Labour lead down to 1% with Populus
November 5th, 2007
Big boost for the Lib Dems
Populus, the only pollster which recorded solid Labour leads since June, has continued to report a Labour margin in its latest survey for the Times. The figures are with changes on a month ago - CON 36%(-2): LAB 37%(-3): LD 16%(+4)
This will bring a lot of comfort to the Brown camp after the polls from ICM, ComRes and Ipsos-MORI had Tory leads of 5-7%.
Of all the phone pollsters using past vote weighting the Populus formula is more favourable to Labour though the differences compared with last week’s ComRes and ICM surveys cannot just be explained by methodology.
For the Lib Dems there will be huge relief that the miserable ratings they were getting after Brown’s election retreat have not been maintained.
The interesting feature is that the Lib Dem surge appears to have come from both the Tories and Labour.
The key thing is whether Populus is just a one off or whether the other firms follow suit.
Mike Smithson
MessageSpace Advertising
Why do you say the LD recovery has come from the Tories?
Oh God! poor old test, a smiling Gordon he won’t be able to cope.
re 1. I missed off the last bit of the sentence!!
The trend of the last four Populus polls is an improvement for the Tories from a lead of -10 to - 1. And an improvement from the -3 eight polls ago.
A further confirmation that the Brown bounce that took Labour into the lead on this poll in June/July is fading. In this it matches the other polls but as the volatility is so marked at the moment a longer period trend is going to be more indicative.
The election that never was also seems to have distorted all the trends in most of the polls.
3 was just about to post as 1 and you edit the sentence!
we know that all great leaders take no attention of polls. Look how well bush is doing. fine fellow.
I’d be surprised if the next poll doesn’t show an even bigger lead for Labour. They seem to have regrouped somewhat and are heading for several days of good publicity. I just hope Brown doesn’t take this as encouragement for more of the same. The reason he’s doing OK is simply that there is not a lot of enthusiasm for his opponents. Advice for Brown. Move left and NO more gimmicks!
Total Labour meltdown
Labour = not many seats next time
re 7. Roger - you can only compare surveys from the same pollster. This is a step back, admittedly a very small one, for Labour and a very small move forward for Cameron.
In fact in terms of changes this is a better poll for the Tories than last week’s Guardian survey showing a 5% lead. That was down from 6% - the Populus poll has Labour’s lead down from 2% to 1%.
Amazing Brown on film admitting he ‘didn’t get his sums right’ as Chancellor.
http://www.pm.gov.uk/output/Page13701.asp
The Sun comment lead :
Party poopers
LABOUR Party funding has dried up since the cash-for-honours fiasco, leaving it millions in debt.
Nobody wants Yates of the Yard knocking on the door after handing over a million for a peerage.
But Labour should tread carefully before using legislation as a sledgehammer to crack the Tories.
Party funding is a two-way street.
The Conservatives have access to large donations and are flush with cash.
But Labour is still bankrolled by its union paymasters.
In the last election, they poured £1.58million into Labour marginals - while Tories only raised £1.38million for target seats.
Total union donations topped £8million — and very nicely they’ve done out of it too.
They have been amply repaid, some would say, by an annual £12.5million “training fund” at taxpayers’ expense.
The Big Three — Unison, GMB and Unite — are routinely consulted on policy.
They’ve won concessions over paid holiday leave, employment law changes — and the disastrous decision to keep paying public sector pensions at 60.
The unions were the driving force behind the deluge of taxpayers’ cash for unreformed public services.
Now they expect a say over key economic and financial issues — like big City takeovers, import controls and corporate responsibility.
If Gordon Brown is planning to reform party funding, The Sun will be the first to cheer.
But it must be fair, impartial and transparent — and keep well away from taxpayers’ pockets.
If politicians think they are worth electing, they should prove it by raising their own money. Openly and honestly.
7 i agree. its only a matter of time before GB is 10% ahead in the polls. what a great job he is doing.
11 - thats it, its all over now, labour = 1931
11 They have been amply repaid, some would say, by an annual £12.5million “training fund” at taxpayers’ expense.
What??!?!
Labour gives the unions 12.5 million per year and the Unions give 8 million to Labour.
If Unions didnt spend money on politics, it could be spent on training.
The next government must launch Police & Tax investigations into the Labour-Union Money-Go-Round.
Expect some very senior Labour and Union officials to face justice.
I would be delighted if Labour fell out with the Sun. Perhaps Mrs Brown could be persuaded to do a bit of breast feeding infront of the Dacres and then they could fallout with the Mail at the same time. Ultimately it will do Brown good with the 90% who don’t read the Sun to be his own man again.
15, Roger. But at the rate things are going, the Sun will fall out with Brown because he has become far too RIGHT wing (even for them)!
According to UK Polling Report, this poll gives Labour a 32 seat majority:
Conservative 242 seats (+44)
Labour 341 seats (-15)
Liberal Democrats 38 seats (-24)
Others 11 seats (-1)
Northern Ireland 18 seats (nc)
According to Electoral Calculus, this poll gives abour a 36 seat majority:
CON 241 seats
LAB 343 seats
LIB 36 seats
Peter Riddell in the Times:
“On a longer-term comparison, Tory support now is almost the same as throughout Mr Cameron’s leadership. The only real difference is to Labour’s advantage with its rating higher now than its 32 per cent average between April 2006 and June 2007, largely at the expense of the Lib Dems. So much for Tory hopes that a turning point has been passed in voter attitudes.”
Gabble. Thank you for pointing out so eloquently that the “UK Polling Report” and “Electoral Calculus” seat predictors are complete hogwash.
Do you seriously believe that the LibDems would lose 24 of their 62 seats on these figures? (To take just one example of how these calculators are flawed)
16 Funding the Labour Party with Tax Payers money via “Union Training Fund” is not right wing. It is old fashioned backhanders.
8 million pounds goes directly from National Funds to the Labour Party via the Unions.
Perhaps The Sun doesnt want to acquire the stench of rotting fish coming from Labour?
20. No, I think the LibDems will do better against the Tories.
LDs go from 0 to 36 with Baxter in two weeks. At that rate of improvement, I can say “Go back to your constituencies and prepare for government.”
22 Gabble. “I think the LibDems will do better against the Tories”
Yes they will. Very well if they elect Clegg (as expected), but less well with Huhne.
Either way, these figures scream out at me “Hung Parliament”.
And it behoves me to say on this date that sometimes I think that Parliament should be hung - the whole lot of them.
23. I’ve quoted two seat predictions which both give Labour a majority in the 30’s. I think that’s about right on the headline figures. However, I would expect tactical voting to favour the LibDems and Labour over the Tories.
14 Despite all that union membership continues to decline and looking at statistics will go that way - younger people less likely to be members. Only 17% of private sector employees are members as against 59% in public sector and that means that 57% of union members are from public sector. So though Unions represent a minority of workers, less than 30% overall, their position in funding Labour Party and their dependence on public sector means that Labour is institutionally biased against reform of public services.
7. Roger. Good to see you back. I agree with your advice for Brown. “No more gimmicks”. All he has to do is govern. The Brown bounce resulted from him demonstrating a steady authority, precipitated by a number of events that required quiet assured leadership and he did it quite well.
If he could stick to that formula, stop allowing the Tories to dictate the political agenda, stop being wrong footed by them and embarrassingly stealing their policies instead of simply leading his government and stop losing his cool at the dispatch box, then he could yet regain the initiative.
I think this may happen in the short term as we get into the start of the now long campaign towards the next GE. And I would not be surprised to see Labour start to hold their ground better in the opinion polls. From a betting point of view I hope this happens because, as sure as eggs are eggs, Cameron is a far more talented politician than Brown and will get under his skin again. The spread prices are too tight at the moment for me to get involved. A few good polls for Brown and we are looking again at value betting.
Surely it’s more healthy to finance a political party from trade union members opting to pay a political levy than receiving donations from a multi millionaire businessman who made his money from offshore banking in the Caymen Islands? (Or any other multi millionaire for that matter)
O/T dropped a comment earlier on Ben Brogan’s blog pointing him to Anthony Well’s site and Anthony taking him to task. Good man Ben, he’s added a para admitting his error and hat tipping Anthony.
Sorry if someone posted..
“Grassroots support for Tory who quit over immigration”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article2814162.ece
This poll is a bit too good for Lab. After 5 mins, I’ve discarded it in favour of Mike’s rule of thumb (which I think has Tories 40 and Lab 35?).
Nevertheless, looks like Lab may have stabilised having teetered on brink of a dangerous slide back below 35%. Polls in range 35-38 for next 6 months would be OK for Lab - better than I would have expected after non-election.
28 Roger - Agree - that’s why I support Cameron’s proposal for a cap on donations. It should apply equally to the very few Union barons who prop up Labour - or rather receive tax payers money then re-cycle less back to their pet party.
Union members are asked once a decade if they wish the union to have a political fund and this is sold on basis that without it unions couldn’t campaign on matters of importance to the union (so couldn’t fund campigns for law changes etc.). Then members have to opt out rather than in. Voting is low and inertia means people don’t get round to opting out.
Thatcher wasn’t hard enough in framing the legislation - hopefully Cameron will be.
and:
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/queensspeech2007/story/0,,2205942,00.html
“(…)the government will signal its intent to legislate on party funding(…)
But the eventual proposals are likely to follow the ideas set out by Hayden Phillips, the former civil servant who last week abandoned his year-long efforts to gain cross party agreement on party fundin”
33 & 28
Also in Guardian
“Unions would no longer be required to stage a ballot every 10 years to continue with its political fund ballot so long as they meet new rules on disclosing the cost of the political levy to individual members”
so making it easier for Labour to continue getting union funding.
34:
but “(Hayden Phillips) He suggested 40p of state funding each year for every vote cast for a political party in the previous general election. On this proposal Labour would receive just under £4m per year state funding.”
34- the Daily Mail is not so sure:
“Ministers are pressing him(Brown) to accept the recommendations of senior civil servant Sir Hayden Phillips, who suggested using a combination of matching funds and pay-per-vote to give cash to political parties”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=491937&in_page_id=1770
Ted It is called gerrymandering.
11. Yes any reform of party funding should, ideally, be on an all-party consensus. I disagree with The Sun, however, in that it seems to oppose taxpayer funding. That would be peanuts in the grand scheme of things. It’s not like any of our parties are mass parties in terms of full membership yet liberal democracy is dependent upon a vibrant multi-party system. Not that the apolitical consumer society seems to allow for that.
I seem to recall a recommendation that suggested voters could “register” with a political party in respect of whom a modest of amount of state funding would be appropriated to their party of choice. Can’t recall where this recommendation came from, however.
28. Roger - clearly you believe that, but why? To the vast majority of the population for whom the unions are unelected, unrepresentative, self-interested and anachronistic vested interest groups who pursue self-serving and often self-aggrandizing policies, and for whom the public image is still vaguely of Arthur Scargill trying to bring the country to a standstill or Tube drivers going on strike, there is certainly no moral highground imbued to them.
39 - it may seem rather strange, but I recently joined 3 unions.
Not to tread on the toes of the recently departed but I for one - a regular lurker and occasional poster - have found myself missing Jack W’s excellent regular edition of his ‘poll of polls’ (complete with SOAMES weightings). And so I’ve decided to try and keep up the tradition.
Current ‘poll of polls’ (featuring the mean results from the most recent Populus/MORI/ICM/ComRes/YouGov polls) gives us:
Conservatives 39.6…Labour 35.6…Liberal Democrats 14.8
Putting these figures through Wells/Baxter give us an HoC result of:
Lab307…Con290…Lib24
which would leave Labour 18 short of a majority and with casualties including Home Sec. Jacqui Smith, Jim Knight, Andrew Slaughter and our own Nick Palmer.
The Lib Dems would lose such luminaries as Shadow Foreign Sec Michael Moore, Don Foster, Julia Goldsworthy, Chris Huhne, John Leech (back to Lab), Susan Kramer, David Heath and Matthew Taylor.
More next time (if I’ve got my sums right!)
41 Thanks Billy. Looking forward to seeing more of your ARSE Mark II.
Well, I can’t seem to take this poll that seriously as it does not fit with my preconceptions.
Perhaps we should wait for a few more polls?
On a brighter note I have finally figured out the fault that has plagued my Rotel RP-1500 record deck for the last 5 years. Tunes (on vinyl of course!) at last!
Re 23, SBS “LDs go from 0 to 36 with Baxter in two weeks. At that rate of improvement, I can say “Go back to your constituencies and prepare for government.””
Have I missed some news of Jack W? I take it he is just not posting here, and we have heard no further news?
45-if you still there:
comment 92:
http://politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2007/10/22/its-92-that-brown-will-concede-a-referendum/#comments
and:
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/backbencher/story/0,,2198239,00.html
Re 46, Me, I was aware that Jack W had bowed out, but had hoped that was as far as the news went, I.E. we have no news of his demise.
I do hope that is the case.
On funding, the money is ring fenced for modernisation of the unions, you cant give it back to the Labour party. the government also gives money to business groups as well.
re 47. Benedict - through the wonderful facility of Google Alerts I am able to track daily what is happening to the amazing man behind Jack W. From what I can gather he is active and is working on a fascinating initiative.
48. But the money they would have otherwised spent on modernisation of the unions is now free to be given to the Labour party.
And we need to get over this idea that its all in each individual member’s hands to “opt in”. The decision with what to do with the political fund is in the hands of the leaders. The union leaders can decide whether to give the money to the Labour party or hold it back and thus they have disproportionate - and undemocratic - power.
The only fair way is to give members the choice of which party they want their money to go to and how much. And once they’ve made that choice the union leadership shouldn’t be allowed to hold it back. Once those two conditions are met, each members donation should count as an individual one - with each restricted to under £50,000.
As for organisations, whether businesses, unions or anything else, I don’t see why they should be able to donate anything at all.
If “Billy Ruffian” isn’t the man behind Jack W I’ll eat my hat! Welcome back.
Yes good to see Populus on trend with gaining Tories, but why are they so far out of the rest of the polls? Like Mike says the difference can’t be explained just on methodology. I find this interesting as somebody must be wrong. You can’t have 8pt Tory leads and 1pt Lab leads and both be right.
48. Clearly the Unions dont need money for ‘Training’.
Labour gives 12 million to the Unions, 8 million of which comes directly back to Labour.
A child can see what is happening.
Labour Government gives 4 million to Unions and 8 million to Labour.
Corruption. Sleaze. Stench.
Bleah, 5 hours sleep as had to finish an article last night and we’ve got a petition for users of a commuter train at 730 this morning. This is a BLACK coffee break…
Like Martin Smith I suspect the poll slightly flatters Labour, but not by much. As I said before it came out, I reckon the Tories are ahead among the ‘certain to votes’, hence the 5% MORI lead (which is based only on that category), but the parties are about even among those likely to vote. People who generally vote Labour have been nudged by perceived Tory cockiness.
What’s interesting is the LibDem revival. I don’t believe the public is following the leadership contest, but it may be that the LD score was artificially depressed by Ming’s perceived problems, and the public acknowledged that it’s been addressed by the change. Still think they will get squeezed if people expect a close election - the receding prospect of any election soon has reduced that factor.
52: This is simply not correct, nor are the similar posts earlier. Unions can only give money to any political party if their members (a) vote for a political fund and (b) don’t opt of it if they disagree with the use to which it’s put. It doesn’t matter how much money the unions get for training - if the members didn’t want the fund they couldn’t contribute a penny.
tjm’s proposal is a form of direct democracy, akin to taxpayers deciding where their money should go, instead of electing a government to do it for them: there’s a case for it but it’d be relatively unusual. Because the requirement to opt in would swing the ‘can’t be bothered’ group (always significant, even with something as important as a company pension scheme) out of the political fund, it would significantly reduce Labour’s income (which is possibly one reason the Tories like the idea), increasing dependence on wealthy individuals. For balance it would need to be matched by a severe limit on individual donations (£50K sounds far too high, more like £5K), and that would require a much lower level of activity by all parties. Whether that would really be terrible for democracy I’m not sure.
alex - caught up with your query last night. I’ve not been as closely involved in the project as I’d like for a while, so I won’t swear to every detail, but basically if you renew your passport once it gets rolling you’ll be asked for a biometric (fingerprint) record for the identity register, on the basis that if you ask the state for a document confirming you ridentity, it’s reasonable for them to ask that they can check if it’s really you that uses it. No ID card is involved in that, and if Clegg doesn’t want to have one he doesn’t have to. Critics of the scheme don’t like the idea of an identity register either, though, and the debate has largely shifted to that.
Bleah, 5 hours sleep as had to finish an article last night and we’ve got a petition for users of a commuter train at 730 this morning. This is a BLACK coffee break…
Like Martin Smith I suspect the poll slightly flatters Labour, but not by much. As I said before it came out, I reckon the Tories are ahead among the ‘certain to votes’, hence the 5% MORI lead (which is based only on that category), but the parties are about even among those likely to vote. People who generally vote Labour have been nudged by perceived Tory cockiness.
What’s interesting is the LibDem revival. I don’t believe the public is following the leadership contest, but it may be that the LD score was artificially depressed by Ming’s perceived problems, and the public acknowledged that it’s been addressed by the change. Still think they will get squeezed if people expect a close election - the receding prospect of any election soon has reduced that factor.
52: This is simply not correct, nor are the similar posts earlier. Unions can only give money to any political party if their members (a) vote for a political fund and (b) don’t opt of it if they disagree with the use to which it’s put. It doesn’t matter how much money the unions get for training - if the members didn’t want the fund they couldn’t contribute a penny.
tjm’s proposal is a form of direct democracy, akin to taxpayers deciding where their money should go, instead of electing a government to do it for them: there’s a case for it but it’d be relatively unusual. Because the requirement to opt in would swing the ‘can’t be bothered’ group (always significant, even with something as important as a company pension scheme) out of the political fund, it would significantly reduce Labour’s income (which is possibly one reason the Tories like the idea), increasing dependence on wealthy individuals. For balance it would need to be matched by a severe limit on individual donations (£50K sounds far too high, more like £5K), and that would require a much lower level of activity by all parties. Whether that would really be terrible for democracy I’m not sure.
alex - caught up with your query last night. I’ve not been as closely involved in the project as I’d like for a while, so I won’t swear to every detail, but basically if you renew your passport once it gets rolling you’ll be asked for a biometric (fingerprint) record for the identity register, on the basis that if you ask the state for a document confirming you ridentity, it’s reasonable for them to ask that they can check if it’s really you that uses it. No ID card is involved in that, and if Clegg doesn’t want to have one he doesn’t have to. Critics of the scheme don’t like the idea of an identity register either, though, and the debate has largely shifted to that.
Labour cannot sink much lower in the polls, so for them this will come as a great relief. Their problem at the moment is that they can’t build any momentum without something wiping out their lead.
http://lettersfromatory.wordpress.com
Nick P
A £50k maximum doesn’t seem on balance that high - and Conservatives would be hit more by that than Labour but still support it. What is iniquitous is to pretend that Unions shouldn’t have same cap as they are thousands of small donations but then argue that members shouldn’t opt in rather than out because “it would significantly reduce Labour’s income”.
Union political funds are there for more than propping up the Labour party and an individual member donates to the fund not the Party, though I agree most do it because “they can’t be bothered” to opt out. If Labour wants these treated as individual donations then union members should annually and specifically opt in. Then Labour is in same position as the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats in having to convince people to support it by donation not just depend on laziness and inertia.
Good morning everyone.
I am heartened to see Labour still in the mid-high 30s - although this is clearly a volatile situation. I wonder how much the Queen’s Speech will feed into this?
I am totally in favour of all the NEETS proposals. Saw Michael Gove on telly (sans glasses - he now looks like an 8 year old instead of a 12 year old!) saying how stupid it was to force disaffected youth to stay on at school. Doh! School is just *one* of the options, together with apprenticeships, work placements, college, the Forces etc etc. For a 16 year old to just leave school with nothing and no job to go to is not on these days.
56. £50k is not that high compared with the sort of money Lords Sainsbury and Ashcroft (to take two examples) have donated in the past, but I would have thought still high enough to risk some sort of kick-back. £5k is probably not, and would require the parties to start attracting a few more members which might not be a bad thing. I agree with you though that union political fund donations should be treated as a single transfer, not the proxy transfer of many small donations. Yesterday, I suggested a limit on corporate donations of £25k and I’d stick with that (the higher limit partly because there is an element of truth to the multiple-donation argument, and also there is less small scale stuff the government can do as a reward for donating).
The net effect of these changes would probably benefit the Lib Dems most - so be it.
To the state funding argument, yes, in the great scheme of things it is a tiny amount of money but it is the sort of proposal that will generate dissent from the public out of all proportion to the scale of money involved. There are plenty of votes to be won by opposing it. In any case, parties always spend at least as much money as is available to it and state funding won’t change that.
Meanwhile in the Times, David Laws finds that the Brown Bomber is still trying to be the Sultan of Spin, but still clumsy at it.
Still misleading people isn’t wrong if it gets newspaper headlines is it? Might those newspapers though be a little more sceptical next time so another own goal in pursuit of a one day good headline.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article2814115.ece
There’s a damaging piece on Darling in the Telegraph - that he nixed a rescue of Northern Rock
New thread - Is this smart spin - or just dumb?
58- David Herdson - sorry long post!
In France, donations from individuals are limited to 7500 euros (around £5k)per year. However no donations from companies are authorized.
The public funding of parties is based on two elements:
- the number of votes in the last general election (1.66 euro per vote (£1.16) for each party getting more than 1% of the vote in more than 50 of the 577 constituencies + different rules in overseas territories);
- the number of MPs and senators (around 45000 euros (£31k)for each one).
There is an important financial penalty for parties with a “gender gap” in candidates.
The total bill for the taxpayer is around 73 million euros (£50M) for 2007.
Sarkozy’s UMP gets around 27 million euros a year (it could have been 31 million without the “gender penalty”), the socialists 18 millions, Bayrou’s UDF-MODEM gets around 3 millions.
I agree with you that public funding is unpopular but at least it solved most problems of corruption that existed before the beginning of the 1990ies.
And there is a solution to your last point (”parties always spend at least as much money as is available “): a tight spending cap.
It was introduced in France in 1962 (and much more controlled since 1990) and has been quite a success: you see less political posters everywhere but that has not affected turnout: it was a record high during the last presidential election even if the spending limit was 18 million euros per candidate for a national campaign (around £12.5M).
42 – Thank you!
47 – The use of the phrase ‘recently departed’ was intended to refer more to the fact that Jack had absconded rather than anything more morbid.
51 – Sadly not. I am what I say – a constant lurker and occasional poster. I first came here for the ’05 Tory leadership race and was fascinated by Jack and his constant calls for ‘Our Ken’. It’s been sad to see him disappear.
The poll is encouraging for Labour, but out of line with the other five, all of which place the Conservatives on 40%+, so I suspect it’s an outlier.
I do not believe the Lib Dems’ fortune in the minds of the electorate (especially those that vote) varies anywhere near as much as the polls show. The bottom line is that Lib Dems are very popular with exactly the same socio-economic group in about 150 constituencies, get nowhere in about 300 with exactly the same type of people and the rest are in the middle. It only needs the pollsters to take a few stray samples over-representing or under-representing Lib Dem targets (without the socio-economic sample altering at all) for the Lib Dem share of what they publish to fluctuate wildly.
That ANY poll shows ANY lead for Brown at the moment astonishes me. I dislike David Cameron and George Osborne intensely, and am dead set against the Tories. Others I know feel the same. None of us, however, feel anything but despair about how the government has come across in recent weeks.