Tagged with Polling

Why Lord Ashcroft’s polling on Unite is worthless and should be discounted

Michael AshcroftLord Ashcroft published a poll of Unite members yesterday which made uncomfortable reading for Unite’s leadership – “just under half (49%) of Unite members said they would vote Labour in an election tomorrow; 23% would vote Tory,” revealed Lord Ashcroft for example.

It also gave some encouragement to Ed Miliband’s plan to restructure the party-union link — 57% of the 712 people polled by Lord Ashcroft “said the rules should be changed so members would be asked if they wanted some of their membership fee to go towards the fund, rather than having to opt out“. Mind you, this compares with 87.4% of the 241,249 Unite members who voted in the real poll required by law who voted to retain the opt-out fund as it is now. Answers do depend on how you ask the question! Continue reading →

Urgent lessons for Labour

Ed Miliband at the NPFThe latest ICM monthly poll showing Labour and the Tories level-pegging at 36%, largely because of the collapse of the UKIP vote from 18% in May to just 7% only 2 months later, is a real wake-up call for Labour. The UKIP vote is extremely flaky and volatile, largely used by (but not exclusively) Tory voters as a protest vote, and likely to rise again at the EU parliamentary elections next June – though equally likely to subside again rather quickly thereafter.

But the real significance of this latest shock poll, even if it is qualified by a somewhat different showing in other polls, is that Labour is stuck at a rather modest poll level and does not seem to be gathering the support one might expect given the government’s unpopularity over austerity, pay cuts, privatisation of the NHS, and severe benefit cutbacks. It is crucial at this stage, less than 2 years from the election, that Labour asks some very hard-headed questions as to why.

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Two Eds and the fallacy of being “tough” – even if it costs more

This is Ed Miliband’s speech to Labour’s national policy forum in Birmingham on Saturday. You can also read it here. The tough message is because

when George Osborne stands up next week and announces his cuts in day to day spending, we won’t be able to promise now to reverse them because we can only do so when we can be absolutely crystal clear about where the money is coming from.

There is no doubt that the two Eds have decided that toughness is the greatest virtue for these tough times. If we don’t show it, the story goes, we won’t be seen as fiscally responsible. But in spite of his commitment to “iron discipline“, it’s possible Ed Balls may still believe the excellent advice in his Bloomberg speech about jobs and growth, and about “changing and leading public opinion rather than being driven by it“. When we’re in government, the two Eds may well tax and borrow more to boost spending and jobs, but they’ll be careful to present it as “investment” (for which it is OK to borrow) not “day to day spending”, and we won’t commit to it in any case until we’re elected.

We don’t believe that this is the best way to win back those 5 million votes lost between 1997 and 2010. Of those voters who positively approve of austerity (far fewer than those who just see it as inevitable — the view Labour has failed to challenge), why wouldn’t they vote Tory or Lib Dem? The Two Eds are not only wrong in what they now say about what Britain needs but they are targetting the wrong voters. It’s worth looking at those who did vote Labour in 1997 and whom they support now. Continue reading →

The Thatcherite agenda lives on more for Blair than for Britain

The poll conducted by You-Gov Cambridge and published this week in The Guardian shows that the British are more ready than the Americans, French and Germans to affirm their continued belief in the values of fairness, compassion, and concern for others, and to look to their government to act in line with those values.

The poll’s message is salutary, coming as it does in the week of Thatcher’s funeral and a few days after Tony Blair’s advice to Ed Miliband that he should not risk any re-affirmation of traditional Labour values. We are a less Thatcherite country than her acolytes would have us believe, and the route to electoral success for Labour is a braver one than Tony Blair understands. Continue reading →

Lib Dems face annihilation, says poll

No, really read on. We mean real annihilation. Although the YouGov poll on the 76 key Lib Dems seats was reported yesterday by the Sun and UK Polling Report, it was overshadowed by another YoGov poll which showed UKIP overtaking the Lib Dems at a national level, and even in its reporting, only the headline figures for all 76 seats were reported, ignoring the crucial distinction between Tory-Lib Dem contests and Labour-Lib-Dem contests, which were as follows: Continue reading →