Poll watching – the British elections

Written By: - Date published: 6:59 pm, April 7th, 2010 - 8 comments
Categories: International, uk politics - Tags:

So will David Cameron snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory? According to the latest Guardian poll it is possible. Results show that:

Labour support has climbed four points to 33% since an ICM poll carried out for the Guardian last week. Conservative backing has dropped one since then to 37% Labour’s best ICM rating since December 2008 and the Tories’ worst since February.

On a uniform national swing, these figures could leave Labour 30 seats short of an overall majority. Even if the Tories perform better than average in marginal seats as most people expect David Cameron would struggle to establish a secure parliamentary basis for power.

Either party could be left dependent on the Liberal Democrats, who are on 21% in the poll down two from last week.

Of course no poll matters like the one on the day, but it will be interesting to watch the political games unfold…

8 comments on “Poll watching – the British elections ”

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  1. gingercrush 1
    7 April 2010 at 8:52 pm

    Yes its going to be interesting. Hopefully TV One and or TV 3 cover the election in the news and cover election day. Its also interesting because its going to tight much like the situation in 2005. Obviously FPP means the seats aren’t proportional so its unlikely parties get the seat numbers in proportion to their vote. What happens during the election campaign will be interesting because I think we’ll see things repeated by both Labour and National here in 2011. (In the past Labour used ideas from Blairs campaigns and National’s campaign in 2008 had many similarities to the Conservative party). I also expect there will be a push for electoral change after this election. Certain parties will have little or no representation despite winning a share of the vote (much like the Greens and other parties in New Zealand faced prior to MMP). Also Labour can potentially win more seats even though they poll lower than the Conservatives.

    This will be one interesting election and I’ll be following it closely.

  2. gingercrush 2
    7 April 2010 at 8:52 pm

    Do we not have the edit function anymore?

    [lprent: That is what I’m working on. I thought I had its caching problem fixed earlier today, but that wasn’t the case.
    So it is off until I can sort out why super cache is caching the page after the reediting timeout and details are on the page.

    It looks tricky, and is probably related to a configuration issue further back in the system with session data. ]

  3. Peter Johns 3
    7 April 2010 at 11:17 pm

    The sun poll on Sunday had a 10 point advantage to the Cons. Polls are over the place, but I believe it is somewhere in between, 6-8%.
    I reckon it will be a real narrow Cons majority (>20 seats) or a hung parliament. Brown has to go as Labour are like the Cons in 1997, always believeing their own bullpoo.
    Labour are suggesting tax increases already, B4 the election!!!!!

  4. Peter Johns 4
    7 April 2010 at 11:18 pm

    Meant under 20 seats.

  5. RedBack 5
    7 April 2010 at 11:53 pm

    Yeah the Cons will need a swing against Labour of a whopping 6.9% in order to gain an overall majority. Thats no easy feat as no party has gained such a swing since WW2. Even with a 2.1% swing against Labour they can start talking to the Liberal Democracts about a possible Lib Dem/Lab coalition government. The biggest threat to Labour isn’t the Tories but voter apathy. This maybe the lowest turnout for a UK general election for a very long time. The main problem for the Tories is that alot of older swing voters over here still think Tory they also think Thatcher and the negative social impact that government had on British society which they are still feeling the impact of. The only way the tories could ever get themselves back into contention to fight a general election was to appear to distance themselves from that era. But with Lord “tax dodger” Ashcroft advising them on policy and the old tory warhorse Ken Clarke back in the shadow cabinet I doubt they’ve changed that much. Alot of voters over here are also cautious of the lack of a plan from the tories with regards to getting the UK economy kick started post recession. The Tory plan was to simply let the market dictate and let the banks up here fall and with it millions of peoples savings and of course jobs. Its that kind of “let the market decide” attitude that makes alot of British voters still very nervous about a Conservative government and rightly so.

  6. RedBack 6
    7 April 2010 at 11:59 pm

    Actually try the BBC’s “swing-o-meter”. It can be found here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/election_2010/8574653.stm
    (I apologize now if that hasn’t been pasted correctly).

    Very useful. But it does make you realise just how unfair FPP actually is. The UK really needs proportional rep desperatly. If nothing else it will make the electorate feel a bit more engaged in the voting process than they currently do.

  7. Sanctuary 7
    8 April 2010 at 9:36 am

    The thing about the Guardian poll is historically it slightly favours Labour, but it has also been the most accurate of all the polls. The problem for Labour is in the marginals the gap is wider, and given the archaic FPP system the Brits have that is where it really counts. I am picking a very low turn out and a slim (less than 10) Tory majority, although I note that in the Tory Murdoch Times columnist’s are sounding a note of caution and even predicting a hung parliament. Given how close that paper is to the Conservative, you have to wonder what they’ve been told about the Tories private polling.

  8. RedBack 8
    8 April 2010 at 10:06 am

    Yeah Labours promises of major electoral reform post election including a proposal to give the British public the chance to finally vote for the seats in the House of Lords and the increase in employers contributions in the national insurance tax is definitly overtures towards the Lib Dems. Sadly the Tory’s plan the opposite if they win. They plan to reduce the number of MPs and a cut to MPs salaries. Can’t see why anyone would want to vote for a party that has already admitted it wants to reduce democracy for ordinary folks. Only the Tories would be arrogant enough to try to sell the idea of less democracy for voters being a good thing. At least Labour are starting to warm to the idea of proportional reresentation.

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