I send these final parts without any significant comment at all. It is an enormously worthwhile commentary on all the polls that have passed over our screens since the last election.
I apologise for sending out the heading prematurely yesterday - slip of the finger! And tonight's delay is due to Mr Wells posting the final section late in the evening. But here it is and I think it's well worth waiting fgor.
Christina
UK POLLING REPORT 13-15.9.09
Posted on September 13th, 2009 by Anthony Wells
2008-2009 The credit crunch
Back at the end of 2007 I predicted that Labour would never be able to regain a lead in the polls under Gordon Brown (it’s a prediction I still stand by – and so far I haven’t embarrassed myself!), unless some unforeseen event came along to turn politics upside down. Since then, we’ve had two major unforeseen events come along and shake up politics. While there have been lots more of the little negative news stories that I talked about earlier (Smeargate, Ghurkas, 10p tax rate, botched reshuffles, etc) they all just add more the “cost of governing” – the negative things that stick to a government and sap their support. These two deserve exploration in their own right though – the credit crunch and the expenses scandal.
The credit crunch and recession has been responsible for several ups and downs in the polls. The negative news in 2008 budget probably contributed to Labour’s dire ratings in the summer of 2008 (though Labour disunity and infighting and the 10 pence tax row would also have played major roles). After the bank bail out plan in October 2008 however it provided a significant boost in Labour support, which happened largely in tandem with recovering public optimism on the economy.
My own take was that the public initially underestimated how bad the recession would be, they thought the bank rescue plan would avoid any real pain and moved back to Labour in response to what they perceived as good handling of the economic crisis. If I am right in thinking that a large part of Labour problem is that they have not succeeded in putting across a mission, a reason to keep them in power, then it also solved that – Labour were there “to save the economy”. This recovery in the polls fell away again in January 2009 as several high street stores (most prominently Woolworths) went to the wall, and it became clear that recession hadn’t been averted.
It’s important not to ascribe all of Labour’s misfortunes to the economy. They were trailing very badly in the polls before the credit crunch began, they were saddled with an unpopular leader and a lack of a clear message before it happened. Obviously a deep recession is going to lead to a certain “feel bad” factor, but it also had potential to help Labour. If there is an air of crisis people may want an experienced hand in charge (we repeatedly saw polls during Labour’s recovery in late 2008 that showed people saying they wanted Brown in charge now… but Cameron in charge after the next election), and the crisis played to Brown’s strengths of character, he remains far more sure footed and confident when talking about economics than more emotive, human interest issues.
This brings us to one of the major questions that remain to be answered before the next election: what happens when economy improves? One can make a case for it having a positive effect for Labour, a negative one, or no effect at all. If the credit crunch is actually helping Labour (because it plays to Brown’s strengths, or makes them less likely to risk a change of government), an end to recession could make things worse for them. Alternatively, if the economy improves people may feel generally more positive to the government and think they’ve done a good job getting up out of it (though the end of the recession in the 1990s did nothing to help Tory fortunes). It could of course, have negligible effect, or none at all, or positives and negatives could cancel one another out.
What we’ve seen so far does not suggest the news will be good for Labour, since public opinion already seems to be increasingly optimistic about the economy. Economic optimism turned a corner around February 2009, and is now rising strongly. In June Ipsos-MORI showed more people expected the economy to improve than thought it would get worse – the highest economic optimism figure for 12 years. The public already think we have reached the bottom of the recession and are on the way back upwards, but as yet there is no sign that Labour’s deficit in the polls is falling.
It’s possible that the actual announcement that the recession is over and Britain’s growth rate is back in positive territory may prove a tipping point – in the 9 months that are left it’s one of the few potential game changing moments that remain, but my guess from the economic optimism figures is that people are already factoring in the end of the recession and, beyond the effect of a general feel-better factor, it’s not going to have a huge effect.
Aside from the state of the economy, the credit crunch has a second, probably more important impact on our politics; the bigger legacy it leaves behind is paying for the rescue package. Both parties have sought to draw dividing lines over this in recent months: Labour sought to portray the election as a choice between Conservative cuts and Labour investment. The Conservatives have sought to paint it as being about Conservative honesty in facing up to cuts vs Labour will make cuts too but won’t admit it. The polls so far suggest that the Conservatives are winning the argument with the public – 64% of people told ICM they thought spending should be cut, a large number of YouGov polls have now shown that people would prefer spending cuts to tax hikes when it comes to balancing the budget.
However, this doesn’t mean that Labour’s claim that the Conservatives would cut spending more than them has not been believed – it has. Going back to that ICM poll, 22% thought the Conservatives wouldn’t make enough cuts, 42% thought they’d get it about right, and 30% thought they’d cut too much. In comparison, 46% thought Labour would cut too little, 26% thought they’d get it about right and 21% thought they would cut too much. Now, at one level it shows that far more people think the Conservatives would strike the right balance with spending cuts – 42% to 26%. What it also shows however, is that people do indeed think that the Conservatives would cut more than Labour would.
Right now, this seems to be good news for them, as people are telling pollsters they want spending cuts. However, abstract spending cuts are far more popular than concrete, specific examples. When people are asked what areas cuts should fall upon, the answers are normally things like international development – areas where very small amounts are spent (and which the Conservatives have ring fenced anyway!). Any incoming government will actually need to find savings in big spending departments like education, health and defence. A far proportion of the public don’t seem to accept that it is necessary to cut borrowing in the first place – while most of the poll questions we’ve seen on the topic have asked what people’s preferences are on the assumption that borrowing needs to be reduced, MORI have asked questions giving people the option of just leaving things as they are….and 31% of people opt for it.
At the moment, the tax and spending argument is all going the Conservative way, and broadbrush accusations that the Conservatives would cut services will probably backfire with an electorate that wants cuts. Since I first drafted this piece, Labour seem to have dropped the Conservative cuts vs Labour investment line anyway (almost certainly the right decision, given the way the numbers seemed to be going!) but I suspect that public spending and cuts will still be the battleground that the election is fought upon and that, sooner or later, the political parties will manoeuvre themselves around a new division over the issue.
Posted on September 14th, 2009 by Anthony Wells
May 2009 – the expenses scandal
Moving on from the credit crunch, the event that has really defined the last year in politics (or at least, the last six months) is the expenses scandal. The previous parts of this round up really dealt with the change in the Conservatives and the problems that have beset Labour. In contrast the expenses scandal is something that has hit the political system as a whole.
The direct effect on the polls is slightly blurred because it came so close to the European elections and the effect of both events was probably to push support away from the big three towards minor parties. It is almost certainly there though. We saw polls put “others” as high as 30% (from ComRes in late May) and even if one dismisses that as an outlier, there were several showing them above 20%. While some of this will be due to the European election effect, when put in the context of last European elections the level of support for “other parties” peaked at 17% in the opinion polls. This is clearly more than the standard “European election boost” in support for minor parties.
To date the expenses scandal does not appear to have had a disproportionate effect on Labour or the Conservatives – they both suffered equally, and so far they both appear to be recovering equally. The Liberal Democrats have perhaps suffered less – they are already have some anti-politics kudos, and while some Lib Dem MPs were criticised during the expenses scandal, none really received much focus. There are no real Lib Dem expenses scandal poster boys, like Margaret Moran and her house in Southampton, Elliot Morley and the mortgage that didn’t exist, Douglas Hogg and his moat or Peter Viggers and his Duck Island. That said, while they didn’t really suffer, neither were the Lib Dems able to capitalise. Instead support went to the minor parties, most notably to UKIP and the Greens (while a supposed growth in BNP support got more coverage at the time, they did not actually benefit as much).
The longer term effect of the expenses scandal is hard to say. In terms of the effect on how expenses are organised in the Commons I’m sure it will be massive. Certainly it has led to a change of Speaker and a much larger turnover of MPs than usual at the next election as many are forced to stand down or suddenly discover important health or personal reasons that mean they really need to go. But the electoral effect? On a national level, we can already see it fading, down from the low twenties around the European elections to the mid-teens in more recent polls. With the European elections gone, the expenses scandal largely exhausted and the increasing focus upon the main contenders as the election grows ever closer, I expect them to continue falling as we approach the election, though I’d be surprisied if it isn’t still the highest level of support for “others” at a general election. The short term effect of higher support for the Greens and BNP may help push them over the barrier in the two normally contested seats where victories for minor parties are just about feasible (Brighton Pavillon and Barking respectively), but other than that, its effect upon a general election result will be negligible.
What could give it an impact is if there is a disproportional effect upon one of the main parties – if the Greens put up a lot more candidates and get more publicity they will likely impact upon the Liberal Democrats, in white, working-class estates the BNP could gather support (largely hurting Labour, but also taking up people who might otherwise become working-class Tories), in the past UKIP have tended to disproportionately take support from the Conservatives, though the local and European elections also showed a clear movement to them from Labour. So far the gain in other support does not appear to have disproportionately damaged any of the three main parties – Labour and the Conservatives went down together and, as support for others recedes, Labour and the Conservatives have come back up together – however, the potential is there.
A more intriguing possibility is the effect on individual seats. Normally MPs enjoy some degree of incumbency vote – local people know the name, they’ve received the newsletter, a fair proportion of people have probably contacted them about something and been helped by them. No matter how apparently useless an MP is, my guess is that nearly all of them have in the past had some small degree of personal vote. Following the scandal however, and even after the large number of retirements, there are still a lot of MPs out there with less than spotless records on expenses, or at least, whose record could be made to look questionable by an opponant pointing out how much they claimed on a second home or spent on staff. It is yet possible we may see something of a negative incumbency vote. I would not expect huge great swings against incumbents, but there doesn’t need to be in order for it to have an effect. My guess is that we’re probably talking about a couple of thousand votes, but at any given election there are something in the region of 40 or so seats with majorities under 1000.
So that’s my summary of how we got where we are now – the ups and downs of the past 4 years, of leadership changes, Brown bounces, the credit crunch and the expenses scandal. Tomorrow I’ll look the potential for change in the final lap before the general election.
Posted on September 15th, 2009 by Anthony Wells
In the first four parts (1,2,3,4) of this article I looked back at the last four years and asked how we got where we are. This final part is looking forward across the remaining months before the general election and asking the obvious question of whether anything is likely to divert proceedings from the Conservative victory that is the almost universal assumption amongst commentators (with the seemingly lone exception of James McIntyre. Perhaps there are others, but it’s certainly a lonely furrow he’s plowing!)
I reject the sort of argument that governments always recover towards an election. Firstly, public opinion moves for a reason, the government have to do something to make themselves more attractive (or the opposition something to drive support away). More importantly, it’s simply not supported by the facts.
I looked at it in great detail here, but in short, while it’s always possible in hindsight to pick the worst point for a government and say they went on to recover from it, it doesn’t follow that they will automatically recover from their position now; in the last two Parliaments the government didn’t really recover at all compared to their polling lead the year before the election. For Labour to recover, they need to address their problems.
As you’ll have picked up from the article so far, my view is that these are:
(1) They no longer have the luxury of facing an unappetising opposition
(2) They have failed to put forward a coherent narrative or purpose
(3) They have been in power for 12 years, carry the accumulated blame of all that’s gone wrong and the public want a change
(4) They have an unpopular and unlikeable leader who doesn’t connect with the public
(2) They have failed to put forward a coherent narrative or purpose
(3) They have been in power for 12 years, carry the accumulated blame of all that’s gone wrong and the public want a change
(4) They have an unpopular and unlikeable leader who doesn’t connect with the public
The first of these is largely out of Labour’s control. They have not so far managed to find a formula of negative campaigning that works against David Cameron. The main routes that seem to have been explored are, firstly, attacking Cameron as being rich and out of touch, which seems to have backfired in Crewe and Nantwich and just made Labour look negative and old fashioned, and a “two faces” attack that behind Cameron the Conservatives haven’t changed and are still nasty and right wing. The converse of this (”New Labour, new Danger”) failed for the Conservatives in 1997, and so far it seems to have backfired when tried against Cameron (on things like Dan Hannan’s NHS views) by just giving David Cameron the opportunity to differentiate himself even further from the old Tory brand.
There is always the chance of the Conservatives imploding themselves. They had a conspicious row over grammar schools and David Cameron’s reaction to the result of the second Irish referendum on Lisbon may yet be another point where there is no easy way to make all in his party happy (though a lot of people seem to be grossly overestimating its possible impact – the issue of Europe has extremely low salience with the public, with only 2% or so naming it as an important issue. It is only a threat to Cameron because it is an important issue to many in the Conservative party and it could provoke internal division which would damage their popularity.) To date, however, the party has been relatively united and it is normally when a party is doing badly in the polls that internal dissent breaks out. Cameron has also proved himself to be quite cautious especially when he is ahead in the polls. So, while it is possible, I wouldn’t expect the Conservatives to throw it all away by proposing something hideously unpopular.
Looking at the second problem, in theory there is nothing stopping Labour putting forward a wonderful, compelling new narrative tomorrow. It’s the sort of thing that people like Jon Cruddas have correctly identified as Labour’s key failing and who occassonly call for from the sidelines. Unfortunately, it is much easier to identify as a problem than it is to solve. Gordon Brown’s lack of personal charisma is an obstacle, so is the lack of goodwill towards the government. People would have been a lot more willing to listen to Gordon Brown laying out his new government’s great purpose when he first became Prime Minister, my impression is that now a sizeable proportion of the public has just stopped listening. On top of that, it’s a very difficult thing to do in the first place, especially in an era of unideological, catch-all parties – if there was some compelling narrative in the Labour cupboard, it would probably been deployed by now (for what it’s worth, the Conservatives don’t seem to have really cracked what their narrative is for the next election either – though they have the luxury of being the opposition and not really needing one, they just need the government to lose.)
Thirdly, there is the “cost of government” and the public’s desire for change. Again, Gordon Brown had a chance when he first became Prime Minister, he was never the ideal agent of change having been there for so long, but there could have been some obvious repudiation of what had gone before, some great symbolic reversal. He can obviously not present himself as a new candidate of change now, and given his waning authority, a massive change in policy or senior cabinet roles also seems unlikely.
Fourth is Gordon Brown himself.
When I write these long round ups I do my best not to sit on the fence. It’s easy to slam caveats on everything, never put your neck out and hence never be wrong. At the end of 2007 I said I didn’t think Labour could regain a lead in the polls under Gordon Brown. I still don’t. There are a couple of cards still in the deck: when the recession formally ends and the headlines announce “Recession Ends” that could yet give them a boost. Cameron’s response to the Lisbon referendum in Ireland also has potential to give him some internal party difficulties. The biggest possible game changer though is if Labour have one last go at getting rid of Gordon Brown before the election (or if Gordon Brown himself decides to stand down).
I’m not going to pontificate about the chances of it happening – I don’t pretend to understand the inner workings of the Parliamentary Labour party. My view is however that it is Labour’s only real chance of avoiding defeat. A new leader would almost certainly connect better with the public, they could grab the opportunities that Brown missed during summer 2007 and use whatever brief honeymoon they had to put forward a clear offering, and clearly differentiate themselves from the Blair/Brown government, portraying themselves to be the change the public desire.
Could it be enough for them to win? I really don’t know, it depends on too many imponderables, it could collapse into factional warfare and make things even worse, and it may be too late for anything to save them. That said, I think it is Labour’s last, best chance.
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