Are we heading to a new normality?

The June telephone poll from ICM, one of the three remaining regular surveys that carry out their fieldwork in this way, is out and sees a sharp decline for UKIP after reaching 18% last month.

That poll took place while the Farage’s party was enjoying the mass of coverage following its big success in the May 2nd local elections and the good second place in the South Shields by-election.

This month the limelight has been off the party which is clearly reflected in the figures.

But make no mistake – 12% in an ICM phone poll, which many regard as the gold standard, is a very good share for UKIP and is the second highest that we’ve seen from the firm.

Fieldwork for this latest poll took place from Friday until Sunday.

To a question on the handling the slump, both the the blue and red teams are losing trust in parallel. Cameron and Osborne maintain a 9% lead over the TwoEd as the most trusted team for economic management, but only because the LAB two have fallen by the same level.

It should be noted, given my last post, that ICM do not prompt for UKIP.

Mike Smithson

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Voters for the last few years have said the economy is the most important issue facing Britain.

Last night we had a survation poll for Labourlist which shows

That nearly half of all voters (46.8%) believe that Labour “cannot be trusted with the economy”. Less than one-third (30.1%) believe that Labour can be trusted with the nation’s finances.

There is further evidence that Labour isn’t trusted with the economy, as there is polling that shows that a plurality blame Labour for the cuts/economic situation, more than three years after they left office.

As Mike noted back in March

The last LAB government, as can be seen, is getting an increasing amount of the blame. This comes after a period which has seen a narrowing of the gap.

I’ve long taken the view that this is a key pointer to the GE2015 outcome.

As we saw in the US last November a key part of Obama’s success was that voters still regarded the Bush administration as being to blame for the economy.

As long as these figures stay negative for Labour then victory in 2015 cannot be assured.

So Ed Balls’ intervention today, is important, it has led to headlines saying Labour targets free schools, police and winter fuel allowances in proposed cuts, he also told the shadow cabinet it must plan on having the same government funds as the coalition if it wins power in 2015.

There were a number of u-turns, on the OBR, in 2010 Labour said  “There were already serious questions about the independence of the Office of Budget Responsibility. Now its very credibility is at stake.”

Today they said  Labour’s election manifesto in 2015 would include “tough fiscal rules that the next Labour government will have to stick to”…….Tough rules, which will be independently monitored by the Office for Budget Responsibility  and another u-turn over universal benefits

Here are the list of the other key announcements made by Ed Balls today,

During this parliament, it was the 2012 Budget and its aftermath, that saw the largest sustained change in voting intention, something from which the Tory party has yet to recover from.

But despite that, the Tories/Cameron/Coalition is still most trusted/preferred on the economy.

It will be interesting to see over the next few months if the cuts blame voting changes, and if there is a marked improvement in the voting intention for Labour, or Ed Balls’ personal ratings, and if Ed Miliband can overtake Dave as the most trusted to deal with the economy,  although it maybe out of their hands.

There is polling that both George Osborne and Ed Balls put off the voters, George Osborne’s name on economy policies proves ‘toxic’ to voters, poll shows whilst Ed Balls’ own polling reportedly shows him to be unappealing to voters. 

David Herdson noted recently, the 2015 General Election could be an anti-unpopularity contest, something which is likely to happen if the next election is all about the economy, and the main economic spokesmen are George Osborne and Ed Balls.

A full transcript of Ed Balls’ speech today is available here

TSE

Note: Mike Smithson is currently on holiday

@msmithsonpb @dpjhodges Done!

— Harry Phibbs (@harryph) June 2, 2013

My wager with ConHome Harry Phibbs

I’m still on holiday in Italy but that didn’t stop me getting into a wager challenge last night on Twitter with ConHome’s Harry Phibbs on the outcome of the general election.

My reading is simple: this is all about the 2010 Lib Dem voters who made up just under one quarter of the electorate that day. Unless there’s a massive turnaround it’s highly unlikely that they’ll get anywhere near that in 2015.

The critical question is where will this key group of swing voters end up?

The current polling is giving us an unequivocal message – Labour will be a much bigger beneficiary than the Tories. While that situation remains it’s hard to see a pathway for the blues to remain part of the government.

Mike Smithson

There’s a report in the Independent this morning which says

Amid increasing signs that the Conservatives would pull the plug on televised leaders’ debates if Mr Farage was included, the UKIP leader said he would be prepared to challenge efforts to stop him taking part in the courts.

From January this year, there was polling on the debates that should make the Conservatives wary of pulling the plug on the debates.

There’s a new poll out tonight by ComRes for the Daily Express highlighting the dangers for Dave of appearing to be reluctant about taking part in election TV debates. The 67%-12% split saying he would appear a coward if not there is quite emphatic.

What appears to behind the Tory reticence is

Focus groups conducted by the Tories are understood to have re-enforced the arguments of those in Downing Street who say they could give Ed Miliband an electoral advantage.

Party strategists showed short clips of Mr Miliband taken from news programmes and asked voters to rate the Labour leader. The groups were then shown longer videos of his speeches and question-and-answer sessions and asked whether it had changed their views.

Sources said that voters in the focus groups had an overwhelmingly more positive view of Mr Miliband when shown the longer films.

A Downing Street insider said: “If you only watch Miliband for a couple of minutes the first thing you think is that he looks a bit odd and sounds a bit odd and you don’t really listen to what he says.

“But when you see him for longer you start listening properly and he tends to have a more positive response.”

David Cameron should also remember, in 2009, the broadcasters threatened to empty chair Gordon Brown, if he didn’t participate in the debates. 

There are plans afoot for a leaders’ debate, including Farage ahead of the European elections next year, so we may get a preview of what the debates in 2015 maybe like.

John Rentoul in response to the Independent article this morning, has done a blog entry on this topic, and the headline is “TV Debates: Not Going to Happen”

TSE

Note: Mike Smithson is currently on holiday

I expect Labour to win most seats at the next general election and for Ed Miliband to be Prime Minister. The bookies make it the most likely event but not a certainty. They price it as a 1/2 shot that Labour will return the most MPs at the next election and 4/6 that Ed Miliband makes it to 10 Downing Street. This is not a universal view by any stretch of the imagination.

So what happens if Labour falls short in 2015 and doesn’t win most seats – the bookies make this a 1 in 3 chance after all. Well in a nutshell, Labour’s leader wouldn’t last long. There’s a big value bet to be had in this eventuality.

The Labour leadership contest that would follow any failure to win the most seats would be too early for some of the young guns elected in 2010. Instead the main battle would likely be between Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper (or Ed Balls again) and possibly Jim Murphy or Caroline Flint from the right of the party.

I’d back Burnham to win either eventuality and would make him even money favourite to be next leader in those circumstances. As a double (Labour not win most seats, Burnham win) you’d be looking at a double around 3/1. Instead the odds of Burnham being next leader are an eyewatering 25/1 with Ladbrokes.

The only question some may ask is ‘would he stand’? I’m almost certain of it. He stood in the last Labour leadership contest and grew week by week into the contest. Since then he has adapted well to the challenges of Opposition and is now arguably Labour’s most effective Shadow Minister.

His supporters on the green benches are growing and growing and his opposition to the Coalition’s Health and Social Care Act is a lesson to his colleagues as to how to hold the government to account and cut through with the public. His support for the Hillsborough Justice for the 96 campaign has allowed people to see a side of Andy Burnham that most politicians struggle to show.

Burnham’s popularity in the party grassroots is high. He’s from an ordinary background and is earthier than Ed Miliband’s. If Ed were to fall short then the party would likely be looking for someone earthier who could connect better with voters. When I speak to members and ask who they’d like to speak at a constituency dinner, Burnham’s name now comes top every time.

Andy would get some trade union support too. Unison would likely be the first in the queue, although in this context I’d expect the leadership context to be a short affair where union backing and resources would be less of a factor.

Yvette Cooper, the current 5/2 frontrunner in the betting, would have a real fight on her hands. She is in a difficult brief and while she is still popular, I feel the pendulum has swung towards Burnham. In Andy’s favour is the fact that health is much more likely to feature as part of Labour’s attack on the Conservatives over the next two years than Home Affairs is.

I largely expect Labour to win a majority and certainly most seats, but if you accept that this is not nailed on, then backing Burnham to be the next Labour leader at anything over 8/1 is one hell of a covering bet.

Henry G Manson

If the opinion polls hold up then at the next election we’ll have four parties polling at least 10% of the vote for the first time in almost a century (the last and only time it previously occurred was in 1918, with the two Liberal factions alongside the Conservatives and Labour all achieving double figures, with 1922 being the only other election to come close).

So what would this new state of affairs look like? In deference to Harry Hayfield’s article I’m shying away from declaring this a four-party system, it’s certainly a rarity for four parties to have this kind of vote and what you call this state of affairs is not hugely relevant.

In some way, it might not look much different, the likelihood is that UKIP’s realistic potential is in low numbers of seats, the Lib Dems will fall back and the make-up of the House of Commons will look more like a two party system than it has for many years.

This is going to lead to further talk about a change in the voting system, but little action. More than ever the two largest parties will want to hang on to their inbuilt advantages and talk about the issue being settled for a generation. Where I think there will be shifts is in a re-visiting of House of Lords reform, not least as a way of deflecting talk of wider reform but also while the opportunity is there for it to be done in a way that suits them reasonably well.

The battle for media attention will intensify, and a shift away from front-bench spokesman (particularly opposition ones and minor roles) and towards party leaders and small cadres covering everything and fighting for airtime.

In this crowded marketplace, the struggle for policy ownership is going to be fiercer and less meaningful. The media will enjoy asking front-benchers if their policy isn’t really the same as what another party will announce, and then watch them try and make chasms out of split hairs.

Plagiarism accusations will be thrown around, along with hints that (for one example) some Tory backbenchers prefer UKIP policy. With a competitor close by there’s less room for straying before questions about defection are asked at every turn and if not outright defection, then the possibility of joint candidates will be brought up.

Ultimately the feel is far more important than the reality, the general public’s knowledge of individual policy is small, it’s something they pay little attention to, and even less about whether someone else had the idea first. What will be much more important is the impression they choose to give (and the media take on that) whether the Conservatives will continue to distance themselves from UKIP or claim them as pointless imitations.

In seat numbers the House of Commons will have a more traditional two party dominated look to it than it has in a long while while vote-wise it’ll be more spread than ever; and while how we are governed will be defined by the seats, how it is covered and talked about will change with the votes.

Corporeal

Now that we’re just a little under two years from the General Election, I thought it might be useful to see how Dave and Ed compare to the predecessors as Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition, and used their net approval ratings with Ipsos-Mori

In the first of this series, I’m starting with how Ed Miliband compares with his predecessors in terms of net ratings.

A couple of notes about the data.

1) The figure from Margaret Thatcher is from March 1977, nearly twenty-six months before the General election. This is the nearest polling to the two year window.

2) Iain Duncan Smith was removed as Tory Leader before he could contest the 2005 General election,

As we can see from the graph, the only two Leaders of the Opposition with a net positive rating two years before an election went onto become Prime Minister.

But only one out six of the Leaders of the Opposition with a net negative rating went onto win the general election, the seventh, IDS, was removed, nobody would suggest he was on course to win the 2005 General Election.

Is Ed Miliband in the same league as Margaret Thatcher?

We’re going to find out in little under two years time.

Update, I’ve added David Cameron’s figures.

Now moving onto how David Cameron compares to his predecessors.

His net ratings are comparable to Thatcher in 1981, 1985 and Blair in 2003, and they went onto win the subsequent general election, Cameron can be relieved his net ratings aren’t as bad as Thatcher in 1990, or Major in 1995 or Brown in 2008, who were either replaced as Prime Minister, or led their parties to record breaking defeats at the General Election.

As we can see above, Jim Callaghan had a positive net rating, but he still went onto lose the subsequent election.

The below graph shows the lead the Prime Minister enjoys over the Leader of the Opposition in the Ipsos Mori net ratings two years before the election.

Two years to go, this election isn’t in the bag for either party.

TSE

• In the next few days, I’ll do a couple of threads comparing David Cameron’s and the Government’s approval and VI ratings to their predecessors two years from a General Election. 
• In the next few days I’ll do a thread comparing this government’s approval and VI ratings  two years before an election with its predecessors.

Yes, you did read that headline correctly, it wasn’t a typo, I am going to discuss whether the Lib Dems can make net gains in parliamentary seats at the 2015 General election, which might seem odd, given the Lib Dems current travails in the polls.

Since the start of April, of the 37 polls conducted by YouGov, the Lib Dems have only led UKIP in four of them, averaging 10.4% to UKIP’s 12.8% in that period.

In the 16 non YouGov polls published since April, The Lib Dems have only led UKIP in one poll, that was the April ICM poll for the Guardian, where they led UKIP by 6%, by the time of May Guardian ICM poll, UKIP led the Lib Dems by 7% in that poll.

In these non YouGov polls, the Lib Dems averaged 9.4% to UKIP’s 16.1%

So why am I suggesting the Lib Dems could make net gains at the next election?

It was said UKIP cost the Tories anywhere from 5 to 10 seats in the 2010 General Election.

That was when they polled a little over 3% nationwide in The General Election.

Just imagine how many seats they can cost the Conservatives if they poll on election day anything like they are currently polling.

Even if they poll on election day half of what they are currently polling with ICM, that would be 9%, three times what they achieved in 2010.

There is evidence that UKIP surge is coming disproportionately from people who voted Conservative in 2010, per the ICM poll for the Guardian this month

Over a quarter of Cameron’s 2010 backers, 27%, had switched to Ukip by May. Some 13% of 2010 Labour supporters have gone the same way, together with 12% of 2010 Lib Dems.

(I’m making the assumption that the UKIP will do better in the South of England, than in other parts of the UK, hence the focus on the Southern seats)

The graph below shows the number of seats in the South of England where the Tories are the incumbents, the Lib Dems are second and the majority is less than 10%.

You can see exactly what seats could be in the Lib Dem sights here

If UKIP maintain their current polling performance at the General Election, then those seats have the potential to become gains for the Lib Dems.

There is precedent for the nationwide Lib Dem share of the vote to decline, but for the seat numbers to go up. In the 1997 General Election, the Lib Dem share of the vote declined by 1%, but in terms of seats, they went from 18 MPs to 46 MPs.

At the last General Election, the Lib Dem share of the vote went up 1%, but they suffered a net loss in seats, going from having 62 MPs to 57 MPs.

The Eastleigh by-election showed how effective the Lib Dem ground game is, particularly in the seats they hold, as Lord Ashcroft noted in January

The Lib Dems will almost certainly do better on the day than their poll numbers currently suggest, since local factors and popular MPs are a more important part of their appeal.

A few weeks prior to the by-election, the Lib Dems were polling 7% with phone pollster Mori, and trailing UKIP.

The irony that a mixture of first past the post and UKIP, could benefit the Lib Dems, will not be lost on some.

Currently the Lib Dems have 57 MPs, Ladbrokes have the following odds on the Lib Dem seat ranges at the next General Election

• 0-10, 12/1
• 11-20, 5/1
• 21-30, 4/1
• 31-40, 3/1
• 41-50, 4/1
• 51-60, 10/1
• 61-70, 20/1
• 71+, 10/1

The 51+ odds look enticing to me.

TSE