What are we to make of Mori’s 9% Tory lead?
December 19th, 2005- Even if true Cameron would still not get a majority?
With so many political developments taking place every new opinion is being put under great scrutiny and the latest, from Mori, has the biggest shock so far. 
If confirmed by other pollsters the change in opinion it represents could totally change the landscape of UK politics.
For the poll in the Observer reports an astonishing turnaround in the fortunes of the Tories since David Cameron became leader. Mori’s “certain to vote” top-line figures give the party a nine point lead. These are the shares compared with the last Mori poll in November. CON 40 (+8): LAB 31 (-11): LD 21 (+2). So a 10 point Labour lead in November becomes and 11 point Tory lead less than three weeks later. This is a sensational change.
- A concern that I have always have about MORI polls is that they are not weighted by past vote. This is a mechanism that ICM, Populus, NOP and YouGov use to try to ensure that they have a representative sample. You ask what people did last time and weight responses broadly in terms of the General Election result. The Mori approach is to report in their to-line figures only those “absolutely certain to vote”
When MORI asked the Best Prime Minister question - Brown led Cameron by 31% to 27%. This was caused mostly by the pollster’s methodology and the way it presents results. The voting intention questions include only people certain to vote, while the questions on best Prime Minister included all respondents. In November the all respondents Mori figure had a staggering 17% Labour lead.
When Mori present figures in this way then they should be consistent. They have one lot of top-line figures and all the other data should be based on that. My rough back of an envelope calculation has it that Cameron would have been significantly ahead on best PM if only those included in the voting intention figures had been included.
The next major poll should be the December survey for the Guardian by ICM which should be out tomorrow or on Wednesday. An ICM survey just over a week ago had the Tories ahead. Will they still have a margin?
Putting the Mori vote shares into Martin Baxter’s famous calculator which seeks to assess each seat based on a uniform national swing we get: CON 317: LAB 249: LD 48. The Tories would be seven seats short of an overall majority.
Mike Smithson
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This is much more like I was expecting to see, except LDs seem a bit too high. Game on for the local elections now…
I accept some of your caution, Mike, but the Mori polling method always used to overstate Labour and slightly understate Conservative support (certainly it seemed to in the lead up to 2005).
What makes this poll so relevant, as I said on an earlier thread, is that it confirms the lead we have had since Cameron took over and in my view validates the change in the political firmamment that we all feel has occurred.
In the Gordon/Cameron question, aren’t the findings (Brown doing better among women and AB voters) a bit against the general consunsus here about Brown’s appeal?
Brown shouldn’t be underrated. Look at the lead he enjoys over Cameron on the economic question.
Traditionally the opposition has a huge lead in opinion polls that withers as an election approaches (some time away methinks). Cameron looks impressive now as he tacks to the left. Dont panic - wait for the costings and listen to the squeals from the CBI.
At family do on Sunday - 8 year old greeted me with - “The Liberal democrats are in bit of trouble uncle Stephen” - who says the young are not interested in politics!
In all the parliaments that have preceded governments losing elections, the principal opposition have led by 20+ points at some stage (albeit briefly during 1970-74). The same goes for some parliaments that have not seen the government change (1987-92 and 1979-83). 9 points isn’t an awful lot - except by comparison with the miserable Conservative performance in opposition since 1997. So don’t get too excited, even if it is confirmed by future polls. And my instinct about this is that findings at this stage are a bit fluffy, in that they may reflect instant warm feelings about Cameron rather than a view that will survive very long. Blair’s achievement in 1994-97 was in consolidating and confirming that switch in support in favour of Labour (which Labour did not manage after the 1990 high point).
5 - This applied to the Labour opposition in the 1980s and 1990s. However, much of the discrepancy between opinion polls and outcome is probably due to the pro-Labour bias of the polls at that time. Most polls in 2005 overestimated the Labour lead. In neither 2001 nor 2005 was there a huge swing back towards the government.
Oh, and how could I fail to remind people that the hurdle for the Conservatives to get an overall majority is something like 42-43% and for Labour something like 34%? It’s highly likely that if a Conservative government does emerge from a future general election it will need Lib Dem votes (or at least acquiescence) in order to survive. Hence, I’m sure, the attempt by Cameron to soften up the party to the idea that Lib Dems and their voters can be sensible and there is some common ground.
8 - Lewis, I made the same point on the previous thread, aided also by my memory of the analysis on the Make My Votes Count site about how big a hill the Tories have to climb just to get a majority.
That’s only if the distribution of votes remains the same Lewis. In practice, I imagine a 9% Conservative lead would be sufficient for a working majority.
4. Sean you appear to have become the prophet of doom recently. Whilst I don’t believe this poll, I certainly believe it might be 38-33 at the moment. Brown will obviously enjoy higher ratings than Cameron on the economy at the moment because Cameron has not declared any kind of policy at the moment. I do think you are being a touch disingenuous with regards to Cameron at the moment.
I don’t think that past history is going to be a terribly good guide here as this is new territory. How are Labour going to respond to a situation that hasn’t existed for the past eight years? The signs thus far are that it is going to be a lethal mixture of panic, complacency and mutual recrimination.
Blair seems to be willing to drag the whole party down with him and I doubt that his loyalists will rally around Brown once Blair has gone. I fully expect that they will be blaming the electorate for “letting the Tories back in” when this shambles is brought to an end.
I also find this particularly significant as this is a Mori poll, and they were probably the organisation that most recently gave Labour 50+% in an opinion poll.
I suppose it is in my nature to be a bit pessimistic. On another thread I recalled going to one Conservative function straight after Michael Howard became leader - and dismaying one of our MPs with my view that if everything went really well at the next election, we might win 220 seats (few people there were talking about winning outright, but there was a lot of excited talk about winning c.270-280 seats).
9. Sean will have the rare experience of being accused by someone of being a prophet of doom and someone else of being a voice of blithe optimism. I don’t see why an across-the-board increase in Conservative support should improve the distribution of their vote, unless it is an extremely large increase. It would depend on a large number of seats already having a Conservative share close to the ceiling of party support, which I can’t believe to be the case. Either that, or Conservative support rising well below average in already weak seats, which I can’t see either.
And in any case I find it hard to believe that Conservative support will rise that strongly in a real election. To Timothy, I would say that those who fail to learn from history are destined to repeat it. Sean’s caution is much wiser.
8. I think you are still a bit too much in thrall to simplistic UNS calculations - as I noted on a previous thread, a 6% national swing would probably mean outsize regional swings in key areas like London and thus deliver a lot more gains than UNS would suggest.
On the other thread, I said I couldn’t see Conservative support rising by 7% in areas of real weakness like Liverpool and Glasgow (assuming the Conservatives were to poll 40% nationally) - so I’d expect to see an above average rise in marginal seats and safe seats to produce that rise overall.
Also, if Labour were to drop back to 31%, I’d expect to see a sharp drop in pro-Labour tactical voting (and perhaps even tactical voting against Labour).
Sean and others. One reason the 1997 landslide was so massive was because the Labour Party had become totally pessimistic to the extent that they just didn’t believe there was the possibility of them actually forming a Government outright.
Blair was in talks with the Lib Dems on the very eve of the election as to the possible makeup of the ‘third way’ coalition he was convinced was the best they could get.
Pessimism is a pre-requisite to a good result.
If you were to ask me what I expect to see (so far out from the next election), Woody, then I think Labour will lose their overall majority.
Whilst acknowledging the data extropolated from Martin Baxter’s votes to seats calcualtion,it should be remembered that there will be (probably)11 more Tory seats and 7 less Labour seats,in a 650 seat chamber next time,so this Mori poll,extropated on ntional uniform swing,would yield a narrow overall Conservative majority.IMHO,whilst it is very early days,and no serious psephologist would get too carried away over one poll,this does seem to confirm the trend over the last couple of weeks,that the Tories are ‘back’ as a serious electoral force;I await further events with interest!
We must factor in that if Cameron has rid the Conservatives of their nasty labels the shy Tories will be more forthcoming.
19. I’m not being so optimistic that I think we’ll win the next election with a landslide. It’s far too far away to judge. I just thought the point you made about Brown and Cameron was a little negative.
As others have said it’s probably best to wait six months or untill the May elections to see what impact is really being made.
The polls do have a positive effect on the moral of members and activists and perhaps assist with causing anxiety for the other two main parties. So hopefully the positive figures will continue.
With all the caveats that others have expressed, my reaction to the MORI poll is basically “I should jolly well think so” - given Cameron’s election and Labour’s travails over Iraq and now education. I read Prescott’s going public on the latter issue as a coded message for “Blair’s lost it” and surely Labour must spend the New Year with focus groups trying to establish how widespread that perception is. Cameron is well liked by metropolitan media types who aren’t natural Tories by any means - what he needs to do is to demonstrate organisational skill both in the Commons and in the country. I expect him to focus on this until next autumn, and then take a view on when he would like the next election to be, having regard to who is leading the other parties and his opinion of his front-bench team.
Can I recommend Jackie Ashley’s excellent piece in the guardian today? Very interesting speculation on the year or so ahead.
Estelle Morris seems to have Blair over a barrel over the education issue. if he doesn’t cave in he will end up trying to get his silly bill through with the support of Cameron and more Tories than labour MPs than Labour and Lib Dem ones.
Brings me to the Labour (Blair) succession. Former education Secretary, come out of nowhere, no hope of winning at all. . . .
Well didn’t it happen once before?
21. I think Colin has a good point. If Cameron’s eventual policies match the current mood music, particularly if proposals brought forward by the Gummer commission on the environment are adopted, then it will be hard to paint Cameron’s Conservatives as being only about self-interest. And this might lead to the pollsters weighting methodologies showing Conservative bias.
Does Baxter account for the boundary changes?
[25] Yes, she’s on her best form to-day - I particularly liked the insinuation that, if forced out next year, Blair may be relaxed about the idea of a Brown government failing.
28 - No he doesn’t. Allthough to be fair I don’t think all the changes have been finalised yet.
20/28 Given the boundary changes are not quite finalised, and the precise work on producing notional numbers (as opposed to calling seats one way or another) has not been done, Baxter doesn’t include them.
Also, it’s by no means as simple as just adding X to the Con total and taking Y off Labour to estimate these changes (and I make it Con +7 Lab -5 anyway). That is at a given distribution of the national vote, i.e. the same as 2005. Boundary changes also affect the consequences of a given amount of swing in terms of seats. I’ve seen it argued (to my mind unconvincingly) that the boundary changes affect the gradient in a way that helps the Conservatives.
Labour has exceeded its expectations after a third straight GE victory - now it is becoming a victim of its own success and become complacent. The Tories are heading for government in 4 years and they will be in government for decades. Labour may never be elected again because the UK consitution will have been amended to allow for an English parliament (where the Conservatives nearly always win) or Scotland becomes independent.
Is it Cameron or is it the economy, stupid? Maybe Cameron has had the good fortune to come along just as voters are having to tighten their belts.
Since the retailers are announcing record sales right now, I might have lost the plot or perhaps that just reflects that inevitable Christmas spending has been deferred till it’s almost upon us. National Lottery midweek sales, surely the epitome of discretionary spending, have fallen below £20 million these last few weeks (their lowest ever level).
If there is an economic reason for discontent with the government then maybe now is not the best time for the LibDems to be putting it about that their leader is a hapless old soak.
25: Thanks for the tip — great article. Last paragraph really insinuates the extent to which politics has drifted more recently. The sharpening of any debate, as well improved and constructive opposition has to be welcome.
Liam Fox weds his long-time love
“Conservative defence spokesman Liam Fox has taken time out from front bench politics to wed his long-term partner and fellow doctor Jesme Baird.”
Surely the word “Baird” is a typo?
Fascinating stuff. But it will all get much more clear when Brown and the new Lib Dem leader are in place. Hopefully though this crest will last us beyond the sweeping gains in the locals next year. That could really give us some momentum.
I totally agree with with 33, the tories can’t win the next election only Brown can lose it,the economy seems to be bumpy now but should smooth out in the next 18 mths, with Cameron and Brown in charge lib dems will be squeezed and could lose up to 30 seats
Re. 29, indeed. I expect his reaction to a Tory victory in 09 might be along the lines of Robert Conquest’s alleged reply to his US publisher’s request for a new title for a revised edition of The Great Terror after the end of the USSR: “How about ‘I Told You So, You F*cking Fools’?”
We also know that Ashley speaks for Brown (or the Brownites), just as Tom Baldwin speaks for Blair (and the Blairites, not least Alistair Campbell).
I think these Mori figures are interesting, but so far this discussion has not taken into account that the Lib Dem percentage has ALSO gone up.
However, it seems to me that the most significant change is the Labour one: their loss of support is dramatic. The question is who picks up the former Labour voters. It is not necessarily going to be the Tories, once the effect of their recent months of highly favourable publicity has worn off.
18 - “Pessimism is a pre-requisite to a good result.”
That rules out Rik then
At last, the sort of numbers you would expect to see in normal politics. An effective opposition ought to be leading a government in its third term with numerous blots on its record. Its much too early to conclude that we will see a change of Government at the next election but at least the right signs are starting to show.
39. and many “winning here Libdems….maybe that’s why you haven’t decapitated any tory…..
41. Andrea there with the put downs. I bet you were lost over the weekend.
EU statement at 3.30 if anyone is interested.
42.”I bet you were lost over the weekend. ”
I managed to survive….on saturday and sunday morning I was busy finishing a research paper for a uni exam. Delivered today and a minute after delivering it, I discover the first mistake
(the headline in a page and the paragraph in the next one)
44. Bad luck. I’m sure the reast of it will be OK.
Anyone know why Charles Clarke hardly ever appears on TV anymore and always sends out Blears?
Enjoy:
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/backbench/story/0,14158,1667313,00.html
45. woody, something went wrong with the final cut and paste (it was a group work and we had to put together the whole paper this morning).
46. Rik, disappointed you haven’t posted the allegations of Paul Marsden about Kennedy’s drinking problems
47 - Andrea - I dont think anyone takes anything Paul Marsden says seriously!
He is, however, a very gifted poet.
41 - “maybe that’s why you haven’t decapitated any tory…..”
<> Westmoreland & Lonsdale?
50. oh, yes, the less famous one (but maybe their importance depends on the perceptive). I got the impression your aims were more ambitious than just Tim Collins
48- Rik,
44 - After spending much of Saturday in A&E and most of Sunday recovering I didn’t even know the site was down till this morning. I have to say the new ERI was very nice - good to see the PFI working!
52 - Nothing serious I hope Max.
50. I think that was more to do with Tim Collins not working the seat rather than the failed strategy. How many of the intended targets increased their majorities?
52. Hope it’s nothing serious Max.
52. Don’t know what A&E is, but after Lennon’s and Woody’s comments, I suppose nothing positive.
55 - Accident & Emergency
56. Thanks, Sophia. Hopefully anything serious for out Scottish spy.
51 - Andrea, those seats would have been targetted anyway due to their small majorities after 2001. It was the Times, not the Lib Dems, who coined the phrase. And it allowed resources to be deployed in other areas …
54 - I also think it had something to do with the make-up of the seat. Westmorland seems to me much more similiar to the LibDems ‘rural poor’ seats in Scotland and the South-West than any of the other targets.
52&53 - No nothing too bad. Was very drunk after the office Christmas party and managed to trip over my lace and fall head first into a kerb. Looks like I’ve been in a fight though - which maybe explains why I was stopped by plain-clothes police outside my flat on Saturday night! So all in all a very dramatic weekend! They said I looked suspicious - I thought I was in trouble for throwing away a fag-end (and getting a £50 on the spot fine) but fortunately they just wanted to know if I had any controlled substances!
57 - I hope you mean ‘nothing’ rather than ‘anything’!!
59. I agree. High house prices and low wages is a major problem in that area.
60. The perils of binge drinking
54. woody, Theres May increased her majority from 7.6% to 13.6%
David Davis was returned with a 10.7% majority (up from 4.3%)
Letwin won with a 4.6% majority (2.8% in 2001)
Tim Collins was ousted with a 6.5% Tory majority becoming a 0.5% Libdem one.
58 oh, yes, Tabman, you would have targeted it anyway, but my point was about not being over-optimist, not about targetting.
I take your point about the origin of the term.
61. yes, sorry. I’m actually reading while writing the comments…not sure what I’m doing worse!
62 - The doctor gave me a leaflet about the dangers of binge drinking - apparently it increases the chances of having an accident - if only someone had told me before!
63 - you forgot Howard. Increased majority too, I believe.
64 - Andrea, I wasn’t on here saying we were going to win those seats or claiming that thousands of ex-Tories were flocking to vote Lib Dem in the East Midlands
66. well, if we go outside the 10% margin, John Redwood increased his majority too.
67. Tabman, I said many Libdems, not all Libdems! You’re the one who decided to go on the defensive
Does Blair’s complete hash of the EU Budget negotiations add to the impression of a Goverment startng to crumble? In addition the next time Labour claims that tax cuts will harm services the reply will be what about the X billions you gave to the EU (the X will vary depending on what they are arguing about.
68 - the perils of having no distinguishing “du/sie”-type singular/plural for “you”!
Is it all starting to look like the fag end of government? Nobeody would think that barely 7 months ago TB won a 60 seat majority.
In some of the decapitation seats, the Conservatives were caught a bit napping in 2001 by a Lib Dem assault but smartened up their act in 2005 and held on well. Bear in mind that the majorities of May and Davis took a dive in 2001, against the usual trend. But more generally the failure of the Lib Dems in the seats they were contesting with the Conservatives should be (and surely is) a subject for an inquest into their campaign. I wonder if the idea of lining up in the same party as Brian Sedgemore was too much for some potential Lib Dem voters.
Blair is looking desperate.
72 - Often the way. I wonder whether a tip for aspiring MPs is to try to find a target seat with a majority of around 2,000-4,000 - low enough to be vulnerable to a good campaign but high enough to encourage a level of complacency among your opponents. Do any stattos know whether there was indeed a higher hit rate in that group than in seats with two and three figure majorities? Of course the “decapitation” seats were around that level but had been so widely touted that any complacency would have been unforgivable (Collins was in that category by all accounts).
Blair is performing at his worst “I have no argument but if I shout loud enough maybe no-one will notice”
72 - Lewis, IIRC Stodge gave a good discetion of ours and the Tories’ campaigns on Friday’s thread.
74 - there are plenty of examples from all parties of seats which were from time to time seen as “nailed on” wins that didn’t go but it may all be anecdotal - Dorset South, Norfolk North, SW Surrey - it goes on and on.
Blair seemed to be losing his rag. Can’t imagine any commentators saying anything positive about him. Cameron was methodical rather than inspiring, but somewhat dogged. CK rambled on, was he on the juice?
72 - the Tories were very good last time at identifying their vote and encouraging back some of the lost sheep, plus of course their dog whistle. Cameron seems to be dog-whistling in the other direction so it remains to be seen whether his more right-leaning flock run astray again.
Blair failed to answer any of Camerons questions and failed to help himself in blustering and shouting his way through is reponse to Camerons questions. His latest tactic of keep questioning the tory front bench when he knows they can’t answer, and then picking up the odd out of context word is fairly underhand and desperate as well.
79 - True, but of course in LibDem - Tory marginals the ones Cameron is currently sirening are worth twice the ones he’s potentially losing, so the Maths probably still adds up for him at the moment.
I see the Tory faithful are out in force. A couple of opinion polls and they are as high as kites.
Given that the various members of tory frontbench use ‘coke’ that is not provided by Coca-Cola. Additionally Mr. Cameron is yet to explain away how he can flip-flop from supporting depositing asylum seekers on the Dodger Bank (or another offshore location) in the manifesto he wrote to “taking them to our hearts, and feeding and clothing and schooling them”.
“Given that the various members of tory frontbench use ‘coke’ that is not provided by Coca-Cola.”
Is this labour equivalent of Goodwin’s law?
It seems sensible to me to abandon policies which obviously failed with the electorate and the off-shore island thing always seemed rather unconvincing anyway. In fact Cameron has said “why stick with policies which failed?” and Blair said much the same thing in 1997 when questioned about abandoning traditional labour policies.
82,83 - I’m sure some on the Tory front-bench prefer Pepsi…
82 - Bryan your comments are offensive and probably libelous.
82. Not seen you on here before Bryan and after that rather vicious nasty comment, I hope we don’t see you again.
85 - Pepsi? No, good old fashioned British Vimto!
85 - don’t mention Pepsi, otherwise we’re never going to hear the last of ‘The choice of a new generation’…
82 - Do you mean Dogger Bank as in the famous sea battle rather than Dodger Bank as in doesn’t exist?
85 - I prefer Pepsi Max - it doesn’t taste as good but I appreciate them going to the trouble of personalising the cans for me.
The perception that TB is a great politician, but only an ordinary statesman can, will grow after the EU concession.
The EU needs a smaller budget in total, not a larger one. Why should agricultural subsidies come out of a central pot? DC doesn’t seem to have made much of it—an important (and very easy) place to put some distance between himself and the govt.
But an educated supporter of TB–Nick Palmer–doesn’t think it matters. I am thus nervous of claiming that it’ll come back to haunt him, but I do…
86 - Rik, I suppose alleging that the Tory Front bench uses some sort of “trade” solid fuel is a pretty low assertion
91. Politics, and statesmanship for that matter, is the art of the possible. Clearly Blair wants a reformed CAP and a smaller EU budget but we are one country out of 25 and cannot always get our own way. In my view Blair got a deal good for Britain in the long term. It strengthens our already strong ties with the new Eastern European countries while maintaining the rebate on agricultural spending. The net contribution of both France and Italy increases at a much faster rate than our own and Germany will continue to be a bigger contributer. Blair could have used his veto and achieved a victory but it would have been a pyrhic one, destroying our relationship with other countries and reducing our influence on the EU. Maintaining the rebate in full would have been unjust, leaving us as the 2nd lowest net contributer, this unsurprisingly was unacceptable to all other EU states considering we are one of the most prosperous nations in the EU.
8 Lewis Baston said for the Conservatives to get an overall majority is something like 42-43% and for Labour something like 34%?
Well no, that is not correct. Firstly, any result has to be in the context of the performance of other parties. Its a matrix not an individual score.
For us Tories our result will be much influenced by what the LibDems manage. It is quite possible that at the next election there will be anti-Labour tactical voting.
If you use Baxter even uncorrected for the boundary changes Tories 40% Labour 31% and LibDems 18% gives a Tory majority of 22. With the LibDems down to 23 seats.
And again, as Sean Fear points out, there is rarely a uniform swing and if it is going our way we might expect much more satisfaction from many LibDem marginals that from solid Labour fiefdoms like Liverpool. Although you never know, do you? And we are not there yet by a long way.
But there is a risk for the LibDems that the talk about the mountain and all that could soon look like comfort food.
[93] You have to be a committed Blair enthusiast to believe that this was the best possible deal. The French were well pleased…
Typically, the deal was what suited TB at the time. A powerful negotiating tool for a future PM? An opportunity to make a real difference right now, but tough, and needed mastery of detail?
I’m not surprised by the outcome. However, you don’t have to be a UKIP member to be unimpressed by it.
72.”I wonder if the idea of lining up in the same party as Brian Sedgemore was too much for some potential Lib Dem voters. ”
but in some other seats like Cheadle or Mid Dorset, the Libdems performed well.
95: The deal was a dreadful one whichever way you look at it.
Take this perspective. The EU has had a terrible year with the rejection of the constitution, problems over future enlargement and trade problems with the WTO and China. By reaching a deal on the budget TB allows the EU to put all this back into the past, and carry on blindly as before with a new deal agreed. If he had refused a budget deal, things would have got worse which might have been the tipping point for a major rethink about the EU.
The only way to fundamentally change the EU is to create a paralysis that will after time force change to occur. However getting a new budget deal prevents this from happening and it can carry on.
Nick Palmer’s claim that the rebate will still increase under this deal is probably true, but only in cash terms. But the rebate was never a fixed cash figure but as a proportion of the budget contribution. So giving away 8billion while the overall budget increases more means that the rebate is reducing: the UK contribution has increased more than it has for France or Germany etc.
If this is a success further successes could well mean that we shall end up with no rebate at all and no net benefit from the EU budget.
85/88. Pepsi is too “sweet”! Coca Cola is better.
93. Statesmanship is partly the art of the possible and partly positioning expectations to influence the possibilities. As you rightly say, on the face of it, TB has avoided a phyric victory and conceded sufficiently to maintain cohesion etc. On the 1st part of the test, he can be given a ‘pass’ mark - although as he is notoriously a big picture man, unable to deal in details (as revealed in excruating detail by the former Washington ambassador), it is almost certain that he ‘left some money on the table’.
However, he has made a complete shambles of the ‘expectation management’ part of his brief - FUBAR would be too kind. He has p!ssed off (in no particular order) 1) the Eastern Europeans 2)the D.O. 3)all ‘core’ EU states 4) R Murdoch 5) all ‘frog’ lovers. To have managed to alienate 2-3 of the above simultaneously requires skill; to have managed all of them requires genius. The man has lost it. I just hope he stays long enough to completly poison the chalice.
can we cut out and keep this priceless gem from Francis: “The Tories are heading for government in 4 years and they will be in government for decades. Labour may never be elected again because the UK consitution will have been amended to allow for an English parliament (where the Conservatives nearly always win) or Scotland becomes independent”. Comment by Francis — 19/12/2005 @ 1:26 pm.
I challenge anyone to find a more ambitious post in the history of PB.Com.
101 - truly Rik on Acid
101.”because the UK consitution ”
I thought UK hasn’t a constitution!
101 - I’m sure Rik said some things about his prospects in Sutton and Cheam that were fairly overboard in retrospect, but even he never went as far as that
103: “I thought UK hasn’t a constitution!”
It does, but we just haven’t written most of it down yet!
103. ok, on reflection, I suppose the various laws which are necessary to rule the country are the UK constitution. It’s just that they aren’t written in the same document.
am I right now?
I’ve said it before here but it seems it needs saying again.
Baxter is only a very approximate tool. If you had typed the actual result of the 2005 GE into Baxter BEFORE the last election, it predicted a Labour majority of over 100. The actual majority was 66. So it is very possible that a similar difference could occur next time.
I would say that any vote shares which give a current Baxter prediction of 300 seats for the Conservatives could well be enough for an overall majority. Remember also that Baxter is still on old boundaries at the moment.
Putting Con 39, Lab 33, LD 20 into Baxter gives 299 Conservative seats. So that might be enough.
O/T - Cameron has appointed Chris Roycroft-Davis (Executive Editor of The Sun) as a speechwriter.
I have to say that I am amazed at the lack of short term effects SO FAR at the Kennedy problem- no net losses in by-elections (and a few big gains), 21% now in 2 polls. Almost all support moving from Labour.
Sure, not great time for the party- infact pretty dire- but I see no collapse, and, as the Mori Oberserver poll showed, Kennedy’s poll ratings are similar to the ones before the election. Could we, possibly, have some sort of core base if disaffected Labour lefties and liberals?
108. Is there a table available anywhere which gives the following information for each country (per year, say from 2005 to 2013):
a) Gross contribution
b) EU spending received
c) Rebate
d) Net contribution (a-b-c=d)
It seems that thousands and thousands of words are written, everyone puts a different interpretation on it yet nowhere is it possible to just see the key facts all in one place.
How many people who have posted on this thread (of all viewpoints) actually know all this information (in full, not just the bits that suit their own argument!)
96 - Yes - but both Cheadle and MDNP were cases of double incumbency in 2005 after seats were first gained in 2001 by Lib Dems. In general (and the Lib Dems being what they are, generalisations are more approximate than for other parties) they did worse than they should have against the Conservatives.
94. Do you really think a national fall in the Lib Dem share of the vote will really cause seat after seat to switch over to the Conservatives as UNS models suggest? And that it’s at all realistic talking about the Lib Dems being down to 20-something seats? Tosh. Most Lib Dem incumbents have always been very good at digging in and the current lot are a more streetwise bunch than past lots. They might have trouble again handing over open seats, though, if their national share is falling.
107 - boundaries - see above. And if you cross your fingers and don’t step on the cracks in the pavement it’ll be a landslide. UNS is an assumption from which everyone knows there will be departures, but you have to have better evidence than wishful thinking in departing from it. Sean F, to his credit, does spell out a couple of his assumptions.
Eric 101. Sadly I think I made an even more over the top post at about 6pm on May 5th when I urged people to BUY the Lib Dems at 68 seats. That cost me dear! What would have been an extremely profitable General Election became just OK.
110 You seem to have a difficulty in accepting that there might be other scenarios that do not match your preferred one. Your complacency is our gain.
110-” Yes - but both Cheadle and MDNP were cases of double incumbency in 2005 after seats were first gained in 2001 by Lib Dems.”
but Ludlow was a first incumbency too. In Touton thet defeated the first incubent (even if someone was expecting a bigger majority).
So trying to find an explanation to LD result is a bit more complex than blaming Brian Sedgemore.
68 Bryan your comments are offensive and probably libelous.
Comment by Rik W
Accusing Cameron of being a flip flopper is libellous, oh! heavy man
112. well, Blue2win, the same could be said about you! You’re complaing just because someone else is giving his (different) idea. do you really want that we all post just “the tories will win every seat in the country including Blaenau Gwent”?
96 - I suppose the difference is that the electorate locally knew enough about Annette Brooke and the late Patsy Calton to know they were not reds beneath the bed ready to leap out and cause havoc. Compared with their knowledge of their MPs (particularly the more active ones), people’s knowledge of challenging candidates is pretty sketchy to say the least.
108 - The old adage that there’s no such thing as bad publicity has a little bit of truth in it - but there may be some longer term harm in that it is the sort of thing people remember. The real issue for the Lib Dems though is whether Kennedy’s detractors have a fair point about his ability to make progress. The recent spat is much more a public airing for an issue which has been circulating for a long time.
re 8&9 it tends to confirm my opinion voiced on other threads that there is now such inbuilt bias that the Tories will never win another FPTP election. You only need to compare the Isle of Skye with the Isle of Wight to see now the system is stacked up aganist them
113 - There is no automatic right to an incumbancy advantage. People get it if voters locally take the view that the MP is better than expected and better than most. Why neither Matthew Green nor Adrian Flook (nor various others around the country) convinced people of that is probably only something their constituents can answer. Results like North Norfolk and Mid Dorset (I’ll leave out Cheadle as the circumstances in 2005 were exceptional although by all accounts Patsy Calton was a respected MP) can only really be explained heavily aided by incumbancy advantage although no doubt factors like local organisation played a role too.
Re 26. There’s absolutely no way of renouncing a life peerage and whilst it would delight me to see the first PM as a peer for 40 years I doubt even the modern Labour party would wear it.
118. James, is challenging everything I write today your new hobby?
I’m not the one who introduced the “first incumbency” effect to explain LD results.
.
113, 120 - I endorse what James says about incumbency. Most observations about electoral rules, I think we can agree, should be bracketed with caveats like (other things being equal) (unless something weird happens) etc etc. It would be rare indeed if one of these patterns proved to be universally true. But double incumbency is one that seems to be repeatedly confirmed in statistical analysis. It’s the exceptions to the pattern that need further inquiry, not the pattern. And I was speaking rather flippantly about Sedgemore. I used him as a symbol of the projection of the Lib Dems in 2005 as being more to the left than the centre, which I think did them some damage (I also think that Labour’s line that people who voted LD might let in a Tory government might, perversely, have solidified the Labour vote in some LD target seats). I certainly wouldn’t put it all on the shoulders of one man. In general, I don’t like monocausal explanations and tend to think life is complicated.
110 - the cheek of it! *splutter!* I’m prepared to be judged on the tone and content of my posts and yours as to who is more open-minded and, as they say in the US, ‘reality-based’.
121. well, you were the first one to introduce the double incumbency effect as an explanation for some results. then when I challenge you about the seats where that effect didn’t seem to have worked, you simply reply with the “there is no automatic right to an incumbancy advantage” line. Ok, fair enough, I agree. But then we could ask why it worked for Annette Brooke and not Matthew Green (assuming MG wasn’t just cr*p as MP)? I just wanted to try to discover something more…..
Then, I could agree with you that the perception of the LD being on the left could have damaged them in some areas, but this perception is something more than just Sedgemore defecting to them.
Ruth Kelly Wardrobe Watch: Better, but she is still either suffering from protanomaly or has no access to a mirror. Also, seems to have gone as grey as a mule in the space of the last 2 weeks. Role ambiguity is always a cause of workplace stress, I suppose.
108 ‘I have to say that I am amazed at the lack of short term effects SO FAR at the Kennedy problem’.
I am pleasantly surprised too. There are signs that Lib Dem vote is much firmer than it used to be, it is less the protest vote and more about issues. It is why the Lib dems opinion poll showing has been much more constant since 1997 than it was in the ’80’s, when it ranged from a high of 50% at the launch of the SDP to less than 5% post merger.
I don’t doubt there will be a dip in the polls if the leadership issue is prolongued, but not the depths of previous self inflicted wounda and there is no reason why it should not recover.
Richard Church
123. Talking about MPs wardrobes, yersteday I spotted Jeremy Corbyn debating thr Education Paper with Oona King on Sky and he wasn’t wearing a red jacket.
122. Re-reading my comment, it could seem a bit confrontational. it was not my intention.
122 - Fair enough; my post 121 does say that I agree about Sedgemore! I think we have a consensus. An advantage for double incumbency is a pretty good general rule and we do need to look at exceptions. Sometimes the root of exceptional cases is in fact in the previous election. I wonder if in Ludlow the Lib Dems benefited from the same feelings that drove the rise of Dr Taylor in 2001 (a chunk of the Ludlow seat looks to Kidderminster hospital) and when these fell back in 2005 some voters returned to their normal allegiance. Taunton’s complexities probably also owe something to the circumstances in 2001 - Jackie Ballard could be abrasive and forthright; she was also targeted in a very high-temperature campaign by the Dulverton hunt. She failed to get an incumbency bonus in 2001. But perhaps the oddity of the circumstances of the Flook victory (ho ho) meant that another Lib Dem started from a better position because the hunters were less determined and he hadn’t made as many people as cross as Jackie B did! But please take the point. MDNP and Cheadle don’t need long explanations - they are pretty predictable (and predicted) double incumbency cases. Taunton and Ludlow do, because they went against a well-tried pattern.
121 Lewis Baston for the Conservatives to get an overall majority is something like 42-43% and for Labour something like 34%.
I assumed these must come from Lord Foxy Flubber’s Bar-Chart World Electoral Reality Ride? Not from Baxter that is for sure.
122 - Andrea, don’t worry. I’m still regaining my breath after being portrayed as complacent by one of the blue chorus! And it’s the exceptions to the rules that make electoral life interesting. If we had a formula that always told us the result in a constituency from the national swing, the readership of books written by me and others would be pretty small!
126. “But please take the point.”
which one? I’m staring to get lost! I don’t remember which was the problem that started this discussion,
128- Lewis. Relieved now. Actually I think we even reached a sort of consensus in the end.
Andrea - all I meant was that a good rule of thumb isn’t invalidated necessarily even by several exceptions - one needs to think about what explains the exceptions before chucking out the rule.
For instance, even if Blue2Win were to make a polite and well-reasoned comment next, it might still be foolish to abandon the general rule that posts authored under that name are rarely worth reading…
122 - You are quite right that the left-wing tag damaged us against the Tories. This was generally less so in held seats where the MPs were generally regarded as not being card-carrying commies, but the factor was still present.
Making incumbancy stick takes several attributes. Being good at your job (and having a well run constituency office) and being personally likeable are probably the most important and my personal view is that Green did not score as well as Brooke (or Lamb or various others) on that ground (indeed your assumption that he “wasn’t just cr*p as MP” may be a tad dangerous). Having a good relationship with the local press and using your increased prestige as an MP to build the constituency organisation are also very important. Again, I think it likely that Green was less adept at that than others.
You are also reliant on your opponents. Ludlow was a very good case of where the Tory organisation was apprently deeply complacent in 2001 and to their credit turned it around. Teignbridge is an example I know of where the defeat in 2001 simply didn’t act as a wake up call (Stanley Johnson is an immeasurably better person than Patrick Nichols but you can probably guess he is not a great organiser).
So as Lewis says, it leaves us with a rather messy rule of incumbancy with lots of caveats. But is there a sizeable body of “Tories for Brooke” in Dorset which would not have existed if she was one of the ranks of non-descript “challengers” from any party across the country? I think undoubtedly yes.
Just to add to that (132), I remember meeting Matthew Green at a reception in 2002 or 2003. Making conversation, I asked who he felt might be next Lib Dem leader. He then proceeded to tell me that it would need to be somebody first elected in 1997 or 2001 but that it couldn’t be X because Y (X being everyone apart from himself elected in those years and Y being some spurious reason too dull to mention in each case). Anyway, I hope he didn’t lay too much money on it - I didn’t.
131. Lewis, I actually 100% agree on this.
I’m not surprised the LDs are doing well. CK is well liked by everybody. That apparently excludes nerds and policy wonks, but they don’t matter.
106:
As I understand it the British Constitution is mainly unwritten but there are certain parts that are codified, like the Bill of Rights 1688, and the Act of Succession.
74 - Did the (in)famous LibDem decapitation strategy target David Cameron at all ?
137. considering the LDs were in third place in 2001, I doubt that even the most optimist of them thought about winning (here) Witney!
98 According to the Sunday Times our net contribution goes up 63% while the French will contribute 116% more and the Italians 135% extra.
137 - we wanted to leave him in place ready for his defection to us
139.”the Italians 135% extra. ”
not sure where we will find them…..the government should increase the porn tax or tax something else too!
140. Tabman, Witney is a place which inspires defection
137 Cameron was a nobody before the GE. He only got bumped up to education spokesman because those nice Lib Dems knocked off Tim Collins. Maybe if that had not happened he would have had no credibility to even start a campaign?
As it happens Lewis (though it strengthens your argument about the benefits a Lib Dem MP enjoys as an incumbent) the Lib Dems ought (in theory) to have made a net loss of 5 to the Conservatives on May 5th. In Lib Dem seats where the Conservative was second, there was an average swing of 0.7% to the Conservatives. On the basis of UNS, that should have given the Conservatives Cheadle, Somerton & Frome, Guildford, North Norfolk, and Mid Dorset, with nothing passing the other way.
Tomorrow’s Guardian/ICM poll puts Tories at 37, Labour 36, rising to Tories at 41% Labour 36% if Brown was PM.
145. Depressing findins in the Cameron/Brown poll
Sean(144)as a resident of the Bournemouth East constituency,you may be interested to know that the weekend before 5th May,the Lib Dems packed up their campaign in Bmth East,realising it was a lost cause,and moved en masse to Dorset Mid(which runs into the north-west suburbs of Poole) to shore up the incumbent Lib Dem;quite suucessfully as I recall her majority went up from 384 to c6000.Even as a Labour voter,I was far happier to see the Tory win in my seat;he is a ‘new boy’,and seems of the paternalistic wing of the party-help,am I discovering latent Tory leanings in myself??:lol:
The poll certainly meets my prediction of a “juicy Tory lead” after Cameron, and of course Tories will be chuffed about it/ However, note the fieldwork is older than the YouGov and Populus polls that showed Labour slightly ahead). Comparing with the all-voters stats on Brown vs Cameron, it suggests (but Mike may be able to work it out precisely) that what’s happened is that a chunk of Labour voters have said they’re not sure if/how they’ll vote while Tory voters are currently cheerful and keen to vote. I’d expect to see some better Tory council by-election results than recently if this is correct. See Anthony Wells for further analysis. As he points out, MORI’s failure to weight for past voting normally helps Labour a lot, and insistence on only taking ‘certain to votes’ helps Tories a lot, so it’s likely to be one of these differences to the other polls rthat has changed significantly.
98: This is simply wrong, blue2win, as Kieran points out at 139. But I suspect that most people think something like that - I’m sure the popular media-fuelled impression is that the result wasn’t good, though I think it was the best available and much better than no deal. FWIW, my impression in the Commons was that Blair was on startlingly good form and Cameron and Kennedy were both just about average. More important is that Tory MPs seemed to feel the same - they gave a good cheer to a couple of prepared Cameron jokes and otherwise were fairly silent. To an extent that may not be visible outside the Commons, his MPs feel he’s still on probation: they hope he’ll be a great success and are impressed so far, but they’ve seen too many leaders come and go.
With regards to the Tory lead necessary to form a majority Government:
The 11% lead quoted is assuming that all other factors remain unchanged - specifically that the anti-Tory feeling that was so prevalent at the last 3 elections remains extant.
The factor of the differences in boundaries/constituency size (cf ChrisA at 117) is a red herring - distortion due to this will be reduced at the next GE anyway.
Rewinding all swings since 1987 (say) would mean that a result of Con 42%/ Lab 31%/ LD 23% would produce a 100 majority rather than a majority of 1 (as the “11% lead required” would predict). No-one is suggesting this, so the factors other than relative party strength in vote-share is obviously crucial - and the anti-Tory voting at the last three elections is the most likely candidate for this.
Since 1992, on the Baxter model, the tactical voting accumulated to (by 2001) a total of +7.0 in the yellow Lib-Lab box and +5.0 in the red Lab-Lib box when measured against the 1992 scenario. Most people (myself included) predicted substantial “unwind” of this in 2005 - which did not apparently happen - Baxter’s analysis shows only 0.5 unwind on Lib-Lab (so that it is now +6.5 against 1992) and zero unwind on Lab-Lib (still +5.0 against 1992 scenario).
This can also be seen by the “forced choice” question of “if you had to choose between Labour and Conservative, who would it be?” - Labour lead by about 17% on this at the election (52:35) against a lead of 5% on the relevant YouGov poll (37:32) - so of the 3rd party/others, Labour gained 15% on their raw strength to the Tories 3%, and a raw preference putting them over 50%.
If this remains the same, the 11% lead requirement will remain - as almost all of those not voting specifically Conservative would prefer Labour. To re-level the electoral landscape, this has to change - which is why I’m very interested in the “forced choice” question.
(Bear in mind also that the 1992 election was felt at the time to have had noticeable anti-Tory tactical voting anyway, reducing John Major’s majority considerably).
Even if the anti-Tory vote diminishes, the Tories have to avoid a Kinnock Wobble in the booths - they have to be close to Labour (at least) on economic competence to avoid voters wavering in the polling booth. They are pegging Labour back on this at the moment, but need to get still closer and do so consistently.
If they achieve both of these, then a lead noticeably less than 11% would probably suffice. As to how much would be necessary - your guesses are at least as good as mine
“Tories at 37, Labour 36, rising to Tories at 41% Labour 36% if Brown was PM.”
Altogether now, ‘John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave…’
148. Nick do you have the figures I set out in