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This could be a good strategy to get the vote out?

Labour’s core strategy in Crewe and Nantwich to portray their main opponent as a “Tory Toff” has attracted a lot of criticism and has even proved a bit too rich for some contributors to LabourHome.

The sight, as above, of Labour activists seeking to follow the Tory candidate dressed up as “Toffs” and the emphasis on his background in campaign leaflets has been the principle theme of the party’s by election defence.

It easy to write this off but this has become almost standard by election fare when Labour has been threatened with losing a seat. The strategy, first seen at Birmingham Hodge Hill in 2004, is to find what appears to be a weakness in the party’s main opponent and then going hell for leather to repeat this on every occasion. It’s not pretty but it worked in that by election as well as at Hartlepool a few months later.

In the former Labour was able to exploit the fact the Lib Dem candidate’s day job was in the community relations aspects of the location of mobile phone masts. In the latter the party made their central theme unwise and patronising comments that the Lib Dem candidate made in her blog about some of the people of Hartlepool.

The “Toff” attack does not quite have the same potency as these earlier campaigns. Labour needs something firmer and more specific about the Tory candidate and that might come in the remaining eight days.

It’s important to understand that all this is not designed to switch votes but simply to provide a message that motivates Labour activists and voters to make sure they turn out on May 22nd. The main danger is if the approach fails to resonate with your own supporters but has the effect of motivating the opposition.

For me the big development today should be the publication of the full data from ICM’s C&N poll that came out at the weekend. This should give us a clearer idea of the cross-party dynamics and help to explain even further the disparity between the general election voting intention in the constituency and the by election. The former figures had the Tories 16% ahead while in the latter it was just 4%.

Mike Smithson

Is this the most likely “end-game” scenario?

Whenever the question of the manner of Gordon’s eventual departure is discussed three different possibilities are raised: that he’ll go after leading Labour to an inglorious defeat at the hands of David Cameron; that he’ll be ousted in a bloody coup; or that he will, like other Prime Ministers before him, stand down on health grounds.

Only a few have suggested that he might come to recognise that his leadership is undermining his party against the dreaded Tories and that he will just fall on his sword. The very idea of this is so alien to the images that Brown projects that the notion just gets swept aside.

I think that this might be wrong. For the one enduring quality about Gordon is that he is totally wedded to the Labour movement and he is fully versed in its history. He will be only too aware of the way that his short leadership might be portrayed. To make the ultimate sacrifice for the sake of the movement by voluntarily giving up the post he had strived for most of his adult life might appear better than hanging on until the end.

This is a massive pill to swallow and Gordon takes a long time making the big decisions. But if all the evidence is pointing one way he could, I believe, do it.

The Labour blogger, Paul Linford, in an excellent post at the weekend on what happens next wrote“..I think it entirely plausible that Mr Brown will fall on his own sword. The one thing he has always been is a party man”.

There are several betting markets - I’m in big on the line up of party leaders at the next election where I got an effective 5/1 on Cameron being the only one from last July who would still be there. It’s now tightened to 1.62/1.

Mike Smithson

Mail on Sunday

My assessment: the Tories have a 90% chance of winning

We’ve now got more information about the Mail on Sunday’s ICM poll on the Crewe and Nantwich by election and it’s clear that the situation is even worse for Labour than was being reported last night. The panel above is reproduced from the paper.

For the Tory by election poll margin of 4% would have been 12% but for ICM’s “sprial of silence” adjustment. This is a standard procedure and involves allocating to Labour half the votes of those party supporters from the last general election who now say they they will turnout but “don’t know” yet what they will do.

I cannot recall a survey in the past when this adjuster has produced changes on this scale - normally it affects the shares by a maximum of 1-2%.

My guess is that the final votes on May 22nd will be much closer to ICM’s 16% Tory lead on general election voting intention than the reported figure of 4% for the by election. Based on these figures my view is that Cameron’s Conservatives have at least a 90% chance of taking the seat.

In many ways the Crewe and Nantwich general election voting figure is more dramatic than YouGov’s national 26% Tory lead that was reported on Friday. For C&N is constituency number 165 on the Tory target list and if a 16% lead actually occurred here then Cameron would win the general election with a massive land-slide.

Another survey in the Observer also suggests that there has been a sea-change in opinion. The paper notes that “a Tory government is preferred to a Labour one by a margin of 50 to 32 per cent. In another significant boost for Cameron, more voters think the Conservatives would do a better job of governing than believe they would do a worse job”

It’s not clear from the online edition of the paper who carried out the survey and whether or not the pollster is a member of the British Polling Council.

The latest Crewe and Nantwich betting prices have the Tories at 0.4/1 with Betfair and 4/11 with the traditional bookmakers. It looks good to me.

Mike Smithson

A 24 seat shift to Cameron’s party in just ten days

The spread firm, SportingIndex, has just put up its new general election commons seats spreads following the YouGov poll overnight suggesting that Labour are on just 23% - a massive 26% behind.

When we last looked at this, a week last Tuesday and two days before polling, I posed the question - “Will punters believe in a Tory majority after Thursday?”.

Well they have and the Tory spread has moved from 318-324 seats up to the latest 342-348 seats. So taking the mid-point in the spread the market is suggesting a Tory seat total of 345 seats - or an overall majority of 40.

I think that this is just about the first time ever since spread betting was launched in the UK that gamblers have been prepared to risk money on the Tories getting a workable majority.

Clearly the polling has helped and so has Boris’s victory in London. Market sentiment has now moved to believing that David Cameron will be the next prime minister.

Mike Smithson

Has the Sun switched from MORI following the Mayoral outcome?

A key thing that polling does, apart from to give some idea about the outcome of a future general election, is to help create the environment in which the political process operates. As we have seen so often the pressure on party leaders can be driven by poor polling numbers.

For there’s little doubt that shocking polls for Labour, like the one in this morning’s Sun, can affect the whole way that contemporary politics is perceived and one set of bad numbers can lead to another.

But judging from the Sun’s report of its poll this morning it looks as though the top-selling tabloid newspaper might have switched to YouGov. The report notes that the paper “…chose YouGov after they accurately predicted the results of last week’s London Mayoral election.”

For the last couple of years or so the polls the paper has carried out, almost on a monthly basis, have been by MORI. Now if today’s development means that future Sun surveys will be by YouGov then there could be a pattern of at least three a month from the online pollster. YouGov, of course, already does regular surveys for the Daily Telegraph and the Sunday Times.

I’m not sure whether this is a good thing - different approaches by different firms can give us a clearer picture and help us to understand better what is going on.

More YouGov polls could also affect the betting - particularly the spread markets on the number of seats that the main parties will get at the next general election. Market movements tend to be drive by the latest polling numbers and, not unexpectedly, the Tory spreads have moved upwards overnight.

The Conservative seat price on Spreadfair is now at 343-347 seats - the lower figure being the sell level and the higher one the buy level. Profits and losses in this form of betting are determined by working out the difference between the contract level and multiplying by your stake amount. So if you sold the Tories at 343 seats at £50 a seat and Cameron’s party ended with 373 seats then you would lose 30 times 50 = £1,500. On the other hand if they only got 323 seats you would win 20 times 50 = £1,000.

With this firm the prices are set by what other punters want to offer. The other spread firms fix the levels themselves and both of them have been down overnight. Expect a new price fix this morning.

Mike Smithson

Appalling news for Labour from the pollster that got Boris-Ken right

In what is perhaps the most sensational opinion poll for decades the pollster that got the London Mayoral election spot on, YouGov is tonight reporting a 26% lead for the Conservatives.

The shares are CON 49%: LAB 23%: LD 17%

The last survey from the firm had an 18% Tory lead so this is a very big shift upwards.

Clearly Gordon Brown and Labour have had an appalling week and the fact that the Tories can win something big, the London mayoralty, indicates almost certainly that a sea change is taking place.

Before people start knocking YouGov it is worth remembering that in the days after Gordon’s conference speech last September the pollster was recording the biggest Labour leads of any media-commissioned survey.

The big question now is what this will do to the overall political environment.

Clearly the Tories have to take Crewe and Nantwich if this really is the state of public opinion.

Mike Smithson