Monday 14 September 2009

All These Polls Add Up, Gordo


A new poll released by Pupulus puts the Conservatives on 41% and Labour on 27% - not in itself significant, you might think, but taken with all the others by all the polling firms and the numbers add up to a few inescapable conclusions, all of them alarming for Brown.

Political Betting puts it like this:
CON 41 (+3) LAB 27% (+1) LD 18 (-2)

This the first public survey by the firm since mid-July and clearly the comparisons above reflect that. The numbers are very much in line with all the other firms and show that there’s been very little movement during the summer.

Populus operates in a manner that’s very similar to ICM and, indeed, the firm usually uses ICM call centres to carry out its fieldwork. The main difference is that for its Times polls has a sample of 1,500 which is the largest of any of the phone pollsters.

There’s bad news for Brown - 65% of those interviewed thought that someone other than him would make a better leader.

I'm actually quite surprised by the 65% negative rating for Brown. I thought it would be much worse. It seems that 35% of the population are idiots.

The conclusions, though? The first one must be that Tory support now has definitely become solid. After the expenses scandal and the Hannan/NHS squabble, any damage that might have been infliceted has been completely repaired. Cameron has certainly not "sealed the deal" (a pointless, meaningless cliche anyway), but people to me seem to be resigned to the fact that the only way to kick out this failed Labour regime is by turning to the Conservatives. It just goes to show, no one really votes Tory out of love, they vote for them out of necessity. And quite right too. People trust them to fix Britain's broken economy - they've done it before, after all.

The second conclusion concerns Brown (ah, Brown, you again). His plummeting popularity is certainly a concern, but it is the pattern emerging in all the polls which will concern Labour grandees most. Even the ones technically weighted in Labour's favour are showing signs of shifting towards the Tories. To my inexpert eye, you can add a further three percent to an ICM or a Populus poll if you want to know an election outcome. That's what happened in the locals and Euros - and worse. Labour's vote is so fragile that they are one more Megrahi scandal away from total collapse. That scandal is bound to be lying in wait just around the corner. They have been overtaken by the Liberals before during the early Eighties, but that was at the expense of the Tories. It could be about to happen again. Suffice to say, Brown's position has just become even more precarious, if that is actually possible.

Finally, since this poll was conducted on behalf of The Times, the last word might as well go to it:

No party has ever recovered from being so far behind in the polls at this stage of a parliament to win the subsequent general election.

Opinion has hardened among voters that David Cameron will win an overall Commons majority, now expected by 57 per cent, up six points since mid-July.

The poll is devastating about Mr Brown’s position as leader. Just one third think he is the best leader that Labour could have at present. But nearly two-thirds (65 per cent) believe there are other Labour politicians who would make a better leader than Mr Brown. Some 48 per cent cannot think of anyone specific but believe “literally anyone would do a better job than him”.

5 comments:

  1. Scary typo...nearly gave me a seizure. Labour on 277%? Even Mugabe, Ahmadinnerjacket and Karzi couldn't manage that!

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  2. ROFL - yeah, that was a bit of a shock! My thoughts certainly went in the same direction as yours...

    I hope Smithson's fixed it now.

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  3. Nice to see they are doomed and that it's only a matter of how many seats they lose. I'm pretty sure, D, that when you say another scandal is just round the corner, you are absolutely right, I mean, this IS labour we're talking about so there just HAS to be another one merely waiting to be exposed. Then we are going to see complete wipeout for Labour, apart from the 25% diehard twats that keep voting for them, and they may well become as unelectable as the Lib Dems have been for 90 years - that would suit me just fine.

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  4. I think a Lib-Lab alliance is on the cards in the next 10 years. While not being completely back to 2 party politics, things will be a lot more polarised than the last 2 decades.

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  5. Me too, Spidey. Me too.

    UB: Under Clegg, I would be flabbergasted if there was a Lib-Lab pact. He and Cameron have a lot more in common than people realise, for one thing. But I guess it is possible. If Clegg goes, and the Liberals shift left, then yes. But not with him.

    Clegg would be better off doing a deal with the Tories and killing off Labour once and for all. But I suppose that won't happen as long as they are connected to burnt out old lefty frauds like Shirley Williams. Once they're all dead, the influence of ex-labour left wingers in the Liberal party will diminish considerably - and Britain might take one step closer to killing off socialism once and for all, leaving behind a choice for the electorate between either liberal conservatives or liberal democrats.

    So I'm not so sure about the polarisation - or, at least, I think it will be rather different from your characterisation. I think there'll be a rump of hard line socialists left behind like some quaint artifact of a bigone era, while the Blairite, social democrats of Labour will either be culled, will quit or will defect to the Lib Dems, who will emerge as the dominant antagonist to a Tory government.

    One thing is possible in that scario, PR could be the big issue 10 years from now, (assuming Britain hasn't become part of the EU socialist-imperialist superstate and ceased to exist, that is...)

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Any thoughts?