Babes and Sucklings

Thirty years ago this week, Parliament was dissolved, and the last Labour government to have a working majority went to the country to appeal for a renewal of its mandate to govern. There is no consensus of opinion on why Harold Wilson lost that election and Edward Heath won, but one widely-held belief is that the final critical swing in the last few days may have been caused by England's defeat by West Germany in the quarter-finals of the World Cup. A government was ejected from office because England lost a football match.

That example, and a few others like it, are testament to the belief that essentially trivial factors can affect the results of elections. So the birth of a fourth child to the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, should not be dismissed as insignificant simply because it has no rational bearing on Labour's ability to govern.

MORI's latest poll for The Times was conducted last weekend; as it happened, almost half the interviews were completed by Friday night, before the birth was announced, and the remainder in the next couple of days. By weighting each half of the sample separately to the national profile, to ensure that the two sub-samples are entirely comparable, we can see exactly what effect the arrival of Leo Blair had on the state of public opinion.

As the table shows, the effect was dramatic; in voting intention, there was a three per cent swing to Labour from the Conservatives, and Mr Blair's personal satisfaction score rose six points, from 45% to 51%. Both changes are big enough to be statistically significant. (Meanwhile, Mr Hague's satisfaction rating was 27% satisfied, 46% dissatisfied in the first period and 28% satisfied, 46% dissatisfied in the second, indicating both that the two samples were well-matched and that it was indeed perceptions of Mr Blair that had changed rather than anything else.)

Voting Intentions

Q Are you satisfied or dissatisfied with the way Mr Blair is doing his job as Prime Minister?

To understand the scale of the impact a little better, we ought to convert the percentages into numbers. Tony Blair's satisfaction score rose by 6%: in other words, two-and-a-half million people went to bed on Saturday night dissatisfied with his performance as Prime Minister, and changed their minds the following morning.

Who was it who swung? Almost exclusively those who live in households with no children - apparently the sight of Tony and Cherie cuddling Leo is less impressive to those who have kids of their own - and C2DEs rather than ABC1s - probably because they are less likely to take a deep interest in politics, and therefore more susceptible to changing impressions and image. Broadsheet readers showed no Leo effect at all; indeed, Labour's share of their vote fractionally fell over the weekend. But tabloid readers swung, and those reading no daily regularly at all swung even more.

People often criticise opinion polls because they seem to fluctuate wildly over time. But if a single event, so apparently irrelevant, can have this much effect on public opinion then it would hardly be surprising if events of real political moment can produce swings over days and weeks. Indeed, we already know how volatile public opinion has become: during the last general election we interviewed a panel of voters twice for the Evening Standard, once towards the start of the campaigned again the day before polling, and found that a quarter of them had changed their answers. Wise political leaders bear this in mind, which is why 'spin doctors' have become so important in modern elections: the superficially trivial can swing millions of minds and millions of votes.

Where does this leave the political scene? As the table also shows, the pre-Leo figures agree with MORI's earlier poll for the Daily Mail, and with ICM's and Gallup's May polls, in finding a deterioration in the government's position since before the local elections at the start of the month. But despite the Opposition having scored some clear hits in policy areas such as crime and asylum seekers, there seems to be little public enthusiasm for replacing the government with their Tory opponents: only 18% think "William Hague is ready to be Prime Minister". [Other findings from MORI/Times poll] The ease with which the public's disillusionment can be mitigated, and their support swung back to Blair, emphasises the fragility of what the Tories have so far achieved.

And is all this just a sign of the degenerate state of British politics as we enter the 21st Century? Well, maybe. But there is a throwback to an earlier age. In the 19th century, when there were no polls to aid the politicians, and candidates had to rely on their instincts, the story is told of an election strategy meeting at which one of the participants suggested that they could discredit their opponent, the 75-year old Lord Palmerston, by revealing that he had just fathered an illegitimate child. But wiser counsel prevailed. "Good God," exclaimed one of the others. "If that gets out he'll sweep the country!" So, on these findings, will Tony Blair ...unless William and Ffion have a riposte of their own in mind?

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