{"id":11894,"date":"2013-07-16T10:19:51","date_gmt":"2013-07-16T09:19:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=11894"},"modified":"2013-07-17T08:33:46","modified_gmt":"2013-07-17T07:33:46","slug":"does-the-british-electorate-know-what-it-wants-and-can-the-opinion-pollsters-actually-measure-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=11894","title":{"rendered":"Does the British electorate know what it wants &#8211; and can the opinion pollsters actually measure it?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As a lifelong Labour supporter, I was disconcerted by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/politics\/2013\/jul\/15\/tories-labour-ukip-guardian-icm-poll\"> today&#8217;s news<\/a> 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%.<\/p>\n<p>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&#8217;s European elections).<\/p>\n<p>Regular readers of NightHawk may recall a posting I did two months ago headed <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=11339\">&#8220;The rise and rise of UKIP &#8211; and why it won&#8217;t last&#8221;<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>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 <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Dawn_Butler\">Dawn Butler<\/a> 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 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mk.labour.co.uk\/emily-darlington\">Emily Darlington<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n<p>Footnote: in <a href=\"http:\/\/yougov.co.uk\/news\/2013\/07\/16\/are-labour-and-tories-really-level-pegging\/\">this piece<\/a>, Peter Kellner explains how the difference between the ICM poll and the YouGov poll has come about. He concludes:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;My judgement is that Labour\u2019s 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\u2019s local elections.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As a lifelong Labour supporter, I was disconcerted by today&#8217;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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-british-current-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11894"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11894\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11905,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11894\/revisions\/11905"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}