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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » As we move another month closer the killer fact for CON remains: LAB’s vote is still buttressed by LD switchers
We are now within 17 months of the election and the overall situation remains the same. Even if all the 2010 CON voters who’ve moved to LAB returned it would make very little difference to Labour’s majority winning vote share. Those 2010 LD switchers remain.
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Hence I don't think you can make the case that these voters are really sticky. They may be, but equally I think they will only really focus on the question when the election gets closer: do they really want EdM as PM or not?
As I've posted before there are three groups that really matter:
- 2010 LD/Lab: I think we will see a high percentage return and a significant NOTA component
- UKIP: From NOTA they came, to NOTA will they return
- "scared 2010": Labour ran an effective campaign and scared people into believing that the Tories would torch everything. The record has proved that is not the case. Perhaps Labour can avoid proper scrutiny of their plans (I'm still mystified as to how they managed than in 2010) but it may be they can't.
- (There's also SLAB: Labour did much better in Scotland in 2010 vs England - how much was down to Brown's Scottishness?)
My money's still on a hung Parliament, with the Coalition continuing.
The polling by the former CON treasuer, Lord Ashcroft, underlines that the LD>LAB switching is much more pronounced in the key marginals than elsewhere. We are seeing the same in the Alan Bown funded Survation polling of the marginals by Survation.
Do 2010 LDs want EdM as PM? The numbers suggest that he as the edge with this group on Cameron.
The one GE2015 conclusion you can draw is that a CON majority is very remote. A continuation of the current coalition is quite possible. I'm on that at 9/1.
Something happens. A number of people are involved. They get caught or found out, either because they make mistakes and leave a trail of evidence, or because someone talks.
I this case (perhaps), Lucan disappears. His friends help him to disappear. They arrange for his body to be disposed of, never to be found. They cover their tracks and keep schtumm. They never blab.
In almost any other case, his body would have been found (washed up on the beach somewhere) or he would have been found alive (like John Stonehouse) or his friends would have confessed.
The other possibility is the almost equally unlikely scenario that Lucan managed to dispose of himself, without help, and without his body being found.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10511145/Universal-Credit-politicians-always-pay-a-price-for-trying-to-change-the-world.html
The Daily Mail reports that the Pope beat Miley Cyrus to become Time Magazine's Person of the Year.
Perhaps this means that I should complain the the Pope beat Daniel Radcliffe to become Time Magazine's person of the Year.
Careful how you handle this news PBers but the "killer fact" is that the general election isn't until May 2015.
Apparently too .... On Christmas Day in the pub Dave Cameron hands Sam divorce papers and Ed Miliband is revealed as a serial killer bumping off Labour voters and burying them under the patio. Meanwhile Nick Clegg and Nigel Farage are found to be long lost brothers but both are killed when an airliner crashes on the village pub where they are meeting.
On one view this is a little surprising. The fact that free school meals is not funded past the next election, for example, is frankly odd. But the media meme is now that the tories are nasty but competent on the economy and Labour are useless but mean well. I think this meme is now well established and both parties will struggle to do much about the negative part before the next election.
It may be that the 2010 Lib Dems do not much care about the economy and have other priorities but will the "useless" part make them wonder if those ambitions can be achieved? I think it will and that some, certainly not all, of them will ultimately return to the Lib Dems, especially in those seats where Labour is not an obvious player.
My guess at this stage is still that the tories will be the largest party again but short of a majority. The Lib Dems will be significantly diminished in terms of numbers but still large enough to hold the balance of power. Mike's 9-1 bet on a continuation of the Coalition looks a good one to me at this stage.
Interesting tables for electricity and gas and how the bill is composed. Also given is energy personal indebtedness by country and energy deprivation by country.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-25200808
Personally I have been as comfortable with Coalition policy in the round than I have been with any government in my adult life. The tories of the Maggie/ Major era were good on the economy but really quite repellant on many aspects of social policy. I liked a lot of Blair's social policy but Brown was a total disaster. One of my major regrets (and his apparently) is that he did not get rid of Brown by 2002.
Lab=>LD switchers found that the economic incompetence smell remained in 2010 even when they were holding their noses.
Then !shock! the LDs didn't turn out to be Lab MkII. In fact of course they didn't even turn out to be LD MkI and hence the wave of revulsion from a large element of those switchers.
But.
Look at where we are now.
Has the Lab team transformed itself (no matter for better or worse but critically away from the last bunch)? Nope.
Are the Tories broadly getting the economy right? Yep.
Are the LDs wielding real power in a real government which, while not not following letter for letter the LD manifesto, has enacted some meaningful ("restraining") laws? You betcha.
So in GE2015 the economic incompetence argument and barrier to voting Lab will really have gone nowhere. We know that EdB is as safe as GO so Lab=>LD=>Lab switchers will take a long hard look at the proposed incoming Lab team and, I believe, many will switch back =>LD.
In any event I think these soft left voters turned away from the Lib Dems immediately after the coalition was formed (note the party's polling fell before Ed Miliband was elected) and won't pay much attention to politics again until forced to do so (nothing special about these voters, former Tories are similar).
There was a reduction in one marginal tax rate, but both in absolute terms and as a % of income tax paid, the richest are paying more than they did previously.
Repeating a lie doesn't make it true, dear boy
I think things will change once they really consider the options. But may be they won't.
F1: the FIA want a 12th team for 2015 or 2016. A most entertaining suggestion is a second Brawn team, but I'm not sure that'll happen.
Another part of the Labour mess the government will be able to claim to have sorted.
The reduction in the upper rate of tax was sound economics but very poor politics. There is no getting away from that. Charles is right but it really doesn't matter. The memes are set.
I've always thought 26 cars is about the right number for F1 races, especially with the points system that goes down to 10th place. But with 13 teams, you will always have some struggling for funding. Marussia and Caterham have done well, everything considered.
There needs to be a proper resource restriction. And weight penalties for success. ;-)
Simple fact is Balls needs to be moved on and Miliband won't do; it not so much the chumocracy as the crapocracy.
Chortle
There seems to be an inability among the PB Tories to reverse their question about Ed being PM.
Do you want Dave as PM? Among the 2010 LIB switchers and of course the 2010 LAB group, the answer to the question is No, I should think.
KIP are the wildcard. I still can't ascertain whether their vote is soft or not. If it's not, CON are toast.
If it is another turquoise Coalition is possible, and is a good bet at 9/1.
Customer teams are verboten, currently. However, many feel the new (and stupid) governance laws are there to make them a viable option (either for a third car or a second, customer team). However, this would mean axing half the field and would not sit well with fans. It would also prompt the serious problems of, for argument's sake, a two year odl Red Bull being faster than last year's McLaren (a very bad scenario for PR), or multiple teams wanting just one or two cars.
Given the morons in the FIA got double points for Abu Dhabi and wanted two mandatory pit stops (happily defeated) I wouldn't put this lunacy past them.
Weight penalties are silly. A higher weight limit would be good.
Resource restriction has theoretically been agreed for 2015 onwards. Can't see it working, fully at least, though. McLaren and Ferrari have road operations. You can't limit their road car testing, so anything with an overlap between road cars and F1 will mean those two teams get a big advantage. No way around that.
However, David Buxton, the CEO of the British Deaf Association, has said he was purely making “childish hand gestures and clapping, it was as if he had never learn a word of sign language in his life”.
I think the term is Busted.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/nelson-mandela/10512672/Fake-sign-language-interpreter-at-Mandela-memorial-claims-it-was-schizophrenic-episode.html
I also reckon the continuing economic recovery gives the Lib Dems a sensible line to take into the next election campaign. They've been part of a government that (it seems) is presiding over a recovering and rebalancing economy, and in a funny way perhaps the fact that times are still tough for millions of people gives both the Conservatives and Lib Dems extra leverage for their 'Don't let Labour come back in and ruin things again' angle.
Certainly I found it notable that in PMQs, Cameron seemed so keen to talk about the economy. More than once (IIRC) he said he positively welcomed Miliband's questioning about the 'cost of living crisis'.
I am paying less tax than I paid at the start of this parliament and I am a top rate tax payer. Some taxes that wealthy people pay went up, but if you do not have to pay those taxes then you are actually much better off than you were. The top rate of income tax has come down, as has the amount of tax paid on dividends. The only other direct tax I pay is council tax. VAT went up for everyone.
But voters are a bit more complex. When we talk about 'swingback', what we are talking about is the natural tendency of voters to use opinion polls as an opportunity to 'blow of steam', and send a message to 'their' team. (The same is seen in local elections.) So, come the election in 2015, we would expect to see a number of Conservatives who switched their allegience (in opinion polls) to Labour to come back.
The problem is that Labour's poll leads don't come from Conservative votings moving on mass to them - they come from former LibDems. There are very few Conservative to Labour switchers to 'swing back'.
Instead, the Conservative Party has lost voters principally to NOTA or UKIP. If they wish to benefit from these voters 'swinging back' they need to tailor their message accordingly, and this is why Lynton Crosby has focussed - rightly or wrongly - on immigration as a differentiator.
The truly good news here, however, is for the LibDems. If there is any 'swingback' from Labour, it will benefit them. And any move to the right by the Conservative Party brings the differences between the coalition partners into sharper focus. This makes it easier for the Lib Dems get back some of the voters they lost to Labour and to NOTA.
And as I keep on saying about Crosby - winning elections under systems in which voters get to make graded choices is very different to doing it under FPTP. The more he chases UKIPers, many of whom have no track record of actually going to the polls, the more he alienates 2010 LDs, who we know do vote.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-25345253
Well, that'll be revolutionary.
They seem to have scooped up some fellow hard left LD travellers with their Marxist anti capitalist stances.
As the Ashcroft marginal poll indicated the yellow peril were polling significantly better in the strongholds and much of this improved support will come from these returnees. Clearly other factors have to considered :
1. New voter rolls from 2010.
2. Incumbency bounce in some seats.
3. Differential turnout.
4. Differential swingback.
5. The campaign.
Working on around 50% swingback pulls Labour back, on ICM Dec 2013 numbers, to around 33% and the LibDems up to 16%
2010 LD/Lab: The most settled element of the electorate. They are viscerally anti-Tory, and although many aren't recoiling from the LibDems and often like a local LibDem councillor, they intend to vote to evict the government. They are emphatically not NOTA voters - on the contrary, they have on average stronger views than any other group except UKIP, and it's at a gut level which is immune to things like tax cuts or Falkirk. I don't know what they're like in LibDem seats, though - quite possibly they'll return home there if Clegg is sounding sufficiently anti-Tory by election day.
UKIP: seem highly motivated to vote - "at last we can stuff you lot". If the Tories keep swinging populist (not necessarily "right") they will get some back, but probably not a lot.
Scared 2010: Some do think the Tories have torched everything: there is a lot of unhappiness about NHS trends in this group. Others just think the Government has proved incompetent. Today's YouGov shows that just 1% of Labour 2010 voters have switched to the Tories. However, I think it's still open whether all this group will vote. I'm much more confident of 2010 LDs than of the these.
Scottish Lab: you may be right, I wouldn't know about that. Doesn't affect many seats though.
I think Scotland will provide some interesting results this time around, especially if the 2011 LibDem meltdown is repeated.
"every single poll has shown"
Therin lies your problem tim - polls count for the square root of ferk all.
Real elections count - and in the last one Labour got 27.9% in England.
In my view most of the voters who moved from Labour to the Lib Dems in the noughties considered themselves to be to the left of new Labour. They oppose the use of private health providers, they are skeptical about academy schools, they oppose university tuition fees and they are unhappy about cuts in benefits and Council services. And, of course, they were particularly angry about Iraq. These voters, in general, would never consider voting Conservative.
The very idea of the Lib Dems forming a coalition with the Tories was anathema to these people. They were aghast that the party which they believed to be the most left wing in the political spectrum (as they see it) could do such a thing. They feel an almost personal sense of betrayal. And now that Labour has moved in a leftward direction and repudiated the Iraq disaster they are much more comfortable with returning to Labour (which many of them supported in the 1990s anyway).
Very few of these voters will return to the Lib Dems in 2015 IMO. And there is nothing that the Tories can do or say that will influence the voting preference of this group.
"David Cameron is said to have complained to President Obama that US officials didn’t seem to have heard of George Osborne although – and this clearly hurt – they all knew who Catherine Ashton was. The president apparently explained: “Well, yes… but she is the High Representative of all the countries of Europe.”
Chuckle. (The last sentence of the piece also offers an entertaining wartime anecdote.)
Do you have any evidence to support this assertion?
I ask because your conclusions appear to conflict with clear statements to the contrary by the Office for National Statistics.
See for example the commentary on GDP growth in this month's Economic Review:
Figure B shows that while growth was heavily dependent on a sharp rise in construction output during the earlier period [2009-2010], the distribution of growth between the sectors is more evenly distributed now. Between Q3 2009 and Q2 2010, the volatile construction sector accounted for a third of the total increase in output, despite representing only 6% of the economy. By contrast, in the first three quarters of 2013, growth was spread more evenly between sectors, with the services sector – which has risen more consistently during the period since 2009 - accounting for the bulk of the higher output.
Creating artificial mini-booms by stoking up one manipulable sector of the economy seems to be far more a Brownian than Osbornian tactic.
I suggest you withdraw you assertion quickly otherwise Rachel Reeves might report you to her friend, Sir Andrew Dilnot,
Now it is Cameron and Osborne who are the incumbents, and have the gravitas and credibility that comes from holding office, while these voters can be scared by blood-curdling tales of Labour failures in the past.
The important thing for Conservatives to remember about these swing-voters is that each one of them is worth double a Conservative voter lost to UKIP, or a Labour voter gained from the Lib Dems, because they debit the Labour total and credit the Conservative total at the same time.
OGH has said this many times before and so have the polls since the autumn of 2010. Around 30-40% of the 2010 LD vote has gone to Labour and is currently staying put.
The statistic that surprised me is that Labour have only 80% of their 2010 vote which was historically low - where are the rest - UKIP perhaps ?
My view after Cameron's Spectator interview is that there won't be a Coalition after the next election - if the Conservatives are the largest party but short of a majority Cameron will try to carry leading a minority Administration rather than seek another five-year "deal".
The other problem is that, as TC repeatedly and gleefully points out, the LDs may be down to 30 (his view, not mine) but the Conservatives will also ship seats to Labour on current numbers.
f Labour falls back to the degree that many on here seem confident (wishful thinking, hopecasting, who knows ?) the chances of a Conservative inority will improve but we need to see sustained slippage in that Labour number rather than Andy's much-vaunted topping off of the froth from yesterday.
I agree the two remaining Budgets will be hugely significant.
She's the high representative (foreign mninister) of an organisation of which some of the countries of Europe are members.
If US officials don't know who the Chancellor is that says more about them than Osborne. It may be recalled that, whilst seeing the amusing, I was seriously unimpressed when Obama bought Brown a boxset of DVDs that wouldn't even work on a UK DVD player.
And surely the best option for Clegg to increase his share. No doubt he will attack the Cons in a desperate attempt to scoop them up - but he should also consider attacking the paucity of Labours offering and the successes Libs have had in gov (£10k tax band).
This isn't just restricted to 00s switchers from Lab. In my experience (and apologies for the anecdata) a significant number of tribal left-wing LibDems, supporters since the 1990s or even 1980s, have dropped their (sometimes lifelong) allegiance as a result of the Coalition. I know of one who's now a paid-up Labour member, one who's a paid-up Green, and another who has resigned her 20-year membership but not joined another party.
There is a problem for Clegg here. The longer he continues in coalition with the Conservatives, the less likely these people are to ever come back. A Con-LibDem coalition after 2015 is a mathematical possibility, but it would not do much for the long-term fortunes of the LibDems.
So the three lines of attack are "look what we've accomplished", "look what we've stopped the Tories from enacting" and "look how terrible Labour's policies would be".
For the first time in over a century, the Party will also be campaigning on a record and not just on a series of aspirations. That and the experience of Government will inform the manifesto so I expect a much more coherent document than 2010's wish list as the Party has painfully learnt the lesson (hopefully) of leaving hostages to fortune.
http://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/gainloss.html
My hunch is that 2015 will see relatively few seats change hands.
Norwich S .. Bradford E .. Brent Central .. Burnley .. Manchester Withington .. Dunbartonshire E .. Birmingham Yardley .. Edinburgh W.
GE 2010 C36 L29 LD23
Not bad really...
It's also worth mentioning that whilst attacking Labour may make most sense for Clegg in terms of winning more votes, shoring up his position within his party may mean he goes more for the Conservatives.
It will be interesting to see how that vote ends up going. I hope the result is decisive. The worst thing would be a narrow victory for one side.
I don't meet many UKIP supporters in multiracial urban London but the few I have come across seem quite committed - they generally see the coalition as a continuation of new Labour and are not interested in the "vote UKIP get Labour" argument because they think Cameron is indistinguishable from Labour anyway.
Now it is Cameron and Osborne who are the incumbents, and have the gravitas and credibility that comes from holding office, while these voters can be scared by blood-curdling tales of Labour failures in the past.
The important thing for Conservatives to remember about these swing-voters is that each one of them is worth double a Conservative voter lost to UKIP, or a Labour voter gained from the Lib Dems, because they debit the Labour total and credit the Conservative total at the same time.
How do you know they are not already in the CON camp ?
ICM 26 Nov 2008 C45 L30 LD18
ICM 25 Jan 2009 C44 L32 LD16
As it happens, that period of October 2008 to Jan 2009 was particularly volatile, with Brown getting a big credit-crunch boost (bizarrely, but there we are), so it's not a good one to look at to see the general trend.
If it is fair to say that Labour or Conservatives cannot reasonably be expected to get less than 28 or any more than 40, LD range will be between 9 and 20 and UKIP between 4 and 15 then I would think the margin of error should be no bigger than 2 for any party.
I'd say a lot of the Labour vote is primarily anti-Tory and vice versa.
Also, by looking at ICM Guardian polls since 2010, I have shown that Con - Lab switching has sometimes (well, okay, twice) been more important to Labour than Lib Dem - Labour switching. The reason it looks small in polls now is that swingback from the Labour peak in 2012 has already occurred.
There has been more movement in swingvoters between Tory and Labour than Mike argues. There could be more - in either direction.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-25200808
Ed M needs to get out more and Cameron could do more to drop the greenwash taxes.
But the Lib-Lab floating vote is motivated and anti-Tory - it's simply an illusion to think they might vote Tory or abstain. I can imagine them voting LibDem, though - either in LibDem-held seats or if Clegg turns predominantly anti-Government - we tried but we were betrayed, etc. But I can't see that happening, can you? His basic problem is that there's a big Lib-Lab tactical vote to be held, but very little sign of a Con-LD tactical vote, so attacking Labour doesn't help him as it annoys the former and doesn't draw much from the latter. Morning Stodge! You're misreading the pie-chart - it doesn't say that only 80% of 2010 Labour voters are planning to vote Labour, but that 80% of Labour voters are former Labour voters. According to today's YG, the actual figures for 2010 Labour are 89% still Lab, 4% UKIP, 3% LD, 2% SNP/PC, 1% Tory, 1% Green.
Not convinced the Budgets will move much - oddly, Budgets rarely have a long-term effect, mainly perhaps because in the end they don't change many people's circumstances: you work out that the net effect is that you gain or lose £14.72/year, and go "meh".
1. The traditional "Ed is Crap" thread, or
2. Ed is weak, weak thread, or
3. Falkirk
In 2010 I faced the choice of voting for what I wanted (to vote Green), against what I most feared (so to vote Labour to stop the Tories), or for what I thought might have the biggest effect (so to vote Lib Dem, as having the highest possibility of defeating a Blairite Labour MP, with the smallest risk of letting in a Tory by splitting the non-Tory vote).
You really do not have to go through such shenanigans with STV, or many other voting systems - though we've seen in recent years that the Additional Member System used in Scotland and Wales possibly encourages even more tactical voting than FPTP.
In which case they (we) might well go back to LD if there was a possibility of either no coalition or an LD/Lab one, particularly where there is either a LD MP or a good chance of getting one, rather than a Tory.
Does begin to look though as though Tory voters in such places as Burnley and Rochdale would rather have a Lab MP than a LD.! Bizarre, perhaps.
If the Tories fail to stay in government after 2015 they will have only themselves to blame.
They made three basic errors - failure to keep the Lib Dems on board with the boundary changes, failure to support AV (gratuitously insulting Clegg in the process) and the cut in the top rate of tax. These three factors seem set to doom them to another period in opposition and it becomes harder and harder to see how they can find enough votes in future to win a majority on their own.
Paul Nuttall (@paulnuttallukip)
12/12/2013 10:41
In the Midweek Sport this week I discuss why Mandela should be judged on his successes AND failures.
twitter.com/paulnuttallukip/status/411083347759075328