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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » A Juncker boost for DC? Latest Ashcroft phone poll sees the Tories back in the lead
Tories take lead in new Ashcroft phone poll
Con 33%, Lab 31%, Lib Dem 9%, UKIP 15%
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Looking at the weekend Survation Poll it ended with a penalty shootout between the UK and Germany.
The question was:
Which country, the UK or Germany, would you personally rate as best at each of the following things?
The subject then changed with each penalty taken
Beer Cars Germany even sneaked a win on weather by a single percentage point.
But when it came to Healthcare System this was the result: That cannot possibly be a rational or informed view.
It also makes you realise it is not Labour which is strong on the NHS but rather a large majority of the public wanting to idealise its role and protect it from what they perceive to be adverse change.
The real margin of error in polls is much greater than merely the random sampling error. The YouGov margin is, practically speaking, around 5% on Lab lead, for example.
I'm hanging fire until I see the ComRes phone poll as The Lord Ashcroft phone poll has become synonymous with volatility.
It would give the Scots ideas and that is very dangerous.
He finds 25 (19%) 2010 Lib Dems who now say they will vote Conservative, compared to 18 (15%) who say they will now vote Labour.
When was the last time a poll showed the Tories taking more 2010 Lib Dem voters than Labour?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2675143/Cameron-brightest-Farage-weirdest-Voters-40-marginal-seats-verdict-Britains-political-leaders.html
Despite being a Tory supporter I remain amazed at the faith shown in Lord Ashcroft's polls on this site. Today's poll is good news but reliable? His marginal polls good for Labour but reliable? I don't bet thankfully but if I did these kind of polls would not be my guiding light.
FPT this goes to the heart of Labour's problem. In order for labour to shore up its working class vote, it will have to get much tougher on immigration - but its metropolitan vote is driving in the opposite direction.
But people being polled aren't naive; they know the polling will be used as a proxy to inform debate and justify (or not) policy. So they answer according to that.
They must be seriously bricking it about the northern working class vote. ISIS might be turning attitudes very quickly and very dramatically.
A defence of Islam artcle on CIF gets an absolute shallacking today. Not in the Mail. On CIF. Inconceivable 18 months ago.
Ed's attitude, no matter how Machiavellian, too closely resembles taking your trousers down and bracing yourself.
But it will all blow over fairly soon.
Note that the weighted base in these polls is less than 500.
An unreliable weekly look at four seats that will hopefully be early to declare on GE2015, and will give a good indication as to victory by either side...
Kingswood - Is now a comfortable Conservative HOLD.
Unsurprisingly, the same is true for Pendle, Vale of Glamorgan and Harlow.
And also, by extension, an explanation for the swingback phenomenon and why subsidiary questions on government confidence are not yet [consistently] being reflected in voting intention results..
FPT: Richard N - thanks for the clear answer: you say we will under Cameron have an in/out referendum in 2017 without waiting for any treaty. Suppose the answer is "in", perhaps because Cameron says good progress is being made and he's optimistic about the outcome. Suppose then that the Treaty is not quite what was expected, or there is no Treaty because someone (Poland, say) vetoes it. Would we then have a second referendum? Or would Cameron say that the matter was settled in 2017?
Bought Sakho into my fantasy side.
Amateur error.
37 years later, and it is almost as though he had a crystal ball
But, the world wont listen
His assessment of human nature, and the effect of mass immigration on both sides of the debate, is unsurpassed to this day. I recommend a read of it to anyone interested in politics
What we need to remember is that we seem to be in a generally volatile polling period at the moment.
Remember Ashcroft wasn't alone in showing Con leads last month - ICM and Populus also did. YouGov had the parties tied a couple of times as well I think?
Certainly something happened in May, but after the Euro's there was clear drift to Labour - Ashcroft seemed to "see" this shift first as well?
So what it could be is that Ashcroft Polls are actually very sensitive to the little shifts and nuances in public option that other pollsters don't pick up on that well?
Ignorance and certainty are a very dangerous combination.
Even more so than a Scot with an idea.
The trouble is that there is a limit to what you can do to allow for the hypothetical. In the scenario you describe, it might not even be Cameron or a Conservative government who was in power when the Poles pulled the plug. It might even be your problem - what would a Labour government do in that scenario?
Edit: In addition, the problem exists in reverse if we decide to leave. What happens if, contrary to the assurances of the BOOers, we find that we can't negotiate an acceptable trade treaty with the EU?
When people aren't really thinking about politics it's better news for Labour.
Or put another way, come the general election, Lab's stuffed!
It's a theory anyway...
Whatever else Cameron has done, he seems to have united his party.
For example, the percentage of 2010 Lib Dems now saying that they will vote Labour has been: 14%, 33%, 23%, 15% The unweighted base this week was just 104 2010 Lib Dem voters, so the margin of error on this is +/-10%, and so all of the polls could be consistent with this staying relatively steady at about 1-in-4.
On the other hand, there has been a monotonic decrease in the proportion of 2010 Conservative voters who now say they will vote UKIP: 18%, 18%, 17%, 14% - but as to how many you would need to be sure there was a real underlying change? I don't know, though I suspect more than four.
Whatever eventually happens to ISIS, I believe right now it is shaking people to the core (whether rightly or wrongly).
Government drops plan to give attorney general power over web news archives
Media organisations had opposed move to force takedown of past stories that could be prejudicial to jury in criminal trial
http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/jun/30/attorney-general-online-news-archives
09/06/2014 154 235 46 107 219 1003 < 25% CON
30/06/2014 191 209 55 98 218 1006 < 31% LAB
Lord A's raw numbers in each of his polls btw (Unweighted)
Quite nicely his weighting doesn't change them all that much.
My hunch is that 09/06/2014 poll was an outlier on the low side for the Conservatives, we need more data from future weeks to determine if this is a Labour outlier.
I didn;t claim ISIS were an epochal threat. All concerns over what is happening in Syria and Iraq may turn out to be completely irrational.
But that does mean they are not there.
Given that, the volatility of the Ashcroft polls is not at all surprising. In isolation they cannot possibly tell you anything about the week-to-week changes in public opinion.
(Subject to my earlier post - as to the "theoretically perfectly random sample" point, for example.)
They have already taken over several cities in one of the most dangerous places on earth, with the intention of making it an Islamic state, it is a big deal
This is getting very close to a boom.
Springtime for Basil ?
When Cameron is really pissed off about something he finds it hard to conceal it. He looked pissed off over Juncker and the EU-elite's general disdain for Britain last week and good on him for making a stand.
He lost, yes, but I prefer a politician to do the right thing and lose than do what GB did over the Lisbon Treaty and sneakily sign up to it off-camera.
As the Euro elections and council elections both suggested (though on very low turnouts) the two main parties are pretty much nip and tuck and one suspects that local factors may have a disproportionate effect next year.
Danny Blanchflower@D_Blanchflower·Jun 23
Ashcroft poll has labour 5 pt lead which has steadily widened since may which has been a shock to the panicking Tory spin machine
Expand Reply
Jim Pickard@PickardJE·1 hr
And now Ashcroft has the Tories substantially ahead @D_Blanchflower
Danny Blanchflower@D_Blanchflower·54 mins
@PickardJE i agree with @dpjhodges this one doesn't look credible as so much variation across polls - average in june is labour has 4pt lead
Jim Pickard@PickardJE·53 mins
The "rogue poll" defence @D_Blanchflower @DPJHodges
We do not simply go from 'in' to 'out' in terms of trade.
More to the point the idea that EU manufacturers would accept a loss of such a large slice of their market is fanciful - unlike the almost certainty that one of the 27 countries of the EU will mess up whatever deal Cameron feels he has negotiated as a basis for the referendum.
In the past rates would be going up faster than you can say Nigel Lawson.
Death from above will be simple exercise.
So I agree that these are not inconsistent with a stable level of support for the Conservatives.
Similarly, the Labour shares are: 32, 35, 31, 34, 32, 35, 33, 31 = mean of 32.9%
The Lib Dem mean is 8.3% and the UKIP mean is 16.1%
Putting these into Electoral Calculus [just for fun!] gives a Labour majority of 42.
Had in 2010 the tories got 33, labour 31 with libdem, Labour would have been 29 seats short of a majority, but 34 seats ahead of the Tories and in coalition with the Lib Dems would have had a stable majority of 68.
With the figures in todays poll (33/31/9) Labour are only 18 short of a majority, but are only 16 seats ahead of the tories; and in coalition with the Libdems would have a tiny majority of 8.
One of the reasons the coalition has worked is that it has a majority of 80. This means that the dissenters in both parties could be ignored. Indeed it has probably been easier for Cameron than if he had a small overall majority like Major did in 1992. I would think that the main bulk of the Liberals are rather easier to work with than the "Bastards" were.
Labour have no such luxury on these figures and a coalition with majority of 8 would be a nightmare to whip, especially as difficult financial decisions will be needed to continue to reduce the record deficit.
Why are there no bees in my garden when two months ago it was full of them? That is matter of real concern to me. A punch -up between one bunch of homicidal nutters who think we should all live in the 7th century and another bunch of homicidal nutters who also think we should live in the 7th century but in a slightly different way? Nah, couldn't give a big rats arse.
And I don't think they can be accused of being medieval either. With their penchant for cruxificition they are taking us way back into the first century AD.
Nuke 'em.
You ignore the basic point I made that we would still have membership of the single market via EFTA of which we are an original independent signatory quite separate to the EU.
Or are you saying that the EU will pick and choose which members of EFTA they do business with?
That is before we get on to the basic point that our balance of trade deficit is such that the EU simply cannot afford to not trade with us.
But of course don't let simple things like facts get in the way of your blind Europhilia.
That is top enviro issue for UK citizens btw.
It's very clear what we would get when we are in the EFTA: full access to the single market, as Norway has. The question is what we would get once we leave the EFTA. That is likely to be somewhere between what Korea gets and what Norway gets. For me, that would be well worth it to manage immigration into this country.
I would also like to see some polling on UKIP and 2010 Lib dem voters where they could only choose either Ed Milliband or David Cameron, as this will be the decision at the ballot box.
There is currently a petition doing the rounds to get the government to reverse its decision to allow a bee-killing pesticide to be marketed in the UK. Bees are wonderful creatures and anything we can do to help them is A GOOD THING.
The much more difficult part of the negotiations would be on services, which are very important for us but not for our EU friends, and where many of them actively don't want to give us free access. I don't know why you have become so personally unpleasant over the last few months. I guess it must be because I win all the arguments.
"Not very easy on the eye"
Yes he is!
Domestically though I think you're right it's likely to crystallize the stuff the media and political class have been playing down for years i.e. grooming gangs, illegal workers, electoral stuff etc.
'You ignore the basic point I made that we would still have membership of the single market via EFTA of which we are an original independent signatory quite separate to the EU.'
Are you aware that EFTA membership guarantees the free movement of people,surely the last thing kippers want?
RT @carldinnen: Exclusive ITV/ComRes Poll finds support for staying in the EU dropping over weekend; Stay 36% (down 4), Go 43% (up 1),...
UKIP could give lessons to the SNP in making it up as you go along.
Edit: "and never have been" is wrong. OTOH we left in 1973, giving an adequate time for the news to have filtered through to UKIP Towers,
This posting of yours is a classic case. You falsely claim that we would need to have atrade treaty with the EU. Of course that treaty already exists between the EU and EFTA/EEA. As I say,. unless you are claiming that the EU can pick and choose which members of EFTA it does business with your case is garbage.
Yet another argument you have lost because you ignore basic facts.
They love my ornamental sage, and it give a super display.
It's the first major study and the bees are just fine.
What is apparently not fine is the banning of neonicotinoids because their replacements are far, far worse. Though I think that was in the other article I read on this study.
A pioneering European Union survey into the impact of pests and diseases on honey bees found death rates were lower than feared, in part countering concerns about the collapse of colonies of the crop-pollinating insects.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/07/us-eu-bees-idUSBREA361JH20140407