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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » CON + LAB slump to record aggregate low in tonight’s Lord A
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » CON + LAB slump to record aggregate low in tonight’s Lord Ashcroft weekly phone poll
That LAB falls to a record low of 29% is remarkable in itself but what is startling is that in the same poll CON is on just 30% making a big 2 aggregate of just 59%.
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On topic: FPTP may become untenably undemocratic in 2015. It's advantages in creating stable majority governments are washing away.
However my prediction of Labour being 25-28% at the GE is starting to look good.
The LDs coming out for decriminalisation has got the freak vote. If they can get off the floor!
Con 29.73
Lab 29.55
I am glad you agree with one LD policy!
The lady who wrote the Rotherham report would be my choice: we know she can ask the right questions and write hard-hitting reports. Whether she would want it is another question, of course.
In the end, we're going to have to accept that merely knowing someone or having shaken someone's hand does not mean that you're not going to be impartial, especially when you are only one of a panel.
If we carry on looking for the perfect person, with lots of experience in this field but without actually having met anyone at all, we'll end up getting no-one or waiting so long that what will already be a lengthy inquiry will end being pointless. Justice delayed and all that........
On topic: the message, loud and clear, is that voters are fed up with all the major parties and willing to consider any alternative. As others have said, it's a phenomenon seem across much of the Western world, and we should be more concerned about it than just playing the "Ha, you're down even more than us" game. I think it to some extent reflects the weak position of Britain or any other European country in today's globalised world - any more or less responsible party finds it hard to promise amazing goodies with any conviction, which leaves it to the fringe parties to do it with gusto.
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/10/30/david-coburn-ukip-gay-mep_n_6060184.html
I would defend my choice of Sentamu by reminding you that criticism of Woolf was not based in her lack of experience in child protection.
I just heard that an MP, who I didn't know much about, was gay., then looked up his voting record and he seems quite "anti" in terms of equality... strange
Might not be true I suppose, and wouldn't want to out anyone
http://gayhomophobe.com/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/formula1/29888406
I do think that we need to be careful about allowing survivors to make all the running here - and I type this knowing that I will likely be pilloried for saying this.
Not all evidence from survivors is necessarily reliable: remember that poor Lord MacAlpine was defamed on the basis of unreliable evidence from a victim.
And the point of such inquiries is not, primarily, to make survivors feel better or to provide them with comfort, though both may well be the outcome of such an inquiry, but to understand what happened and why in order to make sure, to the extent possible, that such things never happen again. We must also seek to avoid making unfounded accusations against people, who are innocent until proven guilty. It is precisely because child abuse is such a horrible crime that we need to be wary about assuming what we are seeking to prove. It's a very difficult balancing act. Emotion is not necessarily the most helpful guide to making the right decisions in such circumstances.
Another way of looking at it is that BJP was merely the largest component of a 12-party coalition which collectively obtained 38.5% of the vote, and 336 seats...
Vote totals are near-meaningless anyhow, since no parties contest all seats, and most only contest a small minority.
Whats odd is that people no longer seem to care, if the polls are to be believed, that they are voting in a FPTP system rather than PR.
Greens and LibDems are up NOT Ukip.
Anyway, although I'm delighted to see crossover on Lord Ashcroft, with the Tories regaining the lead, he's the most inaccurate pollster in Britain so taken with a pinch of salt.
Con 30%
Lab 29%
LD 10%
Oth 31%
Is this the first time that the traditional 'others' has collectively outpolled all of the establishment parties individually?
Tonight's match, Betfair:
Crystal Palace 2.12
Sunderland 4
Draw 3.5
On the contrary. Now the strategic voter thinks "How can I best screw the pair of you?"
And the answer is obvious. Let's make a hung parliament...
Baxtering C32, Lab 25, Libdem 10, UKIP 15 gives a Tory Majority of 2. Just saying.
Make no mistake, the Conservatives care only about three things: helping the rich, punishing the poor and staying in power.
It's clear at this point that anyone who is voting for this Conservative has no morals whatsoever.
I'm a Labour activist, I want us to win, but I'm also a demofrat and long-standing critic of FPTP. Look at the polls and someone who supports FPTP defend the fact that regardless of how crap red and blue do one or the other are guaranteed to be the government. No wonder people don't vote.
I hope they do something about it.
It is still legally and constitutionally the case that we do not vote for a party or a Prime Minister. We vote for an individual representative for our constituency.
If you really want to fix the system (by which I mean make it better rather than change it to suit one side or another) then we should find ways to radically reduce the power of the parties - truly open primaries, recall of MPs and a massive curtailment of the power of the whips. Make every vote in Parliament a free vote and make it illegal to impose party will on those votes.
Then you will start to get a system that voters can trust and respect as they will know that the MPs have to be working for them rather than for the party or their own interests.
Don't change the voting system, just make the one we have work in the way it was originally intended.
The last three ICM polls (over the last three months) have two-party shares of 66%, 68% and 69%, while the last three Populus polls (over the last week or so) have two-party shares of 69%, 68% and 70%.
These are two long-established polling firms, using very different methodologies, that in ICM's case has been well-tested in a number of general elections. In particular, if anyone wants to pore over the ICM and Ashcroft data tables to tell us why these two phone polls differ I would be much obliged.
Given where we are in electoral cycle its look worse for Lab than Con, IMO.
do you chew carpets ?
If we had a Tory party that was Conservative rather than radical neo-liberal, a Labour party that represented Labour, Liberals holding Liberal as opposed to radical neo-Liberal views AND then the newer/nationalist/fringe parties then people would still be engaged.
Its because having transformed the Conservatives into radicals, then copy pasting the ideology into Labour and the LibDems we now have 3 parties very close on most things but riven as members object to the policy putsch and voters disinterested in all three.
There is a rounding error in the headline numbers, it would seem.
The last Ipsos-Mori poll, which is an established phone pollster had the combined C&L score at 63% but prior to that, their combined C&L score was consistently closer to ICM and Populus.
ComRes phone polls has been trending towards the Ashcroft way.
1) I can't see any circumstance in which an elected mayor of GM will not be the Labour Party candidate.
2) It's an administrative measure that may or may not lead to better administration. How will this help the rich or punish the poor?
3) It's an administrative measure. How can you be so morally affronted, unless you are instinctively morally affronted by anything a Conservative does?
I'm local, and generally Conservative, and generally ambivalent about this, because of point 1) above and also because here in Trafford we have an authority which is to my taste (low spending, good schools) and I don't particularly want this to be countermanded by a high-spending GM-wide authority; and also because in situations like these the suburbs always seem to end up subsidising the centre. I can see the pros, but on balance I'm anti. But I simply can't fathom how you can be quite so angry about it.
The Liverpudlian offy wine farmer must also be having palpitations and multiple kittens as well
Tory MP Justin Tomlinson writes to Met calling for investigation into Sadiq Khan apparently using a mobile phone behind the wheel.
Did he go to the same driving school as a former LD Cabinet Minister?
http://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2010/04/07/does-populus-put-icm-in-context/
Each policy for consideration should also be costed and if necessary that amount gets added to income tax and ring fenced for that policy. That way you avoid the california problem of voting for ever more services but not voting for tax increases to pay for them.
An example might be "Free school meals for every child" Cost x billion which will add 0.5% to the rate of basic tax. A person earning average wage would therefore pay £32 extra a year in tax towards this policy.
Yes, it would be embarrassing for Labour or the Tories to end up in power with a record low share of the vote, but that might make them think carefully about what they do in power.
UKIP might not win many seats next year. But I think they could come a strong second in a lot of traditionally safe Labour seats. What could happen is that the number of seats that are realistically up for grabs at the following election could increase dramatically, which would be a good thing.
The big question mark is the SNP. It would be very interesting if they did hold the balance of power. I know they've said they won't go into a coalition, but if they were offered a 10% (or higher) increase in Scotland's budget, they may reconsider.
To summarise:
The Conservatives have increased from 35% to 37%. The increase would appear to be driven by "don't knows".
Labour have dropped from 39% to 38%, with the components essentially mirroring those of the Tories. 29% of current Lib Dems would consider voting Labour.
The Liberal Democrats have raised their 'ceiling' from 17% last time to 19% now, driven by potential switchers from Labour (up 3 to 14%). These appear to be 2010 Labour and not 2010 Lib Dems that switched to Labour subsequently. The problem is that they also have more potential to lose votes than any other party.
UKIP have dropped from 27% to 23%, with its pool of potential support, relative to actual support, now basically the same as for the two biggest parties.
The Greens have jumped from 19% to 24%, the best performance of any of the five main parties. Their potential support remains about 4 times their current voting intention, even though the latter has increased.
It would seem that voters aren't going through some collective making-up-of-minds, if anything they are becoming increasingly open to changing their minds.
http://numbercruncheruk.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/would-consider-voting-for-question.html
I've been an advocate for a while now of open list PR, with constituencies of about five MPs (more than that becomes unwieldly; fewer MPs and it becomes too disproportional.
CON 34%, LAB 35%, LDEM 9%, UKIP 13%. So UKIP slipping to near LibDem level and the two main parties around 70%, or near 80% if you include the LibDems. Nothing wrong with that in a first past the post democracy.
Having praised Mike on a well-written thread this morning this one, rushed out on the back of Lord Ashcroft, is beginning to look rather weak.
The trend is something like this:
Conservatives holding their own low 30's
Labour: continuing downward drift low 30's
LibDems: rising towards double figures
UKIP: slipping post Clacton roughly mid teens at best
Green: rising quite sharply half LibDem figure
I suspect real voting intentions are half way between Ashcroft and this Populus ie Tories and Lab around 32%.
Here he is on tonight's two polls:
http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/archives/9046
Do I really need to point out that the religious pay taxes and vote?
Apparently yes.
The Populus poll is no change really and as such tells us very little. The equivalent poll last week was Con 34% Lab 36% LD 8% UKIP 13%. So a 1 point shift from Lab to LD. In fact since the end of the conference season none of the parties vote shares in Populus have changed by more than two points Con 33%-35% Lab 34%-36% LD 8%-10% UKIP 13%-15%. If anything I would suggest that it suffers from being overweighted (much as I suspect Yougov has been at times as well) to compensate for the shortcomings of being an online poll (and therefore not being a truly random sample).
If you took the party system and whipping away, you'd almost certainly end up with a worse and more overt system of bribes, mostly in the form of pork-barrel politics but also in kind benefits to MPs. Why you think it would be less likely to happen when the MPs to be persuaded have less instinctive loyalty to the government and less of a sense of corporate mission, I don't know.
That said, on the rare occasions the whips do have to resort to threats and bribery, you're right that it would invariably be better if they lost the vote. A wise government would listen to its rebellious backbenchers at times like this; it takes a lot for most MPs to rebel so if they do, there's probably something in it.