’t carry that much weight anymore and it would be better to ask a set of general questions from which people could get both a score per topic and an overall score. People can be liberal on some issues and strict on others, like the anti smoking ban anti immigration Tory.
Such surveys can give us a particular insight in to what people are actually inclined to vote for as opposed to how they like to percieve themselves, particularly if you add in some extreme outliers to mop up the fringe effect.
So on a question on sex offenders after the normal most extremes like ” Community Service v The Death Penalty, you put in “It shouldn’t be a Crime v Public Crucifiction and Castration”.
I had an interesting discussion with a UKIP candidate recently who’s views on immigration I thought were very right wing, but he got quite indignant when I suggested it because he didn’t perceive himself that way at all.
Peter.
Pete Whitehead seems to have a point, it would be interesting to see where people put the parties and leaders in relation to themselves i.e. move the persons score to the centre and move the parties and leaders by the same amount i.e. if someone puts themselves on +23, Labour on -23 and the Conservatives on +29, this would translate to -46 for Labour and +6 for the conservatives thus giving the left/right view from the polled persons perspective, if this was then done for all polled answers it would give an idea of our each individual perceives the parties and leaders in relation to themselves.
I should have checked the details though as it does reveal a fairl even spread with around 20% in the centre and the remainder who do express a preference fairly evenliy distributed to the left and right. Women seem to let the side down a bit, not only being markedly more left wing than men but also being twice as likely to not know what they are (fully 29% of them dont know - probably a higher figure than the proportion who dont have a view on Jenifer Aniston’s latest relationship)
It is probably still misleading to ask people to identify themselves as left and right on non specific issues. I would imagine that on issues like law & order and immigration a majority would hold right wing views, even if they dont recognise them as such. On areas like health and tax and spending generally people would more likley be on the left.
Have a look at this new Populus poll - interesting for you all…
http://www.votesaxon.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=39&Itemid=1
Aren’t pollsters missing the point when they talk about the “centre ground”? Labour never had the centre ground - the whole point of new labour was they adopted a right of centre view on economics and left of centre social policy. Fighting for the centre ground is a myth. Labour are certainly not a centrist party in classical liberal terms, they believe in big government and lots of legislation. Surely the plan for the Tories shouldn’t be to aim for the centre ground as they become a nothing, pointless party. They need to shake off the racist, nasty party image - but being racist and nasty aren’t necessarily right wing characteristics - or at least they don’t have to be. What they need is to distinguish themselves from Labour with some radical policies, rather like Labour had in 1997. It is not a simple case of a race to centre ground because that is a race they can not ever win.
Just a thought. Does each of us know just where we are on any particular subject. We may think we are right in the centre. But are we?? does it mean that we believe 50% of this and 50% of that. Does that put us in the centre?? I we think that we are but. actually we are much further to the right what we percieve then is that someone or something is far to the left (or right) of our percieved centre ground is actually only a touch to the left (or right) of the true!! centre. It may even be that your judgement of your position is so wrong that the result is that your answer to any particular statement or question could end up in your own belief region ie. right or left but you didnt know it. I think that Pete Whitehead has missed the point about people voting left or right on differing issues it is where they see themselves thats the problem.
jg has a good point when He says “Labour…believe in big government and lots of legislation…. and the Tories are racist and nasty….” but he seems to miss his own point when he states that some Labour policies are right of centre and some are left of centre and therefore they are not in the centre. I don’t think any person or political party will be in the centre on every issue, but they can be perceived as being in the “centre”. I think that this poll was measuring how people perceive themselves and the main parties, not how people match parties given an academic definition of left and right.
One obvious way to define this is for Yougov to do a centre poll.
Q1
Ask people on a 1 to 9 scale how left or right they are.
Q2-13
Ask them the same question 1 to 9 on a range of issues, say about a dozen, health, housing, crime, prisons, asylum, immigration, education, tax, public spending, security and defence.
Q14-25
Ask them specific questions about the above dozen questions with if possible nine options from very left wing liberal to extreme right wing.
Then you compare the two sets in a graph, which would have 0 in the centre and +/- for left and right. In each category there would be two bars one for the 1 to 9 and the other for the option question to show how people perceptions of left or right varied from the answers they give.
As a safe guard you could ask the two sets of questions, either back to front ( options before 1 to 9) for half the respondents or you could ask the questions a week or two apart ( or indeed a combination of the two).
It might not be possible to do but it would also be nice to be able to pull up your own responses and compare them to the averages.
I suspect that the result would be that on some issues like the EU the whole country was slightly to the right while on the NHS a bit to the left.
For want of a better term I suppose you could call the result the “mainstream” and see how it altered for each party and over time.
Peter.
If the moves by Gordon Brown to offer the LibDems some share in Government is correct then the battle for the centre ground has started - although I do not necessarily see the LibDems as the centre. It look awefully like the 1976-1979 scenario which went badly wrong.
Both the Lab and Con leaders are peering at life after the next election when a lack of an overall majority is looking likely. However they appear to have different strategies as to how to capture the necessary centre ground voters. Cameron should avoid doing deals at this stage.
If the majority of LibDems that have shifted are going to the Tories and it’s going to be a two horse race then making the LibDem support think they will get more from a Labour government is a sound strategy.
Thats one reason the LibDems have flipped because they know this makes them look like a side show. They’d like a deal but on their terms and this offer makes them look like minnows.
Peter.
Maybe the moves by Gordon Brown could be a major change in the way politics operates in this country. Most people see themselves in the centre, and a coalition of “the talented”; those from the centre, centre left and centre right could be the next big thing.
innocents abroad,you make an interesting point.england is conservative,so if scotland and wales were out of the picture,the would seldom loose in westminster.this left right poll is not representative,as there is a far greater consentration of people in the tory south east(the area that pays for scotland,wales and the north).if the south east became independent,and lost its dependents,it would be the second wealthies country in the world and scotland would be at the poor end.the fact remains,and the reason the union will last, scotland(4.8m people) has a monumental dependency and government culture,over 65%.only england can afford to pay for this,its all a numbers game.the snp are left wing so would find it impossible to change this.only last week they wanted to ban private schools!!
philip.
Philip,
Ban Private Schools?????, Where did you get that one from.
I’ve checked the web and there isn’t a mention of it in any paper or news wire I can find, which is a bit odd given that most of them are itching for a chance to have a go at us.
Peter.