An interesting poll - if it has been conducted after Gordon Brown’s offer of Goverment jobs to Lib Dem peers, it would confirm my thoughts that the Lib Dems have made a mistake in taking the line that they have probably forced Menzies Campbell to adopt.

I mentioned in an earlier blog that I believe some 3% of previous Labour voters had switched becuse of Blair, those votes will have gone mainly to the Lib Dems. With Blair gone they are likely to switch back to Labour. If the Libs are going to prevent a serious squeeze from both parties, the Lib voters who may be inclined to vote Tory are more likely to stay voting Lib Dem if they have a representation in Government, otherwise they might as well just switch back to the Tories if they see a falling off in Lib Dem support. The Lib Dems have made a mistake on this one and I think it is a mistake that Menzies Campbell could foresee but was unable to convine the others in his party.

As a footnote, the Ipsos Mori poll of 1,970 people was conducted between the 14th-20th June

I think we need to see an ICM poll to gain a balanced perspective. But in common with some previous polls this is bad news for the Lib Dems even without the Paddy Ashdown affair.

This surely is the first sign of the Brown honeymoon period. It may not last. It is not so long ago (2 months) that the LibDem vote was rising briefly as the Spring elections took place.

These polls are slightly spurious in my opinion. Wait and see what Brown is like when faced with the real problem of being Prime Minister.

Cameron may be the one who has the real problem at the moment

[…] With Labour ahead in the polls. […]

Before anyone gets too excited about these findings, they need to be qualified in a number of ways;
- A bounce for a new PM is nothing unusual. Major overturned a double-digit Labour lead when he became PM.
- It’s a bit like Callaghan and Thatcher in the late 1970s, when he and Labour regularly outshone her and the Tories and still lost in 1979.
- Not long before Blair announced his departure date, Labour had its lowest rating since the days of Michael Foot in 1983. We should wait for the dust to settle to see if this bounce is just temporary.
Let’s not read too much into one poll.

Andy D is exactly right. I think that Gordon Brown will have a few months honeymoon but not as long as David Cameron did. I believe that within a few years when election time is finally with us, the Conservatives will have launched the vast majority of their policies and people will begin to shift back to the Conservatives. I am predicting that by the time the election is going and weekly opinion polls are being issued, the Lib-Dems will almost certainly be regularly squeezed and will only reach around 17% on a good week. The Conservatives will reach no higher than around 42% and will be no lower than 38%. The Labour Party will reach no lower than 32% and no higher than 34%.

My conclusions are that the Labour share of the vote will definitely be within the low thirties and the Lib-Dems will be in the mid teens but it will be the Conservative share of the vote that I am not quite sure of. If the Conservatives perform well in the EU elections in 2009 and the General Election is held after then, the UKIP share in opinion polls will fall which will help the Tories grasp a few extra seats. The next election will be detirmined greatly on what happens in the EU elections in my opinion because it will affect the Conservatives greatly; if they are strong then they will do well a year later, if they continue to loose ground to the UKIP then a hung parliament with the Conservatives taking 290-310 seats is more likely.

Lets not forget that the Tories had a bounce when Cameron took over from Howard, turning a large Labour lead in to a small Tory lead, I think that Brown will reverse this Tory bounce and put Labour back in the lead with Labour around 39% and the Tories back down to 34%. Not sure where the LibDems will be, I think it all depends on how they respond to Brown.

For Mori’s May 2007 poll (oddly headed May 2006 poll) when asked ‘Which party did you vote for at the General Election on May 5th 2005?’ (Question 11) 20% said Conservative, 32% said Labour, and 14% said Lib Dems. This time round the figures are Tories 20%, Labour 35% and Lib Dems 11%.

So Mori asked 3% more Labour, 3% less Lib Dems, and the same number of Tories and got results that are Tory down one, Labour up 4 and the Lib Dems minus 3.

Coincidence?

Ralph - No, not a co-incidence in the slightest. The question is whether MORI happen to have chosen, by random chance, a sample that contains more Labour sympathisers and fewer Lib Dem sympathisers and therefore there hasn’t really been a change - it’s just down to MORI not using political weighting or, alternatively, whether because Labour are suddenly more palatable to the public that more people are admitting to pollsters that they voted for them in 2005.

It’s an unanswered question in polling. Pollsters like ICM and Populus believe that recall of past vote is pretty constant and - presumably - would therefore assume that a lot of the change in this poll is just down to sample variation. MORI believe that recall of past vote has the potential to be far more volatile and - presumably - would explain the shift in recalled past vote as being a symptom of genuinely changing political support.

Looking at the monthly figures for vote at last general election they are pretty consistent . Although not asked every month , the last 8 polls whiich asked this have Conservatives at 19 or 20% Labour from 32-35% and LibDem from 11-14% . It is perhaps significant that the only other 2 times Labour had a lead in Mori were the only other 2 times the figure was 35%

Interesting prediction Phillip, time will tell. I think the Tory support will now be at its highest (the high 30’s) and come the election the Lab/Tory vote will be pretty similar between 35-38% with the Lib’s around 17-18%.

I can’t see the Labour vote falling to 34 in an election, Gordon Brown will call it when he’s sure of hitting 36 and running out of time just won’t be an issue, it’s going to be his call and if the Tories were going to hit 40 in an election they would be polling mid 40’s now and it just isn’t happening under Cameron and Osborne, they are just too lightweight.

Last time around the Tories should have picked David Davies and then Cameron after the next election defeat when he and Osborne would have had a better chance. The real worry for the Tories now is that if Cameron doesn’t win, they will have real trouble holding it together with such differing views simmering away.

It’s all or nothing for the Tories next time and I just cannot see them winning, their support just isn’t strong enough and the election after next will probably see a Lab/Lib coalition with a new Lib leader and that could be the political landscape that takes us to 2017.

Interesting times ahead - maybe an ex Blairite will become the leader of the Lib’s, who will surely have a new leader after the next election if not before!!!! (No disrespect to Menzies Campbell, he is clearly a man of integrity and great decency).

Interesting that the polls have 75% of people claiming to have voted, while the last election had a turnout of only 61%; maybe we should not read too much into how people claim to have voted in the past!!!!

It would be interesting to know what final figures ICM and Populus with adjustments for past recall weighting would have published given the raw data used by Mori in this poll .
My guesstimate is that ICM would have published something like Con 37/38 Lab 34/35 LibDem 18/19 Others 9/10 with Populus stricter treatment of LibDem recall putting them 1% or so lower . With the previous month’s Mori polls I would have guesstimated Con 37/38 Lab 32/33 LibDem 20/21 Others 9/10 pretty much what ICM actually got from their own poll last month .

Things are getting exciting now. Can’t wait for the next batch of polls.

What I find interesting and also rather amusing is that all 3 parties genuinely believe they’re in with a very good chance at the next election: Cameron thinks that, all in all, he’s got a good chance of winning, Brown clearly thinks the same, and the Lib Dems think it’s obvious they’ll be in a coalition in a hung parliament. Obviously, all these 3 events can’t happen at the same time!

Andy Stidwill, you say that all three parties “believe they’re in with a very good chance at the next election”, I don’t think that this is correct, they all say “they are in with a good chance” but that is very different from believing it. But you are right the polls over the next six months are going to be very interesting.

The WMA is 36½:34½:16.6 C Lead 2. Ipsos/MORI is the least reliable of the major pollsters with a historical bias against the Conservatives of 1.7% and a Standard Deviation of 3%. Back in Oct the did a similar rogue poll which “showed” a Labour Lead of 2% when the true figure (as measured by interpolating the 2 previous and 2 succeeding polls) was a C lead of 6%, they were 7.6% out (and 5.4% out on the WMA). They had exactly the same error (7.6%, with 6.1% on WMA) when the claimed a Labour Lead of 1% for the Sunday Times in Sept. So unless and until we get independent confirmation no credence should be given to their “result”.

FWIW, Cameron might be quite content with a quick election that resulted something like 300 Labour, 250 Conservatives, 60 Lib Dems.

Brown would have a pretty torrid time governing in those circumstances.

I doubt the LibDems will get 60 seats with poll ratings like this, more like half that, mostly taken by the Conservatives.