Does the British electorate know what it wants – and can the opinion pollsters actually measure it?
As a lifelong Labour supporter, I was disconcerted by today’s news that apparently Labour and Conservative are now equal in the polls at 36% each. Last month, the same opinion poll (ICM) gave Labour a lead of 7% and currently the YouGov poll gives Labour a lead of 11%.
What is almost certaintly true is that the UKIP share of the poll is falling. According to ICM, it has dropped from 18% in May to 12% in June to 7% now (although the party is likely to do very well in next year’s European elections).
Regular readers of NightHawk may recall a posting I did two months ago headed “The rise and rise of UKIP – and why it won’t last”.
This weekend, I attended the 40th anniversary celebration of our good friends Jim and Ruth Moher who are both Labour councillors in Brent. One of the other guests was Dawn Butler who was MP for Brent South (now effectively Brent Central) until the last General Election. We talked together about the next General Election which I hope she will contest and when my daughter-in-law Emily Darlington will be standing for Labour in Milton Keynes North. We agreed that the electorate is fluid in its allegiances and the results are really hard to predict.
Footnote: in this piece, Peter Kellner explains how the difference between the ICM poll and the YouGov poll has come about. He concludes:
“My judgement is that Labour’s support has declined in recent months, from 43-44% last winter to 39-40% now. (The party seems to have dipped below this a fortnight ago, before recovering slightly.) The Conservatives are on 31-32% now, roughly where they were six months ago, having slipped back after May’s local elections.”
July 18th, 2013 at 10:02 am
I am coming to the sad conclusion that most people vote based on their “gut feeling”, and that that feeling depends on what they pick up from the media. But what drives the media? Is it the moguls? Is it the most cunning of the politicians?
Australians repeatedly say that there is a crisis in their cost of living, while statistics show the opposite. Prime Minister since a recent leadership spill, Kevin Rudd, is now proposing to terminate the fixed carbon price (Carbon Tax), moving to a market-based Emissions Trading Scheme – to “reduce cost of living pressures”. If the Liberals gain power in the upcoming Federal Election, they will scrap all forms of Carbon emission charges with the Opposition Leader constantly appealing to the public’s sense that they are facing intensifying cost of living pressures.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/jul/16/fixed-floating-pinning-carbon-price
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/20/australia-cost-living
http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/2732638.html