I've said it before, and i'll say it again...

Our newspapers really have to stop distorting the opinion polls they commission.

Take today's Guardian and its new ICM poll for example.

The basic voting intention figures were: Conservatives - 42 percent; Labour - 30 percent; and the Lib Dems on 18 percent.

The Guardian reported that the Tories were down 2, as were Labour, and the Lib Dems were up 2.

Given how several recent polls (3 out of 5) had shown a swing to Labour from the Lib Dems, one might have concluded from reading the Guardian that this swing had continued.

But this was not what happened.

In fact, the Tories were up 2, so were Labour, and the Lib Dems were actually down 4!

So what happened? The Guardian, like all the other newspapers, compared their new poll with the last time they commissioned a poll, i.e. a month ago. But in the intervening period, there had been a further ICM poll - hence the disparity.

Newspaper editors really need to stop distorting the opinion poll situation. It is for this reason that when a new poll is released i ignore the newspaper reports and get my polling news from the excellent UK Polling Report and PoliticalBetting.com.

Brown bounce has just gone splat!

The Brown bounce is well and truly over.

The voting intention figures from the latest Ipsos MORI poll have just been released and show the Conservatives on 48 percent (+4), Labour on 28 percent (-2), and the Lib Dems on 17 percent (no change).

Since the turn of the year we have seen the polls shift back towards the Conservatives with their double digit leads being re-established. Recent polls have also shown Labour fall back under the psychologically important 30 percent level and several (ICM, ComRes and Populus) have shown a jump in support for the Lib Dems, at Labour's expense.

This latest poll shows the Conservatives as the main beneficiaries with the Lib Dems unchanged (YouGov's latest showed the Lib Dems down by 2).

The Tory 20 point lead is the largest since September and shows (i know it's only one poll - but it is following a trend) that Brown's bounce has been completely erased. Brown's personal ratings have also suffered a hit with 64 percent of people dissatisfied with Gordon Brown.

Brown inexplicably coaxed voters back to the Labour fold in the latter months of last year after the Labour Conference. As PM he was able to act and therefore portray himself as a man of action and as the "saviour of the world" he was able to give the impression that he had a grand plan that would save the British economy. The recession would be shorter and shallower because of his action and leaders across the world were following his lead.

These same voters have now deserted him and returned to the Tories. Brown has been found out. Last year he was giving the impression he was on top of events, but now it is painfully obvious that he is behind the curve and being buffeted around on a whole range of issues. The steps he has taken are not working, they are just adding to our huge public debt and are being denounced by Germany, France and the Netherlands.

Far from being the decisive strong leader, he has once again shown himself to be a dithering, ineffectual leader - something which was clear from his handling of his handling of the bankers' bonuses issue. He has sat on his hands since October, then the bonus season arrived and the negative press finally spurred him into action only for him to then announce yet another review which will report by the end of the year.

The recent stories about Sir James Crosby are also really damaging for Brown who had a terrible time last week. It was last week that Brown was linked to the failures of the bankers as it was he who designed our regulatory system, removing the supervisory role of the Bank of England against the advice of the then Governor Eddie George. This will be Brown's Achilles Heel. This is just the beginning. Public hostility towards the bankers will increasingly turn to Brown and the Labour government.

Time to call that general election, Gordon...

Will Labour leadership speculation start again?

Gordon Brown's second bounce - his perverse economic bounce - has come to crashing, thudding halt. This will be his last bounce.

As one can see from the figures below, taken from the excellent UK Polling Report website run by Anthony Wells, the Tories have regained double digit leads in surveys by all of the pollsters and are also above the psychologically important 40 percent mark.

It is not quite as bad for Brown and Labour as it was last summer but it is still pretty awful pointing to an outright Conservative victory at the next general election. What is more, it is likely the polls will continue to get worse for Brown.

More...

It is clear that nothing our hyperactive Prime Minister does is having the desired effect of making the recession shorter and shallower. Voters who seemingly started to give Brown the benefit of doubt before Christmas have since concluded that far from "saving the world," he hasn't even saved Britain. Brown is the "achieve nothing" Prime Minister.

Consequently, some are speculating that given Labour's dire polling and the worsening economic situation, the fun and games of last summer with all the leadership speculation will return with a vengeance.

I don't think this will happen.

Just as Brown had his chance to win an election back in Autumn 2007, the Parliamentary Labour Party had their chance to oust Brown last summer. As usual, the party bottled it and failed to knife a leader who will lead them to a heavy electoral defeat in 2010.

The Labour Party has made their bed and will have to lie in it. There is not time to change leader and in any case the public would punish them for naval gazing if they engaged in an act of regicide at a time of recession which is likely to prove the worst since the Second World War. Brown is therefore safe.

It would seem that Bottler Brown and the Bottler Labour Party deserve one another... and their electoral fate!

Another misleading 'poll' headline

What is it with newspapers giving totally misleading headlines following an opinion poll? I've blogged about this before.

Today we've seen the Telegraph lead on its front page with the headline: "Credit crunch slashes Tory poll lead." The Telegraph uses the pollster YouGov. The impression the headline gives is that the Conservative lead has indeed dramatically fallen. However, this has not happened.

The poll results are:

Conservatives - 42%

Labour - 33%

Lib Dems - 15%

According to the Telegraph, this represents a narrowing of the Tory lead from 14 points to 'just' 9 points, with the Tories down 3 and Labour up 2.

However, this is because the Telegraph contrasted the results not with the last YouGov poll but with the last Telegraph YouGov poll (4 October). All newspapers do this with their poll results.

It is totally misleading!

Had the Telegraph contrasted the latest YouGov results with the last YouGov poll it would be the Mirror YouGov poll (20 October) and the headline would have been completely different because the changes were Conservatives - no change; and Labour - minus 1. So the headline should have been: "Tories increase lead back to double figures" or "Tory lead holds steady" or even "Labour advance halted." It most certainly should NOT be "Credit crunch slashes Tory poll lead"!!!

Another annoying thing the newspapers do with polling, while I'm getting this off my chest, is not even accept the last polling result of their sister newspaper. For example, both the Independent and the Independent on Sunday (IoS) use ComRes. One would have thought that when comparing the latest ComRes Poll with the last one, the Independent and IoS would refer to each other's polls - after all their owners are the same even if they have different editors. Don't be stupid, that would eliminate the ability to have grotesque headlines that distort the political reality.

It's about time this was sorted out!

ICM gives Brown no bounce

The latest ICM poll has been released and shows Brown has got no benefit from his so-called 'Superman heroics'.

Tories are unchanged on 42 percent and Labour are also unchanged on 30 percent. The only movers are the Lib Dems, up 4 points to 21 percent.

This will be hugely disappointing for Brown. He has had the best media coverage for months and months and yet still he is 12 points behind and no more advanced than after the Conservative Party Conference.

It is possible that Cameron's speech on Friday in which he took the gloves off and put the blame on Brown for the country's economic woes and got him some much needed media attention may have cancelled out Brown's 'Flash Gordon - Saviour of the Universe' routine.

All-in-all I would expect Cameron to be pretty pleased with how his lead is holding up.

Voters have clearly decided Prime Minister Brown is not for them!

Tories 'only' 9 points clear

The latest ComRes poll, and first of many this weekend, shows that the Tories' lead has been cut to just 9 points.

Depending on which angle one looks at it, it can be construed differently:

• Tories did have a 20 point lead in the summer. Now it is in single digits.
• This puts us in hung parliament territory.
• However, Tories are still on 40 percent.
• Even after Brown doing his 'Superman' herorics (or should that be Robin?) Labour are still 9 points behind.

The narrative to come will depend on the rest of this weekend's polls and the polls from the next couple of weeks.

Labour would be making a mistake with an anti-Toff electoral strategy

Two slides from Ipsos MORI below indicate that Labour would be making a mistake if it tried to make capital from David Cameron's priviledged background.

The first slide features the question: What people dislike about Cameron / Brown. One of the answers is 'too posh'. But only 5 percent of those surveyed said they disliked Cameron for being too posh. Interestingly, Brown also scored exactly the same!

And the second slide asks: What kind of leader would you prefer? The overwhelming majority (71 percent) say they want someone better qualified than themselves in terms of background and experience as opposed to 24 percent who say they want someone similar to them in terms of background and experience.

The two slides seem to indicate that the electorate is not perplexed by the 'class' of its leaders. The class warriors like the Ed Balls's of this world ought to think again if they wish to make Cameron's background a feature of the next general election.

As the Crewe and Nantwich by-election showed us, old-style class politics has had its day.

MORI - Brown more unpopular than Major

Ipsos MORI - 'The Verdict on Brown'

I’ve just come into contact with Ipsos MORI’s Party Conferences Briefing entitled ‘The verdict on Brown’.

It is an interesting slide-show document that provides an overview of where the parties and leaders stand PRIOR to the Labour and Tory party conferences.

The key messages from MORI are:

• David Cameron and the Conservative Party are still making real headway against Gordon Brown, with more than half the public agreeing that the Conservative Party is ready to govern.
• Cameron has struck a note with the populace, with two-thirds (63 percent) agreeing with his assertion that “British society is broken,” and half believing that “David Cameron represents modern Britain.”
• The Tories are now seen as better than Labour on having the best team of leaders, understanding the economic problems facing Britain and having the better policies on family issues.
• The Tories are also seen as having better policies than Labour on all key issues to voting except healthcare and education (but fewer voters now feel these matter in deciding who runs Britain).
• In contrast 44 percent say there is nothing they like about Gordon Brown and 69 percent are dissatisfied with the way he is doing his job as PM.
• However, half (51 percent) do agree Brown is going a reasonable job in difficult circumstances.
• Brown’s ratings are now where Major’s were after Black Wednesday – the Conservatives never recovered from this point and remained around 13 points behind in the polls for the best part of a decade.

What the MORI findings show is that far from Cameron's and the Conservative Party's poll ratings being simply a function of Brown's and Labour's unpopularity, the Tory leader has been able to make positive headway of his own - particularly with his messages about the 'broken society' and Cameron looks like he has successfully tapped into the zeitgeist of the 'modern', much as Blair once did, and this has contrasted badly with Brown, a man in his mid-fifties who has been in office for 11 long years.

It will be interesting to view the weekend opinion polls to see whether Brown's 'relaunch' conference speech (how many relaunches has this man had - was that his 102nd?) has helped his dire personal ratings, humanising him, and whether that in turn gives Labour a much needed fillip in the polls.

More to follow later on specific slides...

Polls - It pays to look beyond the headline

The Independent on Sunday (21 Sept) led with the headline 'The Brown bounce' as it reported the latest ComRes poll.

However, if one looks beyond that headline, the poll shows nothing of the sort. True, support for the Conservatives has fallen seven points - 46% down to 39% - but the principal beneficiaries are the Lib Dems, not Labour.

Labour is only up 2 points whereas the Lib Dems are up 5%.

So, far from a Brown bounce off the back of his handling of the deteriorating financial situation, the poll results show that the Lib Dems have had the bounce instead - possibly off the back of their new tax and spend position.

In short, beware misleading newspaper headlines.

As for Independent headline writers the message seems clear:

D- 'Could do better'!