The British — "Tories Face Poll Meltdown"
"Tories face poll meltdown" is the headline in the Guardian today, although you would not know it from the Today Programme on BBC Radio 4. Despite the headline over the splash in the newspaper, it didn't make the opening news wrap at 6 am, What the Papers Say at 6:15 am, or mention at all in the first half hour of the programme.
Instead, the survey news was one done for the Consumers' Association on the NHS. Important to be sure, but no mention of who did the poll, or when it was done, but it ran all morning and Alan Milburn was interviewed on the programme at 8:10. Mention was made, slightingly, of the ICM findings on the low level of importance of Europe several times, but the listener wouldn't have known the voting intention unless they happened to catch it in passing until 40 minutes into the programme. Of course I couldn't hear all the programme (it is in the background as I type), but neither does anyone else outside the studio!
You would have thought that the BBC Today Programme of all programmes would have given attention to the findings, which is the first (of three, or four if you count the British Elections Study with Gallup fieldwork catching the collapse of the Tories below 30%, especially noteworthy as it has come, as the Guardian reports, from 'usually the least favourable of the main polling companies to Labour'. Interesting also is that Michael Portillo at the Tory press conference this morning said they are cutting back on their private polling. In my experience, parties only cut back if they are streets ahead, or way behind. I somehow don't think they believe they are streets ahead.
Speaking of BBC coverage of polls, on their News 24 television last night they reported both the ICM as big news, and followed it by a report of BBC On-Line's own ICM poll, which the Today Programme gives little attention to. But BBC Newsnight reported the BES findings, but identified them on the screen as BES/NOP. Hey guys, Gallup does the BES fieldwork.
So with that off my chest (What the Papers Say has just reported its 7:40 version, still ignoring the ICM poll in the Guardian), let's turn to what the BBC doesn't report.
First, yesterday's Rasmussen Research, done for the Indy, done by computer 'speaking clock' among a no doubt bemused British electorate over the telephone, which found the narrowest margin yet, with interviewing of 1,227 adults over 18 years on 26-27 May, which found 44% for Labour, 32% for the Tories, 17% for Liberal Democrats and 7% for others. It also found that although only 30% were satisfied with the way Mr Hague is doing his job as Conservative leader and 47% dissatisfied, John Curtice reports that his -17 is better than the -50 recorded by Michael Foot in 1983.
The Independent's graphics report that slightly more, 51%, think Labour would not keep their promise to improve the NHS and 49% think they would, and they report that if Labour wins the election, 66% thinks that Labour will take us in the single European currency while 33% think not. These figures suggest that the unhelpful habit American pollsters' custom of repercentaging their findings leaving out the 'don't knows', which has heretofore not been our practice, and is not helpful to the understanding of what the public is thinking. Our practice is to report them, other than for voting intention where comparisons are made to the previous general election or referendum result.
The ICM result in the Guardian may not be news to the BBC, but it certainly is to anyone who is following the election, which is most people, and almost all those who intend to vote on June 7th. They show a widening of the gap, but more importantly, a four, yes four, point decline in the standing of the Conservatives, from 32% last week (May 21) to Monday's 28% (May 28). Their 'variometer', which takes account of regional variations in swing, into 'a landslide majority of 267'. Now their swingometer model has been underestimating the result, using the 1997 findings, by dozens of seats. I've run their findings through our 'swingo', and it says that we'd project their result to a majority of 229, with the Tories down 30 seats, Labour up 25, and the Liberal Democrats up 6. I'll confess, I don't understand how their model could have been underestimating ours one week, and overestimating ours this week.
The ICM poll, after an intensive weekend devoted to acres of newsprint and hours of debate on radio and television on the subject of Europe and the Euro, finds Britain's membership of the EU only 10th place in the list of important issues people say will be important to them in deciding how they will vote on June 7th, and Joining the Euro in 11th place, following on from Asylum and immigration in 9th place and taxation in 7th. Sorry William, your own pollsters are telling us that your boffins picked the wrong issues on which to fight this election.
The Tories have no one to blame but themselves. I suspect that this election was lost big, when the leadership election chose William Hague over Ken Clarke to lead their party. I don't think that Clarke could have won this election, but it wouldn't have been, in my view, facing 'poll meltdown', to use the Guardian's headline today.
Finally, on Monday morning Francis Maude at the Tory Party press conference referred to me as doing Labour's private polling. This was questioned by some of the journalists present, who reported it to me. Later Francis and I met in a television studio, the same evening, when he courteously apologised to me for his misunderstanding. This morning Michael Portillo gave me what journalists at the press conference described as a 'fulsome apology'.
In fact, I have not done the Labour Party private polling since 1989, and subsequently served as a polling advisor to the Conservative Party when Ken Baker was Party Chairman, and since then have done polls for the Referendum Party, the UK Independent Party and the Liberal Democrats.
Eight days and counting.
