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.

The seventeen-point strategy

I didn’t get too excited about the nine-point lead yesterday and I won’t get any more excited about a 17-point lead today. It’s still daily poll, about which I am yet to be convinced, and it comes on the day when DC has received more press coverage – largely positive – than any other.

We saw George Osborne’s speech following by a bounce and then a reality-checking un-bounce. The Labour spinners are out in force over DC – that he has called every single economic decision wrong (although the public appears to reject that) and that his wealth means he can’t understand the concerns of ordinary people. I think this last point will have some resonance but generally only to reinforce antipathy in the minds of those already likely to vote against him ie people will agree with it but still vote for him.

Around 45% is where the Conservative Party needs to be in order to be sure of a decent majority in May. I believe the chances that we will be the largest party after the next election are 99.9% – something extraordinary would have to happen to prevent that. But the electoral system is weighted hugely in Labour’s favour – as I mentioned yesterday, 40% for the Conservatives and 31% for Labour produces a Tory majority of four; if you reverse those figures, Labour gets a majority of 124. There is still a significant chance that despite a good poll lead, DC could face a hung Parliament.

Polls tend to tighten as we go into elections. Sometimes they come out again, as in 1992 and 1997. But in 2005, they got even closer. Conservative high command needs to know that until we are on 45% regularly, anything can happen. They need a really, really effective campaign lined up – with a Cameron bounce every day – to be sure of a majority in the House of Commons worth having.

And in the Parliament we’ve got coming, it’s really important that we don’t end up with a minority government that can be blocked into a stalemate. There’s a lot of hard work ahead in every consistuency.

The nine-point plan

I don’t think that daily polls tell us much of a story anyway but the news that the Conservative lead over Labour is back into single figures isn’t surprising or worrying to me.

Despite everything that has happened during the past 18 months, George Osborne’s speech on Tuesday outlining cuts that need to be made if we to have any chance of bringing the country’s huge debts under control, will have come as a shock to some people. They probably don’t read a newspaper or listen to the news and use the internet for other things. The simple fact is that not everyone is going to understand the context of George Osborne’s message – for some, it might become clearer later – others will never see the necessity for spending reductions.

Others will understand the message and will have decided that they don’t like it much. Included in that may be thousands of public sector workers who fear for their jobs. For them, the Conservative message could be pretty glum – although it’s a glumness that we in the private sector have had to manage for the past 18 months. Today in the FT, there is an advert for a Deputy Head of Internal Audit at the DfT for £80,000 + benefits and in the Local Government Chronicle for an Interim Change Manager at £35-43k. I could go on.

This stoking of the public jobs market that Labour has indulged in not only has to stop – it has to be redressed. There are, for example, 99,000 soldiers in the Army and 85,000 officials in the MoD. That’s the equivalent of each soldier having a 0.85FT official to look after their needs – it’s clearly ridiculous. And turkeys won’t vote for Christmas – what is important is the creation and expansion of alternative economies for people to move out of the public sector into.

If you put 40%, 31% and 18% into Electoral Calculus, you still get a Conservative government – albeit with a majority of four (the same nine-point lead for Labour produces them a majority of 124). But I’d rather have a Conservative government that will sort out our national problems with a razor-thin majority than a Conservative government that tells people what it thinks they want to hear with a majority of 124.

If people then vote for five more years of Gordon Brown’s denial and escapism, they will get everything they deserve.

Luvvies, Labour’s Lost

Flawed but not floored - can he turn it around

It’s a bit early to define a narrative from the Labour Conference in Brighton just yet but so far the most interesting thing coming out of the proceedings there is the attitude of the BBC.

First, we have a surprisingly combative interview from the normally obliging Andrew Marr, who went so far as to raise with the PM the issue of his alleged medication. Predictably, Brown dodged the question and instead went for the sympathy vote over his eyesight, something that David Blunkett – a far more robust and substantial man – would never have done. Whatever the answer, it caught me (and quite a few of the Tory Twitterati that I follow) out – one wonders whether this is the last Marr/Brown interview.

It obviously irked Marr to ask the question as much as it did Brown to have to answer it. The BBC man’s pleading that it was a “fair” question was followed up by some serious feigned interest in Brown’s sob story. Obviously I’m sorry he has a sight impairment – but it was noticeable how much detail he was prepared to give up on this in contrast with the actual question about prescription drugs.

Then we had this from Laura Kuenssberg (@BBCLauraK) – she really is a gem on top of a compost heap. Not only was she prepared to tell viewers the actual mood of the conference on Brown’s arrival (ie pretty dreadful) but also to lob some real questions at him about his law-breaking ministers and then reflect that the party activists (the BBC usual calls them crowds as if to ignore their handpicked pedigree) were making so much noise that he couldn’t hear her. And she hinted, quite correctly, that this was probably deliberate.

But look at the story headline – “Labour ‘should expose the Tories’”. Clearly the online staff have gone seriously off message – or on message with PM. It doesn’t reflect the downbeat message from LauraK and about Labour – or indeed much about Labour at all. It’s just a pop at the Conservatives.

Previous to this, of course, was this beauty – again courtesy of online staff – suggesting that Brown and Barack Obama are, after all, the closest of chums and that Obama doesn’t see Brown as a washed-up political liability or “depressing to be around“, as one of his staff leaked to the press. According to the BBC, this official line “quelled rumours” of an Obama snub. No it didn’t – and who are they to report that as fact? Any moderately sensible person watching the polls will realise that the last thing Obama needs with his problems at home is to become embroiled in some tawdry scheme by a foreign political party to prop up their ailing government with lent popularity.

Obama isn’t my cup of tea but he’s certainly not a fool. And only a fool would consider anything other than refusing any more public airtime with Gordon than was absolutely necessary. Any suggestion to the contrary is completely counter-inituitive and total propaganda, which the Beeb is only too happy to repeat.

Going back to the polls, not even Obama could have found a way to spin a poll that suggests you are heading out of office positively. I can’t now find the link on the BBC website – maybe they’ve seen sense and pulled it – but this poll, which states 41% of people think Brown is almost certainly going to lose is bad, bad news. Instead, the BBC concentrated on the 48% of people who though Labour still had a “slim chance” of winning in 2010, along with the 11% who think he will win.

It’s a silly question – you can’t ever rule out that a party has a “slim chance” of winning. I’m not surprised so many people ticked that box rather than commit themselves but it doesn’t reflect reality. The BBC is supposed to be here to present facts not spin to us that 59% of people think Gordon is still in with a chance next year – of course he is, he’s taking part in the election. They are more aware than ever that politics is self-fulfilling and by buying into this silly poll (I though they didn’t report routine polls anyway) they are just playing PM and the PM’s game for them. At our expense.

I don’t expect the BBC to give DC a free ride. I don’t expect them to push through government PR work. But there is a bipolarity within the corporation at the moment between the political pragmatists that realise the New Labour years are 95% drawing to a close and the politically-motivated staff who desperately want to play a hand in upsetting the odds with sly journalism. It’s got no place in the BBC and they have no place on the public payroll.

The BBC is a service, not a political tool. I’m afraid quite a number of its staff work there for the wrong reasons – they should stand for election instead.

Friends in the North

Some very interesting polling news from the FT this morning, showing that the Conservatives – despite what the left-wing media will tell you – have done more than enough to cancel out Labour’s majority in the north of England and may even be winning there.

I don’t expect that cities such as Liverpool, Manchester or Middlesborough will be returning many Conservative MPs in 2010 but what this polling shows is that among C1 – classified as “lower middle-class” although I’m not keen on this type of stuff – and C2 (skilled manual workers), the Conservatives are now in the lead.

And both in the north of England, which kept Labour in power in 2005, and in the Midlands the Conservatives now have an overall lead in the polls – in the case of the Midlands, it’s a pretty thumping one too.

Strangely, none of this information appears to have been reported by the BBC, which usually defends itself by saying it doesn’t report “routine polling data”. I seem to remember it gleefully reporting routine polling data when Tony Blair was on the way up and John Major was on the way out – has politics or society really changed that much?

More likely, the BBC has become more aware of the self-fulfilling nature of polls and has come under severe pressure from PM – and the actual PM – to report more serious news - such as the buying out of ConservativeHome by Lord Ashcroft, for example.

For DC, surely this is gold dust ahead of the Conservative Conference – in Manchester. Okay, he’d be a fool to be triumphal about it – but also a fool to ignore the powerful message it sends out to the north of England; that the Conservatives can genuinely be their voice in Westminster.