Latest Opinion Poll

I always like to leave it a while before I comment on Opinion polls, when they first appear there is either an unnatural excitement or a dismissive attitude depending on what the poll says. The latest opinion poll from YouGov appeared last night and the headline figures are absolutely sensational. The Conservatives have a rating of 49%, Labour 23% and the Lib Dems 17% a Conservative lead of 26%. If repeated at a General Election on a uniform swing Labour would be annihilated and the Conservatives would have a majority heading up towards 300. This poll will add to the sense of impending doom which is beginning to define this stage of the Labour government.

There is nothing of comfort for Labour in this poll, there is no Labour politician featured in the poll who would not do worse than Gordon. The poll rating for Labour is easily one of the most catastrophic in its history, and we need only compare it to the 25% or so that Michael Foot actually acheived in 1983. Now an opinion poll taken when we are almost certainly 2 years out from a general election is probably worthless as a predictor of the outcome however the trend is there for everyone to see. The Conservatives are in a formidable election winning position. This poll is about the limit of most Conservative’s wildest dreams and I doubt there will be a significantly better poll than this. I blogged earlier in the week about whether we are at the tipping point, we will know more after the Crewe & Nantwich by election where I’m hearing rumours that Labour are struggling and could get pushed into third, I think that by the time Parliament rises for the Summer recess expectations of a Conservative victory big or small will have been locked in. By then I suspect even Labour will be privately conceding that the next election is lost with the only questionmark being the scale of that defeat. This is the sort of poll that is pointing to a paradigm shift in public attitudes.

A good weekend to be a Conservative

Fresh from the YouGov poll lead of 18% for the Conservatives, this weekend brings fresh good news for the party. An ICM poll gives a lead of 10% and a News of the World poll in the marginals suggests that Labour are losing out heavily in the marginals. The poll suggests that the Conservatives would make net gains of over 100 seats, enough to give a majority of 64. This is devastating news for Labour as it shows that they are being comprehensively outperformed where it matters most.

The Conservatives cannot sit back on their laurels though and will need to work daily until the next election to ensure that what is only a theoretical result becomes an actual result. The more polls like the last couple and we can be fairly sure that that election won’t be occurring until it has to! 

Latest Opinion Poll - Conservatives 18% ahead

So tonight sees a new opinion poll published by YouGov with the Conservatives on 44%, Labour on 26% and the Lib Dems on 17%. This is a staggering poll. If replicated in a General election it would probably produce a seriously workable majority for the Conservatives. It is also interesting to note that the Conservative lead is now larger than the Lib Dem share of the poll, the Conservative share is larger than the combination of the other two parties shares and the difference between the Conservatives and Labour is double that between Labour and the Liberal Democrats. Now clearly this could be a rogue poll and bear no relation to how party support is in the country. We will need to see other polls to start to get an idea of whether the Conservatives are developing an election winning position. Also next weeks local elections may give us an idea of the state of play.

For Labour this is a catastrophic rating to be at, they are plumbing polling depths that they haven’t seen since the dog days of Michael Foot. If this poll figure is accurate Labour has some big questions to ask itself about how it is in this position, and how to dig itself out. If it fails to come up with the correct answer then it looks increasingly likely that they will be bundled out of office when the next election comes. This sort of polling begins to bring into sharp relief the rebellion in Labour ranks over the 10p tax band abolition. Some thoughts will turn to the leadership and whether to ditch Brown. Whilst I can see the arguments around it, and the superficial attraction I suspect that a governing party that replaced a leader they had chosen by acclamation only a short while before would not be treated kindly. Labour might be looking at a bad result next time, ditch Brown and it could be even worse.

The Lib Dems have staged a modest recovery from the dire position they were in under Ming. It wasn’t Mings fault, it wasn’t even his age, it was his massive dislocation from the zeitgeist. This was a leader who looked like he had walked out of the 1950’s, it was never ever going to work for the Lib Dems under Ming. The problem is that Nick Clegg has only really had one success which is to nudge the Lib Dems polling up a little, unkind souls would probably point out that a lot of that upshift occurred whilst the contest was going on. Nick Clegg probably still doesn’t resonate with the public who would be hard pressed to pull him out of a line up. The other problem is that when Clegg hasn’t been invisible he has bought negative publicity, his EU Treatystution walkout made the Lib Dems look childish, there three line whip to abstain over a referendum that was in their manifesto made them look anti-democratic and out of step with the time. Nick Cleggs laddish boast in a glossy magazine made him look frankly a bit of a prat, so in many ways the Lib Dem poll rating is despite not because of their leader. What does it presage, I think it is pretty clear that the Lib Dems are being squeezed by the Cameron Conservative Party and they need to offset losses in former Conservative seats. The Lib Dems need to make themselves a second alternative to Labour to hoover up the votes that don’t want Labour and don’t want the Conservatives either. The problem is that Nick Clegg is tending to try and face all ways, he should remember the old cliche about not fighting a war on two fronts.

All in all a very very good poll for the Conservatives, a dire poll for Labour and a middling sort of poll for the Liberal Democrats.

Conservatives making lots of headway now

Tonight there is an ICM poll giving the Conservative Party a 13 point lead over Labour. At the weekend there was a poll showing a Conservative lead of 16 points and another poll showing a 9 point lead. Earlier today there was a London mayoral poll giving Boris a 12-point lead over Ken. It is clear that despite certain concerns on the right the Conservatives are beginning to make considerable headway. Labour are now plumbing depths in polling that they last visited under Michael Foot, the Conservatives are pushing up towards the mid-40’s. The Lib Dems have improved slightly since the arrival of Ming but are still being squeezed somewhat. This is a very good position for the Conservatives to occupy at the moment. The danger is though that the election is now more than likely 2 years away and that is a long time to keep a poll lead. I would say though that as of now the likelihood of a change of government at the next election is likely. The Conservatives are now in their strongest position for two decades with the local elections approaching and the realistic chance of seizing the mayoralty of London opening up and the likelihood that there will be further gains in local government the next few weeks and months could get even better for the Conservatives.

 David Cameron must however continue to tread a fine line between caution and boldness, not allowing confidence to turn to arrogance and assumption. Victory is not assured until votes are counted. However the Conservative Party have every reason for optimism going forward, the task is still hard, the election will still be a tough one to win but the polls are now showing that there is potentially enough support out there to win an election. It is now every Conservative’s job to get out and spread the message and ensure that that support solidifies.

Conservatives 11% Ahead

New Opinion poll puts Conservatives 11 points ahead of Labour, Conservatives, are on 43, Labour on 32. This is good news for the Conservatives and bad news for Labour. I suspect that if things continue as they are now there will be at least one poll with a 15 point lead before Christmas. We shouldn’t underestimate how bad things are for Labour, and it is no use anyone pretending. Labour are in a very very big hole.

Latest Opinion Poll

Well the latest opinion poll for ICM gives the Conservatives a share of 43% , Labour 36% and the Lib Dems 14%. This is clearly good news for David Cameron and the Conservative Party, it confirms that the Lib Dems are being squeezed but it is not dreadful news for Labour. I think most Labour people will probably be pretty sanguine about this kind of poll. Some Conservatives will go overboard, I won’t. You can look at the historical poll record and find opinion polls in the 80’s and 90’s giving bigger opposition poll leads than this and them still going on to defeat at the ensuing general election.

This opinion poll doesn’t show as some will say that the Conservatives are heading for government. It does show however that they are competitive for the first time in over a decade. That has got to be good news for politics in general. There is still a horrificly long way to go until the next general election, this opinion poll shows that the Conservatives can win an election not that they will win an election. Every Conservative should see the hope in this poll and seize the opportunity to work hard to turn potential victory into actual victory. I know one thing for sure, I’m up for it!

Update: It appears the TB/GB’s have kicked off again. Articles in the Mail on Sunday and Sunday Times with anonymous briefers sticking the knife in to Brown. I actually thought that the Blairites would stay shtum for longer. Oh well, I won’t try and dissuade them!!

Busy Day for Politics

Well today has been a fascinating day. Brown bottles out. Then a poll puts the Conservatives 3% ahead of Labour with the LibDems on a derisory 11%.

So the next election is clearly a 2 horse race. People expect Ming Campbell to be taken to the glue factory pretty soon!!

Gordon should be concerned

Three polls so far show that Cameron has got a significant bounce. The Guardian poll shows the parties all square. The other two also show statistically insignificant poll leads for Labour. I think the polls themselves are not enough to worry the Gord, I think what he will be more worried about is whether there is traction. The Labour party is already preparing the ground for a climbdown by briefing that the marginals have a strong showing for the Conservatives etc. They are also identifying the IHT proposals as the significant factor, this is important as Labour have form that if they can not easily destroy an opponents proposals by undermining them they pilfer them. So my top tip is expect the government to do something on IHT at some point, it will be nothing like good enough but they will calculate that it will deny the Conservatives a USP.

I think also that the Gord should be worried about reception, I think there is a sense developing that his Iraq stunt was a seminal moment. I commented on it previously and suggested it could represent a tipping point. I think this is partially borne out by the way his hospital visit today was represented as an election stunt, and that was in the Guardian! So I think that the polls will not be what will be exercising Gord or his advisers it will be trying to decipher whether the Conservatives are generating traction with the electorate, so they will be looking at private polls and probably more of the general opinion polls over the coming days. They will also be looking at the fact that the media environment will be more difficult, certainly if the media begins to question the motives of government announcements. If so then this last week will probably go down as the week when New Labour’s 15 year ascendancy began to implode.