On tightening polls

Will it be a closer race as the election approaches?

Cllr Denzil Coulson responded to my post on the seventeen-point post-DC speech poll lead with a Tweet that a 45% Conservative poll rating at the next election was “very unlikely”. Lo and behold, another poll put the Conservatives on precisely 45%, which I duly tweeted for his attention.

“You and I know that polls tighten during the election campaign”

came the response via Twitter and it’s not an unreasonable one, so I thought I’d look into it, starting in 1992. Back then, polls weren’t as frequent or, as we subsequently came to realise, as accurate as now. But looking seven months out from John Major’s photo-finish election win, ICM/Guardian on 14 September had Con 39, Lab 39 and LD 17. That was the same result in MORI/Times 10 days later. By 12 October, there was a Lab 43, Con 41 LD 12 poll done by ICM/Guardian. I’m not being selective – those are the polls I can find. In the end, the result was Con 42, Labour 34, LD 18. Not much sign of a tightening there – except for one away from the October 12 ICM Labour lead.

In 1997, it is a slightly different story. A November 1 MORI poll has Lab 54, Con 30, LD 12 and a Lab 47, Con 34, LD 15 poll followed the next day by MORI. All other polls in November had Labour above 50 and the Conservatives on around 30. The final result - Lab 43 Con 30 LD 17 – is indeed a tightening of the polls seven months out; but which way are the polls tightening? As in 1992, the move was away from Labour as people who, when questioned, said they would vote Labour stayed at home.

In 2001, four polls in December put Labour on around 46, the Conservatives on 33 and LDs on 15. The actual result – Lab 41, Con 32 and LD 18 – was similarly due to Labour voters staying at home, a lack of enthusiasm for the Conservatives and aggresive Lib Dem campaigning. Yes, a tightening – but a tightening away from Labour. During the last election polls seven months out showed Labour at around 38, the Conservatives on 31 and the Lib Dems on 21. The election result was Lab 35, Con 32 and LD 22 – very close to the polling figures in November.

A few things to note:

1) The Labour vote has always been lower in the election than the average polling figures seven months out, probably due to lower turnout among Labour voters

2) The Conservative vote in polls seven months out since 1992 has been very close to the results on the night

3) The Lib Dem vote has always been higher in elections than polls because they campaign so well

It is also worth stating the obvious – that it depends which polls you look at and where the votes are cast is more important than how many are cast. But the evidence above suggests that Labour’s percentage on the night will be lower than their current polling, that the Lib Dems will do better (just as well given that they are on 16% today)and that the Conservative vote will hold around about where it is now ie the average for the month.

We are, of course, all hostages to fortune and whatever surprises the next seven months may hold. But a quick glance through records shows that the Lib Dems relying on a tighening of polls during an election campaign to produce a hung parliament might be a little misguided. It’s still a possibility if we don’t work hard enough, though.

Not our problem

The press release below refers to the decision taken at Woking Borough Council last week to introduce a membership scheme for Woking’s centres for the community. This scheme will allow the council to better tailor the services it provides for users of the centres and offer them priority services – informal consultation ahead of the decision showed that opinion was generally positive towards this idea.

The cost of all this will be just £8 a year – or £4 for those in receipt of concessionary benefits ie those on low incomes in Denzil Coulson’s blog entry. It’s not much – and it doesn’t raise a huge amount of revenue but what it does is support the idea that those who use a service should contribute a small amount to its delivery. The amount charged in this instance not only reflects the ability to pay but also the group being asked to pay.

Contributions such as these will help the council meet budget targets. By opposing this scheme, the Liberal Democrats are voting to make the budget more difficult to balance. They think that subscriptions from the garden waste wheeled bin scheme should be used to offset this scheme instead – totally missing the point that the garden scheme itself, also, has to be offset. In fact, a willful ignorance of how to balance the council budget is beginning to characterise their messaging at the moment, with suggestions of new services and opposing any extra charging to increase revenue.

I’m minded of the Association of Liberal Democrat Councillors’s Effective Opposition handbook, which says:

“Oppose all service cuts…no cut is going to be popular and why court the unpopularity that goes with the responsibility of power?”

Why indeed? Well, because unless you can handle the responsibility of power and the unpopularity that comes with it at some point, you’ve no place running a tap, let alone a council. Since the beginning of history, the placing of an extra financial liability on the population – or certain parts of it – has not been popular. But sometimes the responsibility of power has to be shouldered by those with the courage to understand that what is expedient is not always what is necessary.

The Lib Dem bible then goes on to say:

“You are NOT running the council. It’s NOT your problem.”

Correct – it’s the problem of every resident of the borough that an equitable way is found to ensure a sustainable financial settlement. I’ve been told to read Lib Dem literature and vote for them to find out about another way of financially modelling the council (is this the legendary “fourth way”?). Perhaps that’s true, perhaps not. But I’d rather not vote for any party that takes such a mercenary view of local authority administration – if they’re not in charge, it’s not their problem.

It’s yours instead. And that of those with the task of trying to balance the budget while maintaining a sense of proportion and fairness. Something that is, apparently, conspiciously absent from the Lib Dem handbook at the present time.

View from the conference

Cllr Denzil Coulson is at the Lib Dem conference in Bournemouth. He and I disagree on some of the finer points but I think his musings are well worth a read!

The Mar-jury is still out…

Last night, Conservatives gave a second chance to the Marjorie Richardson Centre by funding it another £10,000 and accepting the excellent business plan that the centre had put together. Mary Painter, a Horseller and Lib Dem activist was very instrumental in that and she deserves praise for the document she helped produce.

Unfortunately, the decision hasn’t stopped sanctimonious sour grapes from Cllr Denzil Coulson, who is trying to claim credit for the Lib Dems for”saving” the centre. Rubbish.

“It is most unfair that community services such as the Marjorie Richardson
Centre have to pay the price for Tory financial mismanagement of the Council to
“plug the £1 million + hole” in council finances.”

he says. That would be the financial black hole that first emerged under the Lib Dems in 2006 /7, then, wouldn’t it? And the one that has been excerbated not by mismanagement but by a lack of funding from government and the effects of the recession?

“Residents and community organisations have already started paying
the price of Tory cuts being applied to fill their financial hole in the council
accounts.”

he continues. Wrong – the finances will be balanced in 2010/11 without recourse to any cuts in front-line services. The community organisations are not services run by the council and don’t receive continuous funding from WBC in most cases. Rejected applications happen every single year and the organisations should be quite capable of finding funds elsewhere – these are not cuts, they are simply a decision not to give a discretionary contribution.

To paint them as cuts is a typical distortion of the truth from the Lib Dems. Although the Lib Dem ranks contain people who are financial professionals, they are clearly choosing to ignore the basic business facts behind the MRC issue.

1) The centre was spending more on management costs than it was earning in sales
2) The centre was relying on Woking Borough Council solely to plug that gap
3) There was no proper business plan in place
4) The number of users is small and declining

Mary Painter and others have produced a good business plan seeking to address all the points above. I have given her credit for that – maybe the LDs would be gracious enough to give the Conservative Executive credit for keeping faith in the centre against the odds listed above.

No? I thought not.

An unholy row

Further to my previous post, the executive has made its decision – to refuse the URC, to pass St Mary’s over to county councillor Geoff Marlow for consideration out of his Surrey members’ allowance and to give St Paul’s, Maybury, £30,000.

The executive members I think have made a sensible decision – the URC bid was just nonsense and the St Mary’s one, while worthy, is something the church should be doing anyway and has had 10 years to plan for. St Paul’s is a truly good scheme with great community benefit and probably deserved £50,000.

But some of the scenes in the chamber were a bit unsavoury. The Lib Dems tutting about grants refused and people getting tribal about churches in “their” ward – or even their churches. There is no place in the council chamber for this kind of contemptuous attitude or religious persuasion.

My own feeling is that the council should put a stop to all applications from churches as part of the community grants scheme. All the churches are wealthy enough to be able to fund their own business and the agrandisement of their own facilities.

If we are to consider exceptional schemes that clearly have an overwhelming and valuable community benefit, they should be brought forward separately – with no obligation for them to get to council – as part of delivering the council’s community strategy.

We shouldn’t be in the business of subsidising church efforts to secure future generations of worshippers. That isn’t what the council tax should be used for.

Update 4/4/09: I find myself in agreement with Cllr Denzil Coulson. Just fancy that!