YouGov polls: Thread 2 “the rise of the Greens”
April 27th, 2007
YouGov finds 9% support for the party in the Scotland elections
An extraordinary poll next Thursday’s Scottish elections by YouGov for the Daily Telegraph shows a big surge for the Greens suggesting that they might provide the biggest sensation in next Thursday’s election - and maybe not just north of the border.
Given YouGov’s record in Scottish elections (they were by far the most accurate pollster last time) today’s figures add further weight to the evidence that the SNP is going to end up as top party in the Scottish parliament next week.
The “funny” polls that have been appearing from firms that are not listed as members of the British Polling Council and don’t following the industry standard transparency rules should be ignored.
So what are we to make of the big surge for the Greens? An explanation might be that there’s been a change in YouGov’s approach to the smaller parties. The following is from Peter Kellner - the boss of the firm:-
He says that in previous Scottish polls “..those people who responded ‘some other party’ were then taken to a list of smaller parties, such as the Greens and Solidarity, and asked which they would vote for.In this week’s poll, we presented the full list of parties together – starting with the four larger parties, and then the four significant smaller parties: Greens, Scottish Socialist Party, Solidarity, Senior Citizens Unity Party..It may well be that the apparent rise since last week in support for the Greens is largely the result of this change in our methods. If so, it is consistent with past polling experience: that if respondents are reminded of the names of smaller parties when they are asked how they will vote, support for those parties is generally higher than if they are not named.”
This sounds spot on and I very much welcome the change in YouGov’s approach.
The big support for the Greens begs the question of whether there maybe similar increases in party support in Wales and in some English local elections next week. My guess is that there will.
In the Scottish election betting the 0.44/1 of the SNP to win most seats looks even more tempting this morning. Take almost everything you can.
Mike Smithson
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One thing this poll does seem to confirm is that the Scottish Greens take about 2/3 of their vote from the SNP and 1/3 from the Lib Dems assuming that the Labour change is just statistical noise.
The Scotsman reports that some rats are deserting a sinking ship:
“Liberal Democrat leader rules out Lib-Lab coalition.”
“There will be no Unionist coalition to keep the SNP out of office, Nicol Stephen revealed yesterday.”
http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/politics.cfm?id=649022007
No wonder the Greens polled 9%. People who didn’t want to vote for the ‘big 4′ got a choice between the Greens, militant lefties or the coffin dodgers!!!
This kind of polling methodology is disgraceful. What about the other smaller parties standing in every Scottish region (UKIP etc).
BB
Using the Weber Shandwick/Scotland on Sunday seat predictor, today’s YouGov poll would give the following seat distribution:
1. SNP 45 (+18)
2. Lab 40 (-10)
3. LD 17 (n/c)
4. Con 15 (-3)
5. Grn 11 (+4)
6. Ind 1 (-3)
(SSP 0; -6)
http://www.scotlandvotes.com/
Mike, the Greens up 4 seats (in reality they are highly unlikely to gain more than 2 seats) versus the SNP up 18 seats. Now, does that justify your story that the Scottish Green Party “might provide the biggest sensation in next Thursday’s election”? I very much doubt it!
The story come Friday, worldwide or at least Europe-wide, is far more likely to be the SNP victory. Outwith the UK (where FPTP has thus far kept them locked out), the “rise of the Greens” is very old hat indeed. That fad came and went years ago…
Interesting - the predictions for the Greens so far have varied wildly, showing gains of up to 4 seats and losses of all but2…
5. Pimpernel
Actually, several recent polls - by British Polling Council members - have shown the Greens retaining only one seat.
Nice try Mike, but…
Can’t see such a big gain for them. Equally can’t see the Tories losing so many. I think where the Tories have seats they will hold, at least. Where we see their vote go down is possibly due to a vote squeeze elsewhere where they don’t hold seats.
Just a theory.
I am surprised at the Green increase- My canvass returns show very few Greens in Hamilton and those with an affinity towards them are backing the SNP on both votes this time as they realise that a vote for any other party will let Labour back in for four more years! Again the Labour vote is in freefall here and our canvass returns are showing a big swing to us- not counting the “Im not sure who im voting for- but it won’t be Labour” voters! I think next Thurdays elections are going to be very interesting in Scotland and there are going to be some pretty large swings away from Labour in their “heartlands”!
The message, from Scotland (and England) seems to be ANYONE, but ANYONE, except the failed three conventional parties.
Hence the unstoppable rise of the SAVE BEDFORD HOSPITAL party
I don’t trust any of the Scottish polls. They do seem to be all over the place. Last week was a LD surge - this week a Green surge. My hunch now is that the polls are wildly wrong, and Labour will do better, and the SNP worse, than any poll. Unfortunately!
I dont really think this poll rating for the Scottish Greens is extraordinary - they got 7% of the vote in the last election and are polling 9% now, hardly a massive increase. A fairly big increase since the last poll due to the change in methodology perhaps but not a result that would come completely out of the blue if repeated on polling day - is anyone surprised that the Green party might poll better in 2007 than in 2003 given the heightened awareness of environmental issues? I dont think 11 Green MSPs is likely but 9 is extremely possible. Whatever happens the bet on Greens returning 7 or more MSPs with Hills that PtP pointed out last week is looking even more value now than it did then so I’m glad I got on when I did. (Thanks PtP!)
Interesting article Mike. I know very little about the Scotish situation but I think you’re onto something when you ask whether there may be significant advances for the Greens in English council elections next week.
I canvassed for them last year in South Bristol. Not because I believe in their overall program or because I expected them to take control of the council but because I thought they were likely to beat the local Labour incumbent and because I wanted to contribute my support to the development of the perception that there are votes in environmental issues. I was prepared to debate their programme on the door-step but no-one, and I do mean not one single person I spoke to, wanted to know what they stood for. People were just in favour of expressing their commitment to and interest in environmental issues in a very general sense. The candidate was elected by a margin of seven votes.
The past year has seen the issue of climate change getting massive attention. A whole raft of other related issues are high on the news agenda and are affecting consumer behaviour. Look at the exponential rise in sales of organic food, the growing and counter-intuitive popularity of carbon-offsetting or the further development of ‘green’ electricity. And there has been a surge over the past three years in local authority recycling rates.
The last time green issues were this fashionable the Greens got 15% of the vote in the European elections of 1990(?). They clearly won’t get anywhere near that this time with the mainstream parties much keener to declare their environmental credentials and mop-up some of these votes. But I wouldn’t be at all surprised if people are currently underestimating the electoral impact of public interest in this type of issue.
“They clearly won’t get anywhere near that this time with the mainstream parties much keener to declare their environmental credentials and mop-up some of these votes.”
Actually the average vote in council elections in England, in seats we will be contesting that are either 1 up, or 3 up with 3 Green candidates, will almost certainly be over 10% for the first time. We actually gained 9% last year outside of London.
We are contesting over 1400 seats, and certainly, these are usually places we’ve got a record of standing. But this is a new record total of council seats contested by us, and the 10% figure will go even allowing for a few hundred new seats.
The percentages are interesting to us political trainspotters, but the council seat numbers are what matter, and we’ll probably gain 20 to 40 more Principal Local Authority seats - our current total is 93.
And James F - thanks for your help last year! It obviously counted.
1. Tom
In fact, I think that you will find that nearly all of any rise for the Scottish Green Party would come straight from former Scottish Socialist Party voters.
The, not insignificant, chunk (6.7% in 2003) of SSP votes looks as though it is being divided roughly: 2% staying socialist (but split SSP/Solidarity, and therefore utterly useless); 2-3% SNP; and 1-2% Green.
I agree with James F that more people are considering giving the Greens a vote, especially in multi-member wards when they reckon they can give their usual party one or two votes and the Greens another, and I also agree that it’s not because they’ve studied the programme and think it sound. It’s “send them a message”, as with anti-immigration voters who vote BNP, or left-Labour people who vote Respect, without knowing or caring much about the details. Don’t think I’m saying the three parties are in some way similar, just that people don’t make the same demands of clarity of programme or leaders for small parties. (They aren’t all *that* demanding of clarity for big parties, are they?)
It’s a nuisance for both Labour and the LibDems, as the drain of one of the ward votes to another party can easily make the difference that results in the whole ward being lost.
The Greens will *not* have a good performance in the local elections, outside of areas where (like Lib Dems, BNP or whoever) they’re the only active anti-establishment party and doing good case work.
They also have a problem with being radicalised by emigres from the old left. Their two new leaders are both members of the party’s socialist campaign group to make it an explicitly socialist party (”Green Left”). So, expect to see more anti-growth, anti-capitalist stuff rather than the practical environmentalism we used to admire.
I suspect they have started to peak in their placxes of strength, and are just destined to be a minor opposition party in patches where the rest of the parties are complacent - like the BNP!
16 Nick, that’s a suicidal strategy for them, and it will be the reason why they will not do as well as they expect next Thursday. If they put up one candidate in a three member ward, it means that every voter will vote against them twice, but only vote for them once. Unless they get voters to “plump” for the Green and not use their other two votes, they are going to get buried.
However, in single member wards it might (and I emphasise “might”)be a different story.
Many greens have adopted ‘target to win’ where they concentrate on one ward in an authority, and the others are paper candidates.
In Birmingham I’m not convinced that they are strategically that astute though as they have just chosen the ward that they got the highest vote in Last Year ( Bournville) and dont really seem to have considered any other factors. Namely that its a rock solid Tory seat with very little LD vote to squeeze (where I would have thought they do best).
The other recent result was the camden Byelection where they had Sian Berry the joint leader as candidate and still didn’t win.
I think the are still finding their feet in FPTP.
‘Recycling’ in Oxford seems to have caused a split in the LD’s so I’d have thought that’s a good place to see just how willing people are to vote green when the reality of environmental policies starts getting bumpy.If voters in Oxford are genuinly motivated by Environmental concerns then the Greens are in prime position to exploit the LD loss of nerve.
For a historical perspective, the best-ever SNP performances thus far have been:
- 32.6% in the 1994 European Parliament elections
- 30.4% in the 1974 (October) UK Parliament election
- 28.9% in the 1999 council elections
- 28.7% in the 1999 Scottish Parliament election
[17] Why wouldn’t the Greens move left? There is an “old left” vote - perhaps 10% of the electorate, perhaps more - that no one else - in England anyway, and given that Respect is more and more becoming a Muslim party - wants. If they’re a “pure” ecological party, they’re more of a pressure group running candidates as one lobbying technique among many. If I were an activist in a mainstream party that’s what I’d want them to do, of course. In fact, they’re just going where the votes are - like everyone else.
Some of the comments on this thread seem to me to be motivated by jealousy that they haven’t yet been tainted by scandal of some sort. Give them time - their members are human, like the rest of us.
19 - this would presumably be a ’split in the LDs’ in the sense that the expansion of recycling under their administration is going ahead, and that the recycling rate is already increasing some way beyond its low level under Labour? To be fair the Greens have already tried to exploit the recycling issue in the city in the slightly unexpected way of making as many difficulties about the expansion as possible, but I don’t imagine it’s the sort of exploitation Crossland has in mind.
22- The split Ive heard of is that a sizeable chunk of the LD group has resigned/threatend to ( is this true ?)over the recycling issue because The local Councillors are finding themselves up against concerted local oppostion to it( petitions etc).
They are finding themselves on the other side of ‘pavement politics’ and dont like it ,with the split along localism v environmentalism lines, Potentialy lethal I guess in a LD group.
A prime chance for the local greens to argue their case as the only party willing to pursue an environmental agenda , but the chance is only there because the Ld group has pursued a much greater level of recyling ( as you point out)and found local resistance.
A true test of how Green the elecorate really is ?
Greens will see modest gains around the UK - both in the Scottish Parliament and on local authorities.
It won’t be anything spectacular, but it will be a marked and steady increase. Peter Crainie’s right - 20 to 40 gains. Not much - but this is the icing on the cake. Our residual vote will increase substantially - incurring the disdain of other parties who blame us for “losing them their seat”. As long as our residual vote continues to rise, other parties will be forced to continue to pay attention to green issues.
Eco - it’s interesting what you say about Greens peaking in some places. Judging from the 2005/2006 results, there might be one or two losses in perceived strongholds. This is unavoidable in FPTP.
But in most parts of the country, the green vote is barely tapped. There is plenty of fertile soil for a couple of thousand Green Party councillors - the limiting factor is not potential support, but numbers of activists.
Crossland - it’s true that Greens tend to be more idealists, and these do not tend to make the best strategists. Although I think this is a problem for other parties locally too. The tories and labour have made some fairly big strategic blunders in their targetting in York.
Personally, I consider myself an arch-strategist, as anybody who has sat down to play boardgames with me will testify
I agree that there is a sizeable Left vote for the Greens to hoover up. Not the Left vote in the old mining areas, or urban Yorkshire and the West Midlands (the BNP will probably pick up quite a bit of that vote). More the Left in university towns, modestly affluent, completely secular, and deeply unhappy with Labour.
I agree 10% per candidate is a very realistic objective for the Greens, and 20-40 gains sounds likely.
On a Westminster level, I’m increasingly convinced that the Greens might just take Brighton Pavilion at the next General Election on the back of a large anti-Labour vote. It’s probably the most “gay” constituency in the country and as Sean says, they are hoovering up a large part of the left vote.
16 Nick, 18 Augustus, it’s the SINGLE transferable vote system, i.e. you only get one vote, and you rank candidates in order, and if your first preference gets knocked out or doesn’t need your vote, it gets transferred to the second, and so on.
Therefore Labour or the LibDems don’t have to fear anything from first preferences for Green candidates, unless of course the Green candidates get enough votes to get elected themselves. Similarly it makes little whether the Greens stand one or more candidates in a ward, although it probably makes more sense to concentrate your campaign on one candidate if you haven’t got much hope of picking up a second seat.
Support for smaller parties usually rises near to polling day in most elections and the Greens should benefit from this more than most this time.
Looking at the data from 2003, I would expect the Scottish Greens to pick up a seat in the two regions where they don’t currently have one, and also possibly pick up a second seat in a couple of the others.
The Scottish Green party have been saying since the start (if anyone would just listen) that they will get 10 seats. One in each of the 8 regions (they just missed the 8th last time) plus an extra 2 in Glasgow and Edinburgh. Given their excellent work in the Parliament it would be surprising if they got anything less.
27 Forgive me, Nimble, I did not realisr that you were talking about the Scottish local government elections alone - I thought you were referring to the English ones as well, which most certainly are not done by STV.
23: Slightly crossed wires. There have been largely personality-related departures from the Lib Dem group (see http://www.stephentall.org.uk/news/000346.html for a pretty fair-minded commentary), and there has been some resistance to the extension of recycling and associated rubbish collection changes (most notably the fortnightly collection of non-recycled rubbish which is widespread for this sort of arrangement); but the two are not obviously connnected (at least, none of the departees cited recycling as their reason for leaving, as far as I’m aware), and there are no threats to resign over this or any other issue.
The perception is that the initial hostility in some areas (and only some: the scheme has been pretty well received in much of the City) is diminishing (not least because the local media have become bored with the story). Doesn’t mean that, if the hot weather continues, fortnightly collections won’t become controversial again, at least for a while; but I honestly don’t see much mileage for the Greens in this - it’s difficult to see what they can make out of the fact that under the Lib Dems, recycling is being extended and the recycling rate is rocketing!
The Greens usualy hurt Lib Dems most right.
HG - thanks for a more informed view re Oxford, on balance I think your probably right.
Peter- The strategy side of local politics is a learning (I learn more each year)curve, ‘Target to win’ is I think the right approach for the Green’s to take in places like Birmingham, I’m sure they will soon work out that choosing a ward where they are 2500 votes behind the Tories is a haul too far
26. I would say that the Greens taking Brighton Pavilion is almost a foregone conclusion. Unlike last time, where a massive Labour decline split between the Lib Dems and Greens, this time, with the Greens already in third, there will be a large Lib Dem tactical vote for the Greens. Keith Taylor is the symbolic leader of the moderate Greens, so any “soclaist turnoff” that might discourage Lib Dem voters elsewhere won’t do so in Brighton. Furthermore, Labour will decline significantly again as they slip in the polls nationally, but their vote is unlikely to go to the Conservatives, who have lost votes in Brighton Pavilion in every election since 1979. Much of it will go to the Greens, who will win the seat with something around 32% of the vote.
I too think the Greens will win Brighton Pavilion.
The Greens do an increasing amount of damage to the Lib Dems at local level, and thus, they are good news for the Conservatives.
34 - I’m glad I’m not the only one saying this! Seriously though, I think you’re right. Tactical voting may very well produce an historic result.
HG provides a much more balanced view of Oxford’s recycling issue than Crossland’s ideas. There have been some strong opponents of the new recycling system writing to the papers, but no member of our Lib Dem group - to my knowledge - has encountered significant hostility from voters in their ward. As HG says, the idea that recycling played any role in defections is truly bizarre.
The Lib Dem group on the council has unflinchingly supported improved recycling, and the rates are rocketing. If anyone has gone luke-warm over recycling it’s Labour and the Greens, as Stephen Tall writes here:
http://oxfordcitylibdems.org.uk/news/000019.html
Local paper’s editoial on the issue:
http://oxfordcitylibdems.org.uk/news/000020.html
I’m quite happy to take criticism from people who disagree with my group on the issue of waste collections, but at least give us the credit for our consistency and determination on the issue!
Cheers,
Richard.
34-36 The Greens are not quite as popular as they were in Brighton as their councillors have had to make up their minds and come down off the fence on several contentious issues . I do think they would win a Parliamentary Byelection in Pavilion but not a General Election
38 - “The Greens are not quite as popular as they were in Brighton as their councillors have had to make up their minds and come down off the fence on several contentious issues”
So you think they’ll win less council seats next week than they currently hold then?
39 I think they will make 2 more gains which is rather less than the 4/5 they have been talking off .
Given the cover story for the thread, SNP odds have collapsed today, following on from yesterday. Today the maximum odds anyone will give is 1.4 on the SNP. I remember a month ago when you could 2.25 - what a dream that was!
Most of the media are now treating the SNP as the government-in-waiting for Scotland. 50 years of Labour domination ending. If Labour lose Scotland, need to bring in a third party in Wales, get wiped out in most of England, isn’t that it - pretty much over for the Labour Party as a major political force in Britain.
41 It’s unlikely Welsh Labour will need a 3rd party for government in Wales. They will become the largest party with a choice of coallition with the Liberal Democrats or Plaid Cymru. Rhodri Morgan will be finished as First Minister.
42. TBH expectations are such I think they’d have to bee finished below twenty four for that to happen. Matters are not helped by potential rivals ege Andrew Davies being threatened with summary rejection themselves if things go completely pear shaped for Labour.
27. er… I think 16. and 18. were talking about 3-member wards in English local elections.