Is a methodology change behind the CR poll shock?
January 31st, 2007
Best to wait until we’ve seen how they’ve done the calculations
There’s a poll with, apparently, some sensational figures from Communicate Research in the Independent this morning but judging by Andrew Grice’s accompanying report by and the quoted party shares there is something not quite right.
The voting intention shares with changes on December are CON 34% (-2): LAB 29% (-8) LD 21% (+7). So Ming’s party is up half again on the figure it recorded just five weeks ago.
What makes me suspicious that something has changed is this from Grice; “.To help determine how the “don’t knows” might vote, CommunicateResearch asked people: “Generally speaking, do you think of yourself as Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat or other?..The results of the “party identification” question show that Labour is struggling to retain the backing of its natural supporters…”
Grice goes on: “Some 82 per cent of those people who regard themselves as natural Tories intend to support the party in a general election - the highest “core vote” rating of the three main parties.”
This party identifier question was not even asked in the December Communicate poll and now it is being suggested that the responses are central to the calculation.
PBC regulars might recall that I have not been happy with the new monthly CR survey for the paper and after raising some issues was told at the end of November that the methodology was “under constant review“.
My guess, and until I have analysed the full data tables this is only a guess, is that CR are using the new question as a form of past vote weighting to ensure it has a politically balanced sample.
If that is the case then it is very interesting and I applaud the pollster and the paper for testing new approaches.
I have invited the boss of Communicate, Andrew Hawkins, to comment and he is usually very helpful. Clearly, though you cannot make a valid comparison with previous surveys if there has been a change in approach. Hopefully the full dataset will be available during the day and when it is I will update the article.
Whatever the move to the Lib Dems is entirely in line with the recent ICM and YouGov surveys - so the trend is consistent.
UPDATE 1245. The boss of Communicate, Andrew Hawkins, has been in touch, about the changes in the methodology for this month’s poll. This is what he writes: “Yes there has been a change (two in fact). First, we’ve changed slightly the question wording to incorporate the three main party names in the actual questions (both main and squeeze). Second, we reallocated those who said don’t knows or refused according to their party identification, but also applied turnout weights to these.”
There is little doubt that the main beneficiaries from naming the parties are the Lib Dems. CR have had very small numbers and part of the big increase this month might be due to that change. The second element also partially explains the big change on last month’s poll.
The firm has yet to go all the way and adopt past vote weighting.
Mike Smithson
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Looks like another duff poll from CR to me.
Somebody on the previous thread expressed the opinion that the Lib Dems have not done much to justify their increased support in three separtae opinion polls.
Somebody else offered as an explantion the excellent coverage that Ming, Nick Clegg, Ed Davey and others have received in recent weeks; combined, of course, with increased local output as PPCs are adopted and local government campaigns get under way.
But I think we also have to take into account the incredible number of disasters that Blair´s Labour Governmentis experiencing (or creating for itself, as the case may be); and the fact that Cameron´s honeymoon with the press is coming to an end.
Increasingly he is being seen as totally vacuous - which some of us have noticed since the beginning - and irrelevant to the development of the political process.
So for me, it comes as no surprise that the Tory percentage should also be in decline, as well as Labour´s.
As you say, Mike, if they change methodology any comparison is essentially invalid. So, if they’re constantly reviewing and changing their methodology then each one is a stand alone and can really not be compared with previous ones.
The poll is mildly helpful in reinforcing a general recovery for the LibDems and a slump for Labour, but the figures themselves are hardly worth looking at.
Wow - I have never seen a party increase its share by 50%. The biggest move in the history of polling?
5. 4. Of course I’m ignoring minor parties like UKIP, Green etc.
The interesting thing (in other words, the part that confirms my prejudices) is that Labour is losing its natural supporters. Money is tight, streets are unsafe, hospitals are closing. Schools are often poor; jobs are scarce and often badly paid. House purchase is near impossible, social housing was sold off in the 80s.
John Hutton’s exciting new plan to harrass the jobless will make things worse.
Too many in New Labour neither understand nor care for working class supporters.
AHM… I hope you are not worrying about your £100 in Tiv and Hon!?
John L - jobs are scarce and often badly paid.
What definition of scarce are you using and if you consider the minimum wage badly paid then maybe you will help people like the unions in their campaign for the wage to be raised, but my suspicion is that you argued against this when it was introduced by this government.
Poll is broadly meaningless due to questions over methodology and consistency of approach compared to previous months.
A shame, because there are some potentially interesting comments in Grice’s article about strength of core vote support (Tories strongest at 82% and Labour weakest at 64%) and also where the non-supporting core vote is going - Lib Dem splits mostly to Tories, suggesting Cameron doing well in attracting floating voters and essentially mantaining core vote too.
If 10% of Lib Dem support voted Tory next time, how many of their seats would fall, assuming UNS and ignoring incumbency, etc?
The advice on this poll would seem to be: ignore the change figures, concentrate on the headline. As Mike points out, there’s no point comparing with last month if the methodology has changed, and if it has changed then presumably it’s because the previous method wasn’t thought to be up to it. And judging by the scores, that would look to be right. Most firms have had a Tory lead of between about 3 and 7 per cent over the last year and this falls nicely into that range; last month’s Labour lead - with Labour in the high 30s and the Lib Dems in the mid-teens - was so out of kilter with other firms and local by-election results that it can be safely ignored.
Whether this months can be counted does then depend on whether they’re using a more reliable method. If it hasn’t changed but they’ve hit credible figures anyway, it’s more likely to be a chance event; if it has, we should take it seriously.
On the scores themselves, they do feel about right. It’s been an awful few weeks for Labour - and got worse yesterday, after the questioning for this poll would have finished - but not particularly good for the Conservatives either. Except on the Home Office stories, the Lib Dems do appear to have made more running on the media and this perhaps is being picked up.
Outside the main parties, it would be interesting to see the breakdown of Others, which by implication has about 16%.
I wonder if for the sake of assessing the true position viz a General Election, it would be better to adjust the headline figures to a set “others” figure. You can obviously debate how well “others” will do in a General Election, but 16% seems ridiculous. Make it, for example, 8-9%, and you have headline figures of 37, 31, 23. Which instantly suggests the the main differences between the pollsters is their others figure, which has little impact on the seat situation anyway.
I don’t know. I can certainly see the LDs taking most of Labour’s floating vote. But the idea the Tories have the largest share on a mere 34%, that is only 1% up on their GE performance, is prima facie nonsensical stuff.
I also think 29% is probably too low for Lab - now.
Once again I will wait for a real poll.
If Nick Palmer were to come in here and call the poll valueless I would not quibble.
i’ll do it for you - this poll is a joke.
5. But the lib dems are a minor party ROFL
15. Indeed, it is valueless
Polls go up and polls go down. No need to get excited one way or the other, the General Election is light years away. Anything could happen. I suppose the three latest are mildly encouraging, at the moment, for the Lib Dems, and mildly disappointing for the other parties, I would not go any further than that. Could all change again next week.
Others 16%!!!, what is the breakdown of this, could be good for the SNP and the Greens. Who knows. They may be midly encouraged…………..
10,11. The ‘Others’ are Green 3%, SNP 3%, UKIP 2%, BNP 1%, Plaid 1% and Others 6%. Quite who the other Others are is anyone’s guess. Perhaps there should be an additional squeeze question for this.
It doesn’t look as if the party identification has been used as a new weighting for the voting intention question.
http://www.communicateresearch.com/poll.php?id=95
It is unsurprising that the Lib Dem “core vote” is the lowest percentage of all three major parties. The Two Tribes* have dominated the political scene for the past 70 years or so, and although tribal loyalty is declining rapidly the last vestages of that. Voting Labour or Conservative, apart from around the margins, is still a tribal, visceral, gut act.
On the other hand, because Lib Dem support has risen from 4% in 1988 to around 20% now, it follows that the decision to support the party is a conscious evaluation on the part of the voter. This informs most Lib Dem campaigning - the need to inform the voter away from their gut decision. The pleasing thing is that we have developed a core vote of some sort over the last 20 years - at 2/3 of our support as is suggested that is historically high.
* - with a bit of amigination this could be Brave Sir Gordo and FB Dave
Ed Balls will not have to face a contest for the Morley & Outwood seat as the incumbent M.P. is jumping ship before he is pushed.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/west_yorkshire/6312339.stm
red flag @ 8 — I have never argued against the minimum wage.
And unlike the Shadow Chancellor, I take no pleasure in others’ economic misfortune.
Gordon Brown, on becoming Prime Minister, must address these problems partly to ensure a Labour victory in 2009/10 but mainly because it is the right thing to do. If a Labour government will not look after ordinary people then, really, what is the point of it?
Agree with thread 6, AND A LABOUR GOVERNMENT IS ENCOURAGING GAMBLING! What’s more the Tories are supporting it too. No wonder the LDs are improving, plus more and more people are not going to bother to vote
Tressage (2) is right, 34% for the Tories is not surprising. Ignoring the lack of cash for an election Gordon must be tempted to call one and watch the Tories fight on their last manifesto (author one D. Cameron)’cos the new one isn’t quite ready yet.
And Labour dipping below 30% - with the continuing rumbling of Levygate - the longer it goes on the more likely it is that Labour will be tagged as sleazy even if no one is actually charged.
Those numbers look good for the SNP and Plaid. At UK GE 2005 they got 1.5% and 0.6% of the UK vote respectively. These CR/Indie poll figures are for Great Britain, not the whole UK, but as NI is too small to make a significant statistical difference, we can say that the SNP has roughly doubled its support (in terms of Westminster voting intention).
This is totally in line with the 2 YouGov Scottish polls so far in 2007, the latest of which (for the Sunday Times) showed the SNP’s Westminster support up ten points, to 28%, from their UK GE low of 17.7%.
The detailed tables are up and it’s interesting to pick through exactly what they show, though the subsamples are small. I’ll focus on Lab and Con to save time - others may want to look at the other parties. Page 3 shows general party identification after demographic weighting. This has a substantial Labour lead: 295-225. It also shows no significant difference in certainty to vote. Page 6 eliminates the people who are unlikely to vote (40 Labour voters and 35 Tories, leaving it after some sort of rounding at 251-191) but then shows what happens when they actually ask how they’ll vote. The Tories now lead by 198-179. All parties suffer attrition: 79% of instinctive Tories will vote Tory, 59% of Labour vote Labour. The most significant loss is from Labour to DK among Labour sympathisers - 13% of this group.
Page 7 is the squeeze question referred to in Mike’s article, and it’s applied only to people who say they probably won’t vote - it asks how they’d vote if they had to. This shows little difference in party share and is pretty irrelevant anyway (though interesting as it’s always been thought than non-voters are generally Labour). Page 14 adds this group into the figures and produces the 34/29/21 result. So people who say “there is a 1 in 10 chance that I’ll vote” and people who say flatly “I won’t vote” are part of this figure. I don’t want to be entirely indifferent to any voter, but as a political animal I don’t honestly care very much about what people who won’t vote would do if they were forced to vote.
So it seems to me that page 6 is actually the important one. This shows Con 25, Lab 23, LD 15, Don’t Know 16, Shan’t tell you 9 and others 12, based on people who say they’re probably going to vote. That’s equivalent to a 3% Tory lead if you eliminate the refused/DKs (the headline 5% lead is because the won’t-votes are included and these don’t have a Labour identification lead). This page has reduced the sample to 789 so the margin of error will be substantial.
The conclusion is this: among those who intend to vote, Labour has a substantial lead in general identification (56% of the two-party split), but only 59% of that group currently feels sure it would vote Labour tomorrow (the wording of the question), vs 79% for the Tories.
This sounds to me quite plausible. I know lots of people who say things like “I usually vote Labour but gosh, you’re in a bit of a mess at the moment, aren’t you?”
I hope that the above is all reasonably non-partisan analysis. Now for the bit that some won’t agree with. The position that this suggests seems to me entirely retrievable for Labour. Nobody would pretend that last week, or even last year, was particularly good for Labour, and outside our partisan circles it would be really odd if Labour voters weren’t scratching their heads a bit and, asked how they’d vote TOMORROW, giving a range of replies, with “don’t know” the largest group after “Labour”. It’s in this group of natural Labour sympathisers who think it’s all rather a mess that I would expect a Brown bounce.
The detailed info is here:
http://www.communicateresearch.com/poll.php?id=95
Stuart – the Scotsman has a poll this morning – without any Westmister voting intentions. It suggests:
SNP – 44 seats
Lab – 41
Lib Dem – 23
Tories – 17
Not sure about others but remarkably the SSP are still polling 3%!
As for the CR poll I suspect – not to put too fine a point on it – that the results are bollocks.
Clarification: when I say “that group” I mean that 59% of the larger group of Labour-leaning voters would vote Labour tomorrow, vs 79% of the smaller group of Tory-leaning voters voting Tory, giving a net Tory lead of 3% of likely voters.
Picking up Commentator’s note - I wouldn’t say it was meaningless but there are a lot of assumptions in the headline data, and i’d personally query including the theoretical intentions of non-voters. To summarise, I think the figures show the Tories are a bit ahead in voting intention, that the LDs are doing fairly well, and that Labour is still ahead in underlying preference - all among people who actually intend to vote.
Interesting article, Mike. If CR has improved their methodology then that is very good news.
19 I suppose that if you removed Others from Others the remaining Others would be about 10% and thus more or less in line with other polls - and give figures in the area that Alex suggests at post 11.
[26] Nick Palmer wrote I know lots of people who say things like “I usually vote Labour but gosh, you’re in a bit of a mess at the moment, aren’t you?”
Yup, and most of them are Labour MPs talking to the Home Secretary in the HoC tea-room …
26 - Nick it’s that kind of wishful thinking that some of us consoled ourselves with in the run up to 1997, that people would come back to us when the chips were down etc.
Im afraid I think it is unlikely to happen for you. Once the shift starts it is almost impossible to turn round.
Very fair as aways Nick. But why will there be a Brown bounce - Everyone knows already that he is going to be PM and he has been equally responsible for the Labour Government as TB. Plus the economy is teetering. The high pound is great for me trying to import dollar denominated textiles from China but is not going to help the rest of the economy - just financing Gov. borrowing must be costing more with the new rates.
It is possible that he will try something “new” but something that wasn’t in the manifesto? Exiting Iraq would be sensible and popular - and would mean not having to buy the military any new toys but I thought Gordon was all for Iraq?
With Levy arrested again it cant be long now though.
28. The changes are SNP +17, Lab -9, LD +6, Con -1
Others are just at 4 seats (-13)
28. Thanks Max. That Scotsman (presumably ICM) poll is pretty much in line with all the others we have had recently. It looks certain to me at the moment that the Scottish Parliament is going to be very well “hung” - and not in the good way
It is going to be very tight indeed as to whether Lab or SNP will be the largest party, although one or the other could start to develop some clear water in the weeks ahead.
Your guess is as good as mine as to what sort of coalition/minority govt will emerge from this election. It is even possible, at a pinch, that the current Lib-Lab pact could continue, if Labour’s losses go direct to the Lib Dems! Common sense tells us however that that is highly unlikely.
I doubt that the current voting system will ever produce a majority govt - which is of course exactly why it was chosen by the Lib-Labs!!
29% seems about right for me for Labour especially with all the body blows from Yates of the Yard.
However `conspiracy` is a catch all and very difficult to prove.
Archer and Aitkin did not tell the truth in court, and were jailed for perjury, so not directly comparable at this stage.
Nevertheless the Police will surely now have to bring charges even if the CPS do not think there is enough to prosecute, for criminal purposes.
As they have to justify the year long operation, to the wider public.
34% in my opinion is to low for the Conservatives, with a popular centrist leader.
28/35. FPTP vote: SNP 33 (-1 compared to previous ICM in November)), Lab 31 (+2), LD 17 (unchanged), Con 13 (unchanged)
List vote: SNP 33 (+2), Lab 27 (+1), LD 17 (-2), Con 14 (+2), Greens 5 (-1)
2,
Ed Davey went on the attack on Newsnight, but looked very uncomfortable when he got the expected retort back from the interviewer and guests, “when are you going to pay the money back you obtained from a convicted criminal”.
34. Andrea
The closer polling day comes, the more convinced I become that the Greens et al are in for an unpleasant surprise come 4 May.
This election is polarising between the grown-up choice of who governs the country - Labour or the SNP. The Tories are going to hold fairly steady in my view (maybe up or down a couple of seats).
The big losers are all those Others that did so well in 2003. Their ranks are - quite rightly - going to get massacred. Finally the Scottish electorate is going to give up the excitement of novelty nobodies, and start acting like a mature electorate. Whatever the outcome in May, I would strongly welcome the disappearance of the numpties.
38. Yes the Lib Dems’ holier-than-thou posturing would be more convincing if they returned that money, rather than hiding behind pitiful excuses along the lines of ‘we took the money in good faith’.
39. Stuart. With a little variations in their £ the Greens can take 1 seat or 9 seats. It’ll be close for all their seats (expect the first seat on Lothins which is almost a safe seat for them). I wouldn’t rule out.
Numpties? Are you sure that you aren’t wishing the loss of some current SNP MSPs too!
38 and when are the Conservatives going to give back the money from the fugitive Asil Nadir ?
41 Andrea
Perish the thought
Out of interest, who, in your opinion, are the numpties in the current group of SNP MSPs?
If you like, you could name some numpty MSPs in the other parties too. Should not be too difficult. In fact it may save time just telling us who is NOT a numpty!!
(I am going through a very “all politicians are idiots stage”.)
I’m not so sure we should totally write off this poll. As someone who believes the present party system is redundant, it may be telling us all something we probably suspect. Disenchantment with the present system is making voters look around at alternatives. Many on the right are looking (just looking) at UKIP, the BNP is making a play for the right and the left white working class, with its economic nationalism. The Libdems are attracting the left/liberal vote who have been flirting with Cameron,in the Celtic areas PC and the SNP are on the up. When the music stops, who’ll be sitting in the last chair?
“If that is the case then it is very interesting and I applaud the pollster and the paper for testing new approaches.”
Mike, are we seeing them testing new methodology just now until they are confident with it, with a view to this settling down to become a regular monthly tracking poll for the Independent?
43. Stuart. erm, it depends. If I list as numpty, the MSP are usually disagreeing with, I would end up with a certain group. However if you consider numpty, the so called “loonies” (so all SSP and at a lesser exent the Greens), I would end up with a different list of MSPs
For those interested in EU Parliament workings. All Committes positions are up for renewal this week. There’ll some changes in some Committee’s chairmanship. Regarding the chairman, the line up has been finalized.
In terms of UK, Neil Parish (Con) will take the chairmanship of Agriculture and Rural Development Committee and Arlene McCarthy (Labour) will keep the chairmanship of Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee.
27. 28. Note the regional breakdown gives the Lib Dems only 6% in Scotland..very odd. Conservatives at 23% only 1% behind the SNP.
42.
Mark I am not defending that, as its a fair point.
But arguing on the point of a pin head, do`nt believe he was convicted.
It seems that the Libdems in Edinburgh North and Leith think that the Scottish elections will be on May 5
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/tm_headline=lib-dem-doesn-t-know-date-of-scots-election&method=full&objectid=18553456&siteid=66633-name_page.html
dez@36
“Nevertheless the Police will surely now have to bring charges even if the CPS do not think there is enough to prosecute, for criminal purposes.
As they have to justify the year long operation, to the wider public.”
That may have been a reasonable supposition, but am not sure it can happen like that now.
Was speaking to my cousin - a CPS lawyer - before Christmas. Something I hadn’t realised is that changes have been/are being made such that the CPS now decide not only whether to prosecute the case, but whether to charge somebody as well.
Reason being (as I understand it) that it gives the CPS chance to point out holes in the case before it reaches the charge stage and thus increase the chance of successful prosecution, as opposed to before when the police decided whether to charge leaving the CPS to put together a case based on potentially incomplete evidence. Of course the CPS could push back to the police to complete the gaps, but by this time the investigation may have wound down substantially and other current investigations would take precedence.
47 Butler
Nope, that is not odd at all! The Scottish sample size is tiny, and unweighted (ie. just raw figures). Looking at Scottish subsamples of UK-wide polls is fraught with difficulties - and is usually best ignored.
In Scotland significant Tory and LD support is very strictly geographically confined - outwith their own pockets of strength those two parties are virtually non-existent. So it is tremendously easy for market researchers to hit pockets of Tory support one week, and almost no Lib Dems, and vice versa the next time.
51. Correction
There is no such thing as a “UK-wide poll” - they are Great Britain-wide (ie. exclude NI).
52. Will there be any NI in the run up of their Assembly elections?
46. Andrea
I could list competent, professional and adult MSPs in all parties, including ones I seriously disagree with. But unfortunately all the parties have more than their fair share of incompetent, lazy, thick and immature MSPs.
Funnily enough, apart from the obvious lunatics (SSP/Solidarity/Greens/Ind/SSCUP) it is actually the Tories who are most overburdened with totally useless MSPs. This is counter-intuitive, because they try to portray themselves as “the party of business”. Most Tory MSPs would struggle to make a living in the private sector - totally unemployable!
If I might make a partisan point - on PB perish the thought - despite clear Labour problems, we have a poll showing a drop in Tory support and another poll projecting that they will lose seat(s) in the Scottish Parliament. Keep up the good work “dave”
Also at the last lib dem conference I remember a classic liberal bar charts presentation in the main hall showing how they were going to become the largest party in the Scottish Parliament. Could any lib dems explain what went wrong there. Surely the liberals wouldn’t use bar charts to make outrageous electoral claims would they…
50,
Richard you are correct that the Police have to take CPS advice before they charge.
But my point is that the Police will let it be known that they thought charges should have been brought, and they presented this to the Cps.
This will obviously get into the media, and public domain.
Even if the CPS decline to prosecute and announce no futher action, on criminal charges.
Reputations are at stake here,including the Police, and how they have conducted the enquiry.
I would suspect shortly there will be an official complaint going in from some involved to the Independent complaints Authority.
I am not surprised by a poll showing Labour below 30% and the pollsters who had the LDs down at 14-5% were flat wrong. I doubt the Tories are really as low as 34%, however. That said I suspect a lot of voters see this Party financing issue as a big two Party problem. Davey may have been a little uncomfortable on Newsnight with a low audience rating but the LDs rather than the Tories could be gaining at Labour’s expense on this issue.
A very odd poll. It reads like a set of local election statistics.
I don’t think there’s any justification for weighting down the figures for Others from 16%. Polls are snapshots - not predictors for the general election.
I suspect the 6% who won’t say which “Other” they’ll vote for include a lot of shy BNP supporters (this is a telephone poll). Yougov consistently gives the BNP 3-5% now.
[54] But will there be fewer “numpties” in the next Scottish Parliament than this one? (Or the next UK Parliament, Dail Eireann or wherever you like…) My guess would be that, as politics becomes increasingly unattractive to able people - not least because of the difficulty of funding political activity in an honest and open way - there will actually be more, alas.
56. Busy morning for the astrot*rfers again.
BTW, I did enjoy this contribution from “Malcolm” on Conservative Home.
“I suppose I should say before the usual comments appear that of course I realise that this poll is a complete disaster for the Conservatives and that if we only adopted all the policies advocated by UKIP we would of course be at least 90% ahead,if not more.”
54. Stuart, I would put Jim Sillars among the main numpties (re-read his comments during the age of consent debates. He’s probably just totally mad though)
59. Innocent Abroad
Too true. For someone who loves politics, I find myself increasingly repelled by politicians. They really are a profoundly unpleasant waste of space.
Fortunately I support a political party that wants to abolish a complete layer of utterly useless politicians, and their even more foul civil service colleagues. We aim to return 59 Scottish MPs to the real employment market (or in Dougie Alexander’s case - first enter the employment market) and abolish that filthy Whitehall culture from Scotland forever.
51 - not sure I’d count Lib Dem areas of strength in Scotland as pockets, bearing in mind they have more MPs/MSPs than the SNP in:
The Highlands and Islands
NE Scotland
Fife
Lothian
Borders
It’s only really in west and central Scotland where Lib Dem support could be described as ‘in pockets’ - but it still enough to give them a number of realistic targets - Glasgow North/Kelvin, East Dunbartonshire/Strathkelvin, Greenock, plus some areas of development like Rutherglen and Stirling.
The SNPs problem is that high 20s/low 30s is not enough for them to breakthrough in west/central Scotland - yes sure they might win in their few ‘pockets of strength’ - Kilmarnock, Cumbernauld etc, but swathes of Labour members will still be returned.
I think it’s pretty certain Labour will be the largest party after 3rd May - and that’s where my money has gone.
Anyone know when the electoral commission will rule on whether the LDs should give back the stolen £2M ?
64.”I think it’s pretty certain Labour will be the largest party after 3rd May - and that’s where my money has gone.”
Dan, I hope for you finances that this prediction will be better than your one about Moray (IIRC SNP and LD neck and neck, tories third and Labour in danger of losing deposit)
47/51/64 The actual sample in the Communicate poll for Scotland was just 80 barely 1 per constituency hence the M of E will be huge . Of rather more curiosity is why the Others Others figure should increase from 38 to 45 from the unweighted to the weighted base
66. Actually I hope Dan is right this time as I see that in pb.com end of the year predictions, I predicted Lab 41, SNP 36 (but I did it without reflection..just to have an execuse in advance
61. ‘Malcom’ surely forgot to mention having Adolf Hitler as Tory leader.
51. Stuart - thanks for that. Would it be worth aggregating the ‘Scotland’ totals from various recent polls to come up with an estimate of Westminster voting totals? I seem to remember someone mentioning on here that the pollsters’ ‘Scotland’ did not always refer wholly to Scotland, but also included parts of northern England.
65.
I thought it was pretty well established by the recent Parliamentary Committee that the Electoral Commission are a load of wallies and could not ‘rule’ on anything - just ‘advise’.
So the CR poll on electoral calcalus give Toris 277 Lab 269 Libdem 72 So on 29% of the poll Labour get 269 seats. It’ll be ‘lets be nice to Ming time’ coming up.
63 Curious reasoning — Stuart.
For example, if consistently applied, you should have opposed devolution in the first place because it created many more politicians in both Wales & Scotland.
I like your postings & am broadly supportive of Scottish independence (though I am obviously much more interested in the destiny of Wales).
But, given what I know of your political/economic standpoint, my guess is you’ll actually be more unhappy on a personal level in an independent Scotland.
Wildly OT, and I apologise, but it is germane to a big debate we all had some months ago.
Remember when we were discussing why being an ex-communist, was seen as more forgivable than being an ex-fascist? How communism was socially more acceptabl than Nazism?
My opinion was and is that being an ex-communist should he just as much a reason for shame, and mortification, as being an ex-fascist. That communism was arguably the greatest of all evils. Others differ.
Anyhow, and coincidentally, I have recently been in Cambodia, and witnessed for myself the true evils of communism. I’ve now written an article on this, complete with gory pictures, on thefirstpost.
http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/index.php?menuID=1&subID=1093
I hope any wandering pb communists or ex-communists read this, and then go away and pour ashes on themselves.
End of rant.
54 - Stuart is calling the Green MSPs “obvious lunatics” going to be part of the SNP’s strategy to get Green party support for a First Minister and confidence votes if and when they need it?
I see Gordon Brown has been flushed out to comment on the Cash for Honours investigation.
He says “I believe when people see the full facts then they (the public?) will be satisfied”.
Is this a non-denial denial? it is certainly not full bloodied support for his colleagues. Seems ever more appropriate to see this as Levygate.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6315877.stm
75. neil, they also are in the same group at EU Parliament level
66 - thanks for the reminder! At least I got the ‘Labour in danger of losing their deposit’ right (or almost right - their vote halved to 9%). I know who my source was and on reflection they were a little over enthusiastic - but the Lib Dems did increase their share by more than any other party and came within 900 votes of the second placed Tories.
My contact for Bromley however was far more accurate - why don’t people keep reminding me about that?
73,
Gwynfa,
I agree if eventualy the people of Scotland vote for Independence.
Where will the right of centre find a voice.
39. Stuart, I normally read your posts with a little bit more sympathy than many on here, but your contempt for the electorate and politicians who don’t fall into your bipolar political world is saddening.
Voters chose these “numpties” because they didn’t find any of the other options appealing; elections are not just about who governs the country, they are also about who you, as a voter, want to represent your views in parliament. It’s sad that you resent voters for making a choice other than the SNP - since it seems clear that your contempt stems from the fact that you feel that these “novelties” are seats that would otherwise have been the SNP’s.
A mature electorate does not get railroaded into making a false binary choice that forces them to choose between the “less evil” of two large parties, neither of which they are much in agreement with.
And presumably if it is a “grown up choice about who governs the country” you would accept that there is no point in voting SNP at Westminster elections?
It is precisely because a growing part of the electorate feel that their voices are not being listened to in our political system that there is a growth in support for the “numpties”; politicians will ignore this at their peril.
52. The Belfast Telegraph will probably do one, but I wouldn’t expect more than that.
76 - what does Broon’s statement mean? That people will be satisfied there has been a cover up and expect prosecutions or that ‘there’s nothing to see here… move along’. Either way it contradicts his statement that he can’t comment on an ongoing investigation.
A more interesting line of enquiry might have been to ask him which charities held meetings on more than one occasion at 11 Downing street ;what fees are charged to charities holding such events and who decides whether such a meeting should be held on the premises.
53 / 81 - Northern Ireland polls are notoriously unreliable but there was one for BBC NI last November:
DUP 30.6%
SF 20.1%
UUP 17.7%
SDLP 16.8%
Alliance 3.5%
RSF 2.4%*
Green Party 2.1%
UKUP 1.8%
PUP 1.6%
(There were others. *Republican Sinn Féin - possibly people meant official Sinn Féin when they picked this option, either way I doubt RSF or RSF endorsed candidates will return Assembly members whereas the Green Party and UKUP on lower %ages could.)
83 That is UKUP and not UKIP is it, Neil?
Would RSF contest assembly seats?
In general, those figures seem plausible.
* Birmingham arrests seem to have foiled a plot to capture torture and decapitate a moderate islamic leader with a video produced to record the whole thing. Terrifying…..
84 - yes, UKUP is Bob McCartney’s mob. The Conservatives polled 0.5% for those who were getting excited about Conservatives organising in NI after some high(ish) profile defections last year.
85 - no, I think they would have problems accepting the preconditions but they would probably back anti-agreement candidates in different places.
86. ” kidnap a moderate Islamic leader” - thats a pretty optimistic operation ;o)
ps those figures (and others) for NI came from this from this report:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/09_11_06_nireland_poll.pdf
Q9 for party support figures
78. yes, Dan, your Bromley contact was way better and no-one believed you on election night IIRC (and Rik should have eaten a hat if there was a recount)
83. Thanks Neil
74 Sean T - Nice article but it’s stretching things a bit to use the Cambodian experience to make such swingeing judgements.
My understanding is that the Khmer Rouge was a small group of nutters on the fringes of the Cambodian political scene. Their numbers surged following the secret bombing raids which Nixon ordered. There are all sorts of lessons which could be learned. I don’t think it helps though to focus exclusively on the ‘failings of communism’ as if it were the sole cause of the tragedy.
Of course, I could be wrong. You could enquire, since you are in a better place than I am for doing so. On the other hand, you may think these people have suffered enough without having to put up with prying from a sanctimonious Englishman with, dare I say it, his own agenda.
Of course i may be wrong
40 - au-contraire Yellow Peril. Ed Daveys responses on Newsnight that (a) The Lib Dems took the money in good faith, (b) the electoral commission has given the party a clean bill of health and (c) The LD’s were completely open about the money, shows the enormous gulf between the behavior of the LD’s and the other two parties. The Tories and Labour hid the loans, they were uncommercial and in some of the cases offered gongs! All this means the great British public will be quite clear which party is the most honest on the sleaze issue - cough - its neither New Labour or the Conservatives…….
91 Sean T - Ignore the last para of my previous post. I don’t know where it came from - probably the remnant of an amendment.
Normally I don’t bother to point out typos and the like but this was one of my more serious posts, so I didn’t want you puzzling.
Trust you and family are all very well and enjoying the break. (Not all work is it?)
92. I love these tongue-in-cheek posts.
I think the police investigation has got to be completed then people will see the full facts and I believe when people see the full facts then they will be satisfied.”
so said Gordon Brown
Do you think he knows the full facts - if not why not - if he does know them - does this indicate he has the results of an internal investigation which makes him satisfied that no impropriety has occurred - or has he been fully involved all along - or is the statement just a nice piece of spin to get through todays interview ? perhaps we should just wait as he says - but he did add that he thought we would be satisfied ………
91. You are indeed wrong. Not about my being a sanctimonious Englishman (well, I’m Cornish, but I’ll let that pass!) - you are entitled to your opinion.
But having now visited Cambodia, and read a lot of its history, I’m afraid to say that it was indeed communism that killed the country.
The Khmer Rouge were pure communists of the Maoist variety. They abolished capitalism to the extent of blowing up the banks and burning all the currency. They believed in an agrarian heaven with no private property, they believed in “from each according to his means to each according to his needs”, yet withal they also had that typically communist desire for a forced and speedy industrialisation - that would somehow spring from the genius of the proletariat, despite their being no money and no food. Despite the corpses rotting in the paddy fields, alongside the halfbuilt factories.
Cambodia is haunted by communism. Drive out into the countryside and your eyes will fill the terrible images: the ranks of people, dressed in black, marching single file, in awful silence, to their deaths.
But don’t take this from a sanctimonious Cornishman. Read the greatest book about Cambodia, Survival of the Killing Fields, by Haing Ngor, which he says he wrote ’so people would understand the true nature of communism’. Then go and visit Cambodia, and talk to people about their fathers and mothers that died.
Communism is a disgusting and evil system, designed for the subjugation and humiliation of the individual. Communists are scum. All of them. Ex communists are merely scum in retirement.
Don’t believe me? Peter Mandelson was a communist.
96 As a conservative do you feel responsible for the actions of the Bush administration in Iraq?
Re: The CR poll.
Palmer’s post suggests that there wasn’t actually any past-vote recall weighting - ie no correction for the source of bias for which Mr Smithson has criticised CR in the past.
Is that a correct interpretation?
If so it would suggest that the poll is even worse for Labour than it appears at face value, due to the general problems encountered by polls in sampling Tory voters.
97 If seanT had voted for Bush, he would bear some small responsibility for Iraq, yes. If seanT was a Republican senator he would bear quite a lot of responsibility. If seanT were George Bush, a whole bundle of responsibility.
(The same holds making the changes Republican senator–> New Labour MP and George Bush –> TB)
So, I think your question is better directed at Nick Palmer MP.
There’s a reason why NI polls are unreliable, people here lie when faced with questions ..its in the upbringing….
The issue of whether rejectionist candidates on the republican side of the equation eould actually take up seats is a throny one but some certainly would. The pure rejectionist, abstentionist front is not so prominent these days. Chances of them getting a seat however, look unlikely with maybe one outsider of those who look like they are standing. They are currently a rag tag mix of people of the republican side who dont have a single agenda other than to oppose SF’s stance on policing or indeed their apparent sell out on the cause of a United Ireland.
Its the same on the Unionist rejectionist side though they look to be even less likely to cause a threat at this stage. Robert McCartney is a one man band, the UKUP being a total mess. His attempts to coalesce a rejectionist unionist team for elections appears to have failed although some will be standing they seem to be more freelancing. McCartney’s own Assembly seat may well be under threat. As for the PUP, their vote will fall further. The electoral power of that party was carried by Ervine whos own seat was tight even if he was still alive. The vote will split but hard to say were it would go, tradionally it woudl have floated more to the UUP. Their slate of canadiates thsi time is also likely to be smaller.
Whilst we have 5 weeks before election and rejectionists on both sides may come out of the cracks the main issues may likely be.
a) Stay at homes, particularly on the Sinn Fein side.
b) Drops in the electoral registers. Again the story is that thsi hit Sinn Fein hard so much so they were breaking their necks trying to rectify it. In their heartland of West Belfast the elctoral register lost something 11% of its previous electorate. SF had a very hard working campaign to get people to register and now the deficit is around 4-5%. Impossible to tell who hasnt bothered registering but certainly SF’s reaction and the general view is that they got hit worse than others.
c) Damage done by rejectionist candiadates down the STV card. With 6 seats up for grabs in every constituency, a reasonable shift of votes to a rejectionist candidates may see the DUP or SF lose slots.
An apparent Northern Ireland Office private poll suggested SF could lose up to 6 seats. I have to say at this stage I consider that total bollocks though there are possibilities of loss.
92 et al. The biggest hypocrites in all this fiasco are those journalists and members of the public who expect fully active and operational political parties without paying for them out of taxation.
97. In part, yes. As I’ve posted on here before, I supported the war for several reasons, mainly because I thought Saddam a bestial ogre, and best got rid of, but also because I half-trusted my own government on WMD. What I mean by this is that I had nagging suspicions the British government was lying, cause Blair and Labour are congenital liars, but in the end I thought, despite the evidence of duplicity (Robin Cook etc), that they surely wouldn’t lie about something so big.
Of course they did lie.
But this doesn’t exonerate me. Because I had still other reasons for supporting the war - lazy ones like: anything the far left, the EU, and Jacques Chirac do not support has got to be OK. So let’s go for it.
For these reasons it’s obvious that I didn’t think through the war, I didn’t think properly about it, I should have realised it was bound to be a disaster, but I didn’t sit down and use my brain. For this I feel personal shame and guilt, despite my excuse of having been lied to by my government.
So yes I do feel some small amount of complicity in this cock-up, which is why I now write so vehemently from the other side, against the war. In my tiny way I want to make up for my mistake, and for my stupidity, by at least seeing the liars that took us to this war - Blair, Bush, Brown, the entire Labour party, the British political, elite - made to pay for their grotesque mistake, for which they have almost NO excuses.
Anyway however this is somewhat irrelevant! Being a supporter of the war (though a regretful thing) is not quite like being a communist in the light of Cambodia. Is it?
No. Not at all. I expect to see political parties finance themselves out of their own resources. If they can’t, they shouldn’t exist.
This just insn’t fair! I get to a computer late in the day because I was ill this morning, and not only do we have a poll but huge numbers of comments!
And no one has visited my blog
Interesting article Mike. Obviously the major change in methodology that seems to have happened makes past comparisions meaningless. Interesting numbers though. We will have to see how they change month on month from here on to see how useful a poll CR will be.
103. So those with the richest members will do best?
105. That’ll be Sinn Fein then…
96 Sean T - I’ve obviously touched a raw spot.
Please don’t cast me in the role of ‘defender of communism’. You should know me well enough by now. I just think that you need to cast you net a little wider and certainly not restrict your anti-communist diatribe to the peculiar and vile little variant that emerged in Cambodia. You may as well condemn Christianity wholesale on the historical evidence of The Ku Klux Klan.
Remember that virulent and mindless anti-communism can be just as dangerous as communism itself. Personally I’ve not much time for either.
102 Sean you’re too hard on yourself. People are responsible for their actions.
No-one in the UK could have stopped the war in Iraq; not you, not me, not even Tony Blair. He could have stopped UK involvement, but that may have cost more lives than it saved. We’ll never know for sure about that one.
The buck for Iraq stops firmly in the White House IMO. George could have stopped it.
As for Cambodia. The UK communist movement could not have stopped that either - so your accusation is ill-founded.
Tougher penalties for those actually responsible.
86 The US morning news networks (NBC etc) lead story is that the plot was to kidnap a British soldier and behead them on the internet. The BBC online at least seem to be staying clear of any details
106. The shinners of course have access to stolen and foreign funds, sources not available to the mainstream parties…although one exception to that rule does spring to mind…
105 Those whose members are willing to make sacrifices for them.
No political party has the right to be solvent.
110 Yes indeed yellow peril , we can all recall a Conservative chairman returning from the Far East with suitcases of foreign cash .
106. And from their fuel supply activities, tax er umm avoidance…legitmate businesses….
109. Yeah but honest Paul, such a plot wouldnt be the the fault of perpetrators, its the governments and the evil crusade against Islam’s fault. It’s that that forced them to not only to consider merely killing but do it in a particular way and on the internet.
86 & 109 - hmmmm. Seems a bit fishy to me. Why would anyone come up with such a plot that would revolt even the most extreme fundamentalist? Seems unlikely to me.
seanT- without the totalitarian, and utterly brutal regime of the Soviet Union (under the guise of communism) Nazism would surely have prevailed in Europe. It was Stalin that inflicted over 90% of the damage on the Nazi European war machine.
The right has been equally brutal to Cambodia’s hideous Khymer Rouge, maybe not quite in terms of numbers killed, but in relation to a complete disregard for the human condition- from Thatcher’s buddy Pinochet, to Saddam’s baathists, to the countless, brutal juntas that have occupied south, central American states, and African countries, many exploited and sponsored by the West.
To me there is a big difference between the ideology of communism with its aspiration for equality and fairness, and facism which at its core supports ethnic cleansing, and brutality. After all “might is right”. That is why I often find the right’s ideas about immigration and Englishness unpleasant, and dangerous. Once you start talking about race and immigration you start the slippery descent into the nihilism of facism, and totalitarianism. Sadly, under Blair the UK has slowly started that journey.
111. It is quite possible to allocate funds according to share of political vote - and I think there is an inevitable tendency towards anti-democratic outcomes associated with your solution.
103,106:
Parties could manage with far less money if they relied more on an active membership willing to donate their time (it doesn’t cost much to knock on doors or canvass in the streets).
What benefit have we had from expensive “policy wonks” and PR gurus - remarkably little. Polling is also expensive, but unnecessary if you spend enough time talking to people (I am sorry to harp back to my bete noir Dr Nicholas Palmer MP who tells us that he spends half his working time looking at a computer screen; trying spending that time litening to people).
Limit expenditure and democracy will thrive. It’s working well in Bedford
115. Communism is an ideology which has always been about confrontation. Liquidating ‘class enemies’ is just as nasty as liquidating the ethnically ‘impure’…except to communists of course, for whom it is wholly justified.
‘Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions’
Marx & Engels
UPDATE 1245. The boss of Communicate, Andrew Hawkins, has been in touch, about the changes in the methodology for this month’s poll. This is what he writes: “Yes there has been a change (two in fact). First, we’ve changed slightly the question wording to incorporate the three main party names in the actual questions (both main and squeeze). Second, we reallocated those who said don’t knows or refused according to their party identification, but also applied turnout weights to these.”
There is little doubt that the main beneficiaries from naming the parties are the Lib Dems. CR have had very small numbers and part of the big increase this month might be due to that change. The second element also partially explains the big change on last month’s poll.
The firm has yet to go all the way and adopt past vote weighting.
Yokel
Thanks for confirming my (totally uninformed) hunch that Neil’s reference to a ‘mob’ and the UKUP, was something of an exaggeration!
sean fear 111- surely the private financing of political parties or politicians leads directly to corruption. If people are genuiely philanthropic they can fund good causes direct??
Parties should be funded by the state pro rota according to votes cast at national and local elections, and on a capped membership, subscription payment system that is the same for all parties.
115 Tyson
Whenever people forget their humanity in pusuit of ideologies, dreadful consequences will follow. This applies equally to ‘the left’ and ‘the right’ and all points in between.
108. Jonathan, you miss my point. I’m trying to say - and I think I’ve proved (if it needed proving) - that communism was at least as evil a creed as fascism/Nazism. Sure communism talked the talk (equality and fairness blah blah) but in the end it was just another means of dictatorship, the dictatorship of the proletariat rather than the dictatorship of the rich/white/ethnically Aryan - but just the same in effect. Anti-life and anti-human, and anti-individual.
Indeed Communism can very arguably be seen as worse than fascism because communism pretends to be about equality and all these nice things, when really it is about hatred and repression; at least fascism does what it says on the tin.
Moreover, communism has caused more death and suffering, by far, than the far right creeds. Add together the Khmer Rouge, Stalin, Mao, all the African and Latino commies and you have hundreds of millions of dead. Communism’s evil is peerless.
And yet somehow it is “OK” to be an ex communist, just a little youthful foible, tut tut, when it is not OK to be an ex fascist.
Peter Mandelson is an ex communist, but he’s a EU commissioner. John Reid is an ex communist, but he’s now Home Secretary.
I somehow can’t imagine ex members of NF or Moseley’s blackshirts being welcomed with such tolerance to our political elite.
Enough. All ex communists are scum, we can agree on that. But I’m not saying we should kick out all scumbag ex communists from government - there would hardly be anyone left in the Labour party - but we should hear from them the most grovelling renunciations of the facile and repulsive views they held previously, they should have to smear themselves with ordure and stick their heads in airport ashtrays, before being allowed near office. We need penance.
114. You think they care? They want extreme they want shock and it isnt the Moslem population that such an act would be aimed at, if it was planned.
They also want to play the big men, as we all can do when you have half a dozen mates ainst one and the one is tied up, injured. I’ve met plenty of such people, all fecking big lads until the gun is pointed at them.
117 Barry
Could you drop your preoccupation with your ‘bete noir’ for a moment and let us have your considered views on the Newsnight programme which you so kindly drew our attention to the other night.
It would also be helpful if you could say a few words about its impact on Gordon Brown’s price in Betfair’s ‘Next Leader’ market.
Cheers
116 Rather the reverse. That simply entrenches existing political parties at the expense of newcomers, and increases the divorce between the hierarchy of political parties, OTOH, and their members and supporters on the other. In any case, it’s quite possible to have a functioning democracy without formal party structures.
115 Where to start? Nazism would not have come close to prevailing had Stalin not (a) agreed to carve up Eastern Europe with Hitler, (b) wiped out the Soviet senior officers in the Thirties and (c) alienated his own people so badly that many of them initially welcomed the Nazis.
“The right has been equally brutal to Cambodia’s hideous Khymer Rouge”. No Conservative/Christian Democratic government has come close to wiping out one third of their country’s population.
To me there is no difference (morally) between the ideologies of communism and national socialism. Both glorify the liquidation of the movement’s enemies, and apply it in practice.
122 Only if people can opt out and fund no political parties whatsoever (which would make it, thankfully, unworkable).
Just because certain politicians corrupt the system it shouldn’t then lead to the innocent taxpayers being made to foot the bill. “Sorry, we’re corrupt, you’ll have to give us money instead!”, no thank you……
Re 120, Mike thanks for the update. We will have to see how their polls pan out over the next few months.
“surely the private financing of political parties or politicians leads directly to corruption. ”
No. Most people do not expect a financial return for their donations or subscriptions.
The evidence suggests that public financing of political parties encourages corruption. The worst aspect of it is that the beneficiaries have a vested interest in helping themselves to more and more money, and the ability to legislate accordingly.
Indeed, UK Paul. Why should dishonest people be rewarded for their dishonesty?
119- the “end justifies the means”- where communism lost the plot-any political system that has been created on bloodshed and violence is doomed with totalitarianism the winner.
In relation to individuality- mature capitalism has been pretty brutal. The British high street has been replicated in every major city- the same shops, the same experience. Our new build housing estates, education with the same curriculum, cars and appliances all look the same, kitchen suites and bathrooms, carpets and clothes. Gosh even our politcial parties are the same!!
Re 123, Peter the Punter:
“Whenever people forget their humanity in pusuit of ideologies, dreadful consequences will follow. This applies equally to ‘the left’ and ‘the right’ and all points in between.”
Here here. I wonder if you would mind me quoting you on my blog?
133 Sure, Benedict. No charge.
(You have a blog? Can’t be up to much if it’s got people like me on it.)
Is it just me, or is it merely a co-incidence that outlandish terror-plots are “discovered” on cue when Labour could use them most, to divert attention away from their own rotting stench? Is “ex-communist” Reid the “man behind the curtain”? Stalin would be proud of him….