ICM: Cameron increasing lead over Brown
December 20th, 2005-
Guardian leader: “Get used to it: the Tories are back”
The monthly ICM poll in the Guardian confirms the trend of recent other surveys and has 
Cameron’s Conservatives still ahead but doing even better against Gordon Brown.
The shares compared with the last ICM poll nine days ago are CON 37 (nc): LAB 36 (+1): LD 21 (nc). But to the question of how people would vote if it was Cameron’s Tories against Brown’s Labour the split is CON 41 (+1): LAB 36 (-1): LD 18 (nc).
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So yet another poll has Gordon Brown doing much worse against the Tories than his party and will surely impact on the betting for next Labour leader.
Gamblers usually respect the Guardian ICM poll more than any of the four regular surveys that come out each month and it usually has an impact on the markets. In summary the pollster puts the Tories 4% up this month against Blair’s Labour leadership, 8% up against Brown’s, with the Lib Dems down 2% and 5% respectively.
Another betting market that might be affected is the one on when Blair will eventually go. There are many different options but a good barometer is the one that he will still be there on New Year’s Day 2008. The latest price is 2.3/1. In our view the poorer that Brown does in the polls the greater the chance that Blair will remain.
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For the message from this poll for Labour is clear - replacing Tony with Gordon makes the party’s prospects even worse.
Overall the poll found that 66% of voters see David Cameron as a “potential Prime Minister”. Even 51% of Labour voters and 63% of Lib Dem ones regard the new Tory leader in this light. Of those saying they would vote Lib Dem in the survey 46% said that “Cameron was someone they could vote for”. Apart from this the Lib Dems will be quite pleased with their latest ICM figures. Still being on 21% in spite of all the negative publicity over their leadership must be a lot of consolation and might reinforce Charles Kennedy’s position.
In a leader under the heading “Get used to it: the Tories are back” the Guardian notes:- “The message is hard to miss. A lot of voters like what they see. The sceptics should get real about Mr Cameron…. the message is a sombre one for anyone who thinks that Mr Brown offers an instant boost to Labour’s chances compared with Mr Blair. The evidence of this poll is that at present he does not. It is Mr Blair’s presence that keeps Labour in contention..”
Mike Smithson
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To me, the problem with the Lib Dem’s 21% is that much of their support comes from Labour voters who hate Tony Blair due to Iraq amongst other issues. When Tony Blair goes, a lot of the people who were attracted by Blair will switch to the Conservatives because the Tories now have a slick, media-friendly leader. Cameron is, to them, the ‘new’ Blair. At the same time, Labour regain the support of those traditional Labour voters who hate Tony Blair. This explains why Brown and Blair are both roughly equal in terms of support (36%), but the Tories have a higher lead under Brown and the LibDems are weaker. This would be true of ANY Labour leader. If the LibDems fail to make more inroads in the next couple of years, Blair’s departure will hit their ’soft’ support quite hard. If I were a LibDem, I would be concerned about the recent Cameron-Brown polls, which have all showed a similar trend.
‘Gormless’ Gordon Brown is very dull and simply an offput to English voters. Labour are going to crash big time and English Nationalism will rise in the same way the SNP grew during the 1970s and the Thatcher years.
1.”When Tony Blair goes, a lot of the people who were attracted by Blair will switch to the Conservatives because the Tories now have a slick, media-friendly leader. ”
It’s very sad that people vote someone just because he’s media friendly. I suspected Cameron could have been a winner just because I “dislike” him as much as Blair.
So “tories are back”, does it mean Glenda couldn’t be the opposition Queen anymore and that TV should stop inviting Jeremy Corbyn to argue against the government?
1) I think all this stuff about what people might do if such and such were to happen is never helpful. I said this before and I will say it again. The Tories must be pleased that a paper like the Guardian are still keeping their ‘winning message’ going for them, but they must be worried - Honeymoon period and Cameron is only 1 point ahead and 4 points up on the election result. Given the noise the press have made, the column inches and air time devoted to his coronation, and he can’t take a double digit lead.
So the winners are. Well the Lib Dems. Not because they have done anything, but because they haven’t - and their vote has remained steady. Interestingly the poll shows something that I have always said, that the party’s spread is about 55% centre left and 45% centre right - which of course is a far more coherent spread of opinion than either Labour (Dennis Skinner to Tony Blair) or the Tories (Edward Leigh to whatever David Cameron is today - is he a liberal, is he a conservative, we’ll just have to wait and see).
4 - whether the LDs lean to left or right is one question but another is to what extent they are, well, liberal as opposed to authoritarian.
I have to say I’m very comfortabale with the batch of polls since Cameron was elected a fortnight ago.
The unrelenting negative press about Kennedy has had little effect with LibDem support has remained very steady around the historically high 20% mark (give or take the margin of error.)
Naturally enough Cameron has produced a bounce, a good one but not amazing, rough 5% or so. The Tories are back as a serious force but they are far from gauranteed. We know that Cameron is good, but we still don’t know how good, equally we don’t know how far he will be able to take the Tories on this ‘liberal’ journey of his. Aftr 11 years of Blair Labour remains determinedly non-Blairite, after 2 weeks of cameron i hesitate to describe the Tories as bleeding hearts.
I see no reason at all to panic about the Brown polls. Yes, the Tory position improves but then we have no idea what the politcal position will be when Browen takes over. What will the economy be like? Who will be leading the LibDems? What rows will Cameron have had inside the party? We just have no idea, so hypothetical polls 1 or 2 years ahead, although they show a useful indicator (and can ofcourse influence current events) really don’t show us anything very concrete.
What we do know now is that the Tories are marginally ahead of Labour with both in the mid to high 30’s, (while the LibDems are more or less holding their own at about 20%. However, we are 4 years from a General Election and things change, while this is good news for the Tories I wouldn’t be buying the champagne just yet - all this means is that politics has giotten interesting gain.
4 & 6 - of course the failure of the Cameron lead Tories to rise to 110% in the polls is a disaster! Whilst the Lib Dems drifting down to 18-21% is a triumph.
Keep it up boys, it is always worth a chuckle
Test
Ita appears that the time settings are screwed and placing posts in random order?
9 - James of course I read them. Do you? My response was a deliberate caricature of the message they both were trying to convey. So do you agree with Paul Lloyd’s ridiculous statement that we “must be worried - Honeymoon period and Cameron is only 1 point ahead and 4 points up on the election result”.
My attempt at dry humour obviously passed you by!
Merry Christmas
16 - Doh! Won’t be able to make the party if it’s the 14th, despite living in London
Hope all have a good time, and I look forward to seeing the photos afterwards and matching names to faces…
9 - James of course I read them. Do you? My response was a deliberate caricature of the message they both were trying to convey. So do you agree with Paul Lloyd’s ridiculous statement that we “must be worried - Honeymoon period and Cameron is only 1 point ahead and 4 points up on the election result”.
My attempt at dry humour obviously passed you by!
Merry Christmas
Lennon - Rik is so tall his head will be out of shot …
I wonder if the reason why Lib Dems according to this poll would have less support if GB was the Labour leader is due a suggestive question? If the question is: If Cameron was the leader of Tories and Brown the leader of Labour, who would you vote for, some people might intuively think, that these are all the given choices, and forget, that they could also vote for the Lib Dems.
Does anyone else think the questions asked in this poll are rather, erm, leading? ‘Some people say that after a government has been in power for some time it runs out of steam. Thinking about the Labour government now, do you think this is generally true or untrue?’ turns into the headline ‘Labour has run out of steam say voters’.
The Kennedy question is even worse- I’m certainly glad they buried it on page 12 of today’s paper. ‘By the time of the next general election both Labour and the Conservatives will have new leaders. In these circumstances do you think the Liberal Democrats would stand the best chance with Charles Kennedy or with a new leader?’ becomes ‘Voters want Kennedy to go, says poll’. That is NOT what this poll says! And the question really seems designed to get the answer it got (52% think the Lib Dems would stand the best chance with a new leader).
14: And did you notice they didn’t actually publish the raw data for that question (or the exact wording of the question) at all?
15. Sara, the first thing I learnt to my uni course about polling researches was not to ask questions worded in that way?
I didn’t have much faith in pre-election polls that said Labour would have a 200+ majority with Brown as leader, similarly I don’t have much faith in these polls showing a weaker showing. In the end we can only make speculative guesses on what will happen if/when Brown becomes leader. On the plus side he is seen as dependable and competent and would arguably shore up Labour’s ‘core’ vote. One thing he may do is bring out Labour voters to the polls who previously stayed at home. On the negative side he lacks TB’s charisma and has a reputation for being dour and dull, and lacks the middle England appeal of Blair. However Brown will have the advantage of incumbency. You can bet he is already planning his agenda, and will be looked to show a reinvigorated government with plenty of life left in it. That ‘new’ affect that helped Major may also help Brown.
I am intrigued at Rik’s contention that the Lib Dems have ‘drifted down’ to 21 per cent. Perhaps his poor grasp of statistics might have been partly responsible for his (ahem) somehat underperforming his own hype in the General Election?
Correct me if I’m wron but aren’t the lib Dems essentially ‘flatlining’ at about the same percentage range, which is better than most general Elections, after which they tend to ‘dive by five per cent or more. Perhaps Charlie K’s giving a bums’ rush to the disloyal ‘bums’ among his MPs has been a bit like the Ashdown legover situation in the past - reminded the public that there is a ‘third way’ and kept the Lib Dems poll ratings up?
22. looks like one of those Xmas rubber daggers to me.
How interested will the media be in this subject the first weekend in the new year?
7. I preferred “The Lib Dems…haven’t done anything recently” (to paraphrase post 4). Been quietly rallying behind their leader have they?
Rik - do you ever even bother reading other people’s posts? Bullseye did not say anything like you suggest. Indeed, he said: “Cameron has produced a bounce, a good one but not amazing.” In what way is saying it’s “good but not amazing” saying it’s a disaster? Please, please just read what people have written now and again.
23. If it was a knife it would appear to have been one of those Xmas rubber toy ones.
Merry Xmas all.
8.”Been quietly rallying behind their leader have they? ”
yes, with a knife in their hands….:wink:
Mike & Robert Smithson, thank for all your efforts to bring the site back
Perhaps nearly everyone can head off for Xmas relatively happy, since, unusually, all the main parties can reasonably take some comfort from the polls. Obviously the Tories will be delighted to be ahead - even 1% ahead on ICM is notable - and look set to be ahead for a while. But I don’t think Lab will be too upset to be steady on 36% - whether TB or GB in charge. I don’t see any firm evidence GB will be a vote loser, though re-distribution of non-Lab votes could well mean lost seats. I do think the article, Mike, misses a key point - there is going to be a change so the question is not so much how GB compares to TB but to the other potential leaders. There is no point Lab worrying about Blair-supporting but essentially non-Lab voters - they’re gone next time. What will matter more is the soft, non-voting (2001 & 2005) and protesting voting (2005) Lab ’suppporters’.
The LDs have got well rehearsed troubles now and ahead but can reasonably suggest the polls show they have built a larger, somewhat more solid core support than has been the case hereto.
So Merry Xmas!
Bullseye’s post is a very good one. I’d take issue with his last line though - politics is always interesting.
6.”Aftr 11 years of Blair Labour remains determinedly non-Blairite”
maybe, but I don’t think it’s the same party it was in the 80’s either.
12 - plus it’s Christmas so let’s all have a bit of champagne, Conservative or not (even CK - but keep it infrequent and moderate)!
The poll movements are interesting although the hypothetical ones less so - “if ifs and buts were crisps and nuts we’d all have a merry Christmas” as somebody or other said.
Yes, I think that’s right Andrea. It’s hard to imagine people like Kuba Assegai, or Linda Bellos, fitting into today’s party.
Apols for double posting and inumeracy!
Happy New Year to all here too.
[11] Good post. I remember that Sean Fear has more than once reminded us that there were huge seat swings in the 1920s (when there was a three party system) compared to vote share changes. There were no opinion polls then, and even had there been they might not have been much use. Martin’s implication, which I find hard to fault, is that the next election will be decided (apart, of course, from “events, dear boy, events”) not so much by swing as by churn. Arguably the party machines are in better shape to cope with this than the pollsters seem to be.
O/T I’ve booked the party - to remind you all: Saturday January 14, “Star Tavern” Belgrave Mews West, London SW1 (nearest tube Hyde Park Corner but also 10 minutes walk or an affordable taxi ride from Victoria - for those who attended the last one, it’s the same venue). Time - from 6 o’clock onwards.
I’m relatively relaxed. The lib dems are holding firm. I’m reminded of the poll BOOST we got after the paddy pantsdown affair. The public clocked a sympathy vote as well as being reminded we existed.
The cameroon bounce is at the low end of expectations.After 2 months of the equivalent of £50m of free advertising from the media they mangae a 1% lead?
and finally, all the polls showing cameroon ahead of browns labour are based on highlt misleading questions. Several pinches of salt needed.
merry christmas!