Is there anything left for Kennedy to play for in Hartlepool?
September 20th, 2004
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Have the pollsters and the punters got this one right?
The betting markets, as we predicted, have closed down their books on the Hartlepool by-election and the only online market still operating, the Betfair betting exchange, has Labour at 1/5 favourites.
But is there still a chance for Charles Kennedy’s party. Can the Lib Dems still pull it off in spite of that devastating NOP poll last Tuesday that had Labour 33% ahead?
Polling methodology. From what we can gather the poll was conducted on a face-to-face basis using a quota sample. In the past these have tended to over-state Labour. Could that have happened here?
Labour aren’t good at converting poll ratings to votes. Their election machines are not as good as the Tories and certainly nowhere near as good as the Lib Dems when it comes converting support into votes. The June 10 Euro Election was the latest in a series when the party under-performed - on that day only 9 Labour supporters actually voted for every 10 who told YouGov and Populus that they would. By the same measure the Lib Dems and Tories were, respectively, equal and ahead.
Labour’s rhetoric seems designed to please activists - not win votes. They’ve had three themes - the LD’s candidate is soft on crime because as a barrister she has defended drug addicts; voting LD will lead to a Con-Lib Dem coalition that will destroy the NHS and the LD candidate patronised the town with some unwise comments in her campaign blog. They need positive reasons why supporters should turn out.
Will UKIP hurt Labour more than the Lib Dems?In the June 10 Euro Election UKIP had one of their best performances in Hartlepool coming second to Labour. A good vote a week on Thursday will certainly hurt the Tories - but they are not the challenger. Will Labour lose more to UKIP than the LDs? At the margin this could be decisive.
Will the Brown-Blair spat dominate Labour’s conference? If it does then the planned advantage of having the election in the same week might turn out to be a negative.
As we said at the start of this campaign this is a tough challenge for the LDs. Charles Kennedy can’t look to large Muslim communities like in the July contests and Brent East and his party has not got the comfort of being in top place in the last local elections there. In July the party also had problems persauding a resilient Tory vote to switch to get Labour out. That might continue here.
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Taking all these factors into account we still think that Labour will hold on - but by nowhere near the 33% that NOP predicted.
But the by-election will be the main topic as LD delegates gather in Bournemouth for their conference and if a sense emerges there that they do stand a chance then the odds will change. At the moment it hasn’t.
Watch those betting markets.If the Betfair prices starts to shift towards the Lib Dems then get on as soon as you can. If it doesn’t then stick with Labour.
UPDATE: Labour must have been reading this site and have now got a web-site for Hartlepool. It’s very slow to load and has only a limited amount of information but it’s a step in the (w)right direction.
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An interesting comment re Hartlepool from Chris Rennard, the Lib Dem election expert:
\”The tide is turning towards the Liberal Democrats. And it will turn our way in Hartlepool. Jody Dunn is an outstanding and brilliant candidate. She has all the makings of becoming our next gold medalist. My money, and I mean this literally, is on her surging ahead of the field when it comes to the final sprint next week.\”
A bit more than just a wink and a nod.
This probably indicates a turn of the tide in terms of betting odds for Hartlepool…..
Now surely seems to be the moment to get in……..
And there\’s an interesting article here which points out that a poll taken in the Hodge Hill by-election showed the parties in almost exactly the same position they were in the Hartlepool poll last week.
Pay no attention to that one Nick - the Birmingham Evening Mail survey prior to Hodge Hill was not a proper survey. They stopped 300 people on the street and asked how they\’d vote - it was apparantly not carried out by a reputable pollster, nor was there any sign of proper sampling or weighting.
HAVING SPOKEN TO PEOPLE WHO HAVE CANVASSED AND HAVING SEEN THE ODDS ON LABOUR, I\’VE STUCK MY MONEY ON JODY DUNN DOING A SIMON HUGHES - THE BOOKIES LOST SOME MONEY ON THAT ONE
It\’s hard to see Bermondsey 1983 as a parallel situation to Hartlepool 2004. Your comparison in some ways highlights the problem - the selection of a middle-class barrister who likes to tell us all about how many Finnish friends she has. Simon Hughes has held his seat through hard and excellent work, but only a Labour meltdown let him into an inner-city seat in the first place.
Jody Dunn might be Chris Rennard\’s \”an outstanding and brilliant candidate\” if she were standing in, say, Richmond. But she is not the right candidate for this seat and her comments about the locals have already shown this. Labour, by contrast, have selected a solid local candidate, not Peter Tatchell.
I expect a considerably more comfortable win for Labour in Hartlepool than in Hodge Hill.
Re. comment 4, I was going to ask if John L expects a 44% swing (as happened in Bermondsey). Even though I don\’t rule out the LDs winning, a swing of that magnitude seems unlikely. The last two candidates to manage a swing of 44% were Independents at General Elections, Messrs Taylor (01) and Bell (97).
Anyone else seen Curtice\’s piece in today\’s Independent? It echoes much of what\’s been said here over the past few months, namely that the Westminster Village is wrong to assume another Labour landslide, and that there could even be a hung parliament.
Alas it\’s not free on the website so I\’ll need to buy a paper copy, compromising my instant response capability.
If you\’re a Lib Dem, today\’s bad news is that Yasmin Alibhai-Brown has endorsed you. The good news is it doesn\’t seem very ringing (again, I need to buy the paper to find out more).
And I fear the tabloids will take \”tough liberalism\” apart with material like this:
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=563617
Why is it called \”tough liberalism\”?
Absolutely re. Oaten\’s racing proposals. Who needs \’soft\’ liberalism if that\’s what tough liberalism amounts to?
As for Yasmin Alibaih-Brown, this is the woman who called Chris Patten\’s daughters \’overfed\’ on R4 after the Hong Kong handover. Apart from being gratuitously insulting (and totally irrelevant), just imagine the outrage if Jim Davidson had said that. I remember, indeed, the (justified) outrage in reaction to Rush Limbaugh\’s unpleasant comments re. Chelsea Clinton\’s appearance.
I wasn\’t half cheering that Kurdish woman (raped numerous times in Saddam Hussein\’s Iraq) who took on YAB about the Iraq War on Question Time a while ago. How long before our least favourite columnist\’s recently released \’Greatest Hits\’ collection of columns (\’Some of my best friends are….\’) gets remaindered?
I don\’t think I\’d welcome Yaz\’s endorsement.
How about a spread market on how many homes in Hartlepool Labour will have leafleted with that Oaten interview by the end of today?
No, these young tearaways need some real licking into shape. They should be forced to train for a strenuous event like the triathlon - boxing, shooting and motor racing.
As of just now, YAB has achieved a stunning Amazon sales rank of 229,691!
A third labour landslide is definitely on the cards if Yasmin Alibi-Brown has backed the Lib Dems - with friends like that who needs enemies?
Mark Oaten\’s proposals are particularly fatuous - and deserve any ridiculed heaped upon them by Labour and the tabloids.
I\’m not sure I agree with book value\’s comemnts re Jody Dunn - I agree Labour have chosen wisely - but good candidates are good candidates because of the qualities they bring - not necessarily because of their location. I think voters in so-called \’working class\’ seats can just as easily see the qualities of the respective candidates as those in more \’leafy\’ areas.
Incidentally did anyone see Fraser Kemp on the Politics Show yesterday - I thought he came across as very, very defensive - not a good sign if you\’re supposed to be 30+ points in front.
Dan, I should clarify: I don\’t mean that the \”person like us\” factor is more important in working-class seats (in fact, probably less so: just looking at the composition of Parliament proves that far more middle-class MPs are elected by working-class seats than vice versa). My real point is that the \”person like us\” effect is more important in weighing up a candidate with no record to run on, as compared to someone who\’s held elective office, run a local business, or even been a local doctor or teacher. And given that, not much in Jody Dunn\’s bio speaks of her ability to connect somewhere like Hartlepool.
By-election campaigns are never pleasant, but I can\’t imagine the LDs wouldn\’t be playing it up had they selected a long-serving local councillor to fight a high-flying political novice Labour lawyer. (Mutatis mutandis, Cheltenham 1992).
I remember that one criticism of Willie Whitelaw\’s \’short, sharp, shock\’ camps was that it produced young criminals who could run away more quickly from the police - to encourage boy racers, who already see speed as a good thing, to go racing is one of the daftest things I\’ve heard for a while. It\’s the sort of thing Lembit Opik would come up with.
I like Rachel Sylvester\’s reference in today\’s DT to LDs favouring the compulsory microchipping of dogs. A happier fate, at least, than befell poor Rinka!
Would the racing courses count as points towards increasing one\’s personal speed limit (in the same way that Opik proposes that the longer you\’ve had a licence, the faster you should be able to drive?)
I do seem like I\’m channelling Tom Watson today. Really I\’m a spurned suitor. Just when I thought the LD right were moving towards a programme I could develop some enthusiasm for, they spoil it all with this.
Good point made by book value at 13. Working-class MPs representing middle-class seats - Ray Mawby (an electrician) in Totnes (a long time ago), Patrick Mcloughlin (former miner, and a working miner during the Miner\’s Strike) in Derbyshire West, and Reg Prentice (after defecting) in Daventry. All of them were Tories. Then again, on the Labour side there\’s Kerry Pollard (an engineer, with a strong working-class northern accent) representing St Albans. Any other suggestions?
List all the middle-class MPs representing working-class seats, though, and you\’d be here for ages. Near where I live, Old Etonian Mark Fisher represents Stoke-on-Trent Central.
Richard - a bit below the belt mentioning Rinka. Do you remember when Auberon Waugh stood for the \”Dog Lover\’s party\”? Those were the days. Of course that was at the time a hung parliament was last in the offing.
Labour candidate is considered as too young and inexperienced by the local labour voters - they wont be rushing to support him
This \”being local\” is a useful line but how many votes does it swing? And how many votes move because the candidate does not have an accent like the locals? Tony Blair didn\’t find being public school-boy with a posh accent a disadvantage in nearby Sedgefield.
Depends on the circumstances - (a) how much else there is to assess the candidate on; (b) how much the candidate is a voter\’s \”default\” choice or otherwise by virtue of the party he/she represents.
It wasn\’t a great disadvantage for Blair and Mandelson since they were Labour candidates in solid Labour seats. I think it\’s more of a hurdle for a candidate trying to be the first from her party to win the seat.
I would have thought that most likely voters are not confident of the names of the candidates let alone anything
about their background or accent. Given that only 60% of people apparently know the name of their MP…
The way Mark Oaten phrases his proposal is daft, and party whips should, err, whip him for it. The proposal (which, for those of you who\’ve only been following through soundbites, is to use joyriders\’ interest in cars to persuade them to become mechanics) is entirely sensible to anyone who hasn\’t been brainwashed by Blunkett\’s Bumper Book of Hanging and Flogging.
I also hope Oaten mis-spoke about a \”£40 fine\” - not a bad price for a day on a racing track!
There is some sense in the way you put the proposal John B, provided that:
a) law-abiding kids have just as much opportunity to get onto such programmes
b) it is coupled with a suitable community punishment on a scheme that, say, aids those disabled by reckless drivers
I\’ve not seen anything to suggest the plan has really been thought through this far.
Lib Dems don\’t stand a chance here. This is an unusual sear. It isn\’t just a strong Labour seat. It is a seat held by Mandelson, who represents the perceived very worst of New Labour spin and presentation over substance. If Mandy can win comfortably here, I suggest even a monkey with a Labour rosette can.
A monekey did win in Hartlepool. Though not in a Labour rosette.
Exactly!
The info I have is that there is virtually nothing in it with a week to go, maybe 1,000 either way. I actually think that Jody Dunn is proving a strong candidate in Hartlepool and will prove to be the factor that gives the Lib Dems a narrow win.
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