General Election 2001 - Election Digest

Election Commentary - Votes and Seats First campaign poll finds widening gap Key public services deemed worse than in 1997 NOP/Daily Express election survey Capital's business executives rate PM and Chancellor above Shadow counterparts Pundits predict 143-seat majority Voting Intentions in Scotland

Election Commentary - Votes and Seats

Opinion polls measure the electorate's intentions in votes, not in seats. Projecting the number of seats that a given share of the votes would give, although it produces a better headline, involves much greater uncertainties.

First campaign poll finds widening gap Key public services deemed worse than in 1997 NOP/Daily Express election survey Capital's business executives rate PM and Chancellor above Shadow counterparts Pundits predict 143-seat majority Voting Intentions in Scotland

First campaign poll finds widening gap

Labour has increased its lead in recent days, standing on 54%, with the Conservatives down to 30%, according to a MORI poll for The Times, the first to have been conducted since the official announcement of the general election date.

Further details and Peter Riddell's analysis is featured in The Times, 10 May 2001.

Source: Times 2001 Campaign Polls Technical details: Survey conducted by MORI for the Times. Sample: A representative quota sample of 1,046 adults 18+, interviewed face-to-face, in home, across Great Britain on 8 May 2001.

Key public services deemed worse than in 1997

Core public services are perceived by the public as having deteriorated since Labour came into power in 1997, according to a NOP survey conducted for Channel 4's Powerhouse programme.

Transport is the service deemed to have worsened most, with 47 per cent saying it has got worse compared to 19 per cent stating a perceived improvement. More of the public also believe that health and police services have got worse rather than better in the last four years, with 36 to 22 per cent, and 28 and 21 per cent negative against positive for the respective services.

Of the four services tested, only schools are perceived as having improved, with 31 per cent citing an improvement, compared to the 28 per cent who feel school education has worsened.

Even among Labour supporters, over two-fifths (44 per cent) believe transport services have worsened, and a quarter think health services have got worse.

Source: (London) Evening Standard, 9 May 2001 Technical details: NOP interviewed a representative sample of 1,000 voters between 4-7 May 2001.

NOP/Daily Express election survey

An NOP survey for the Daily Express shows Labour on 51 per cent, Conservatives on 31 per cent, and the Liberal Democrats with a 13 per cent share of the vote; Labour is ahead of the Tories among both sexes, all age groups, and social classes. Even among AB voters, Labour has a nine-point lead, with Labour on 44 per cent and the Tories on 35 per cent. On uniform swing, these vote shares would imply the Labour majority would rising by 34 seats to 253; the Tories would lose 20 seats and the Liberal Democrats 13.

Thirty-seven percent rated Tony Blair as a strong leader, compared to the 13 and 17 per cent who do so for William Hague and Charles Kennedy respectively; 23 per cent considered Tony Blair a weak leader, as did 44 per cent for William Hague, and 22 per cent for Charles Kennedy.

Barely one in five (22%) rate Labour's record in government as "good"; 49% rate it as "OK", and 28 per cent as "poor".

Source: Daily Express, 9 May Technical details: NOP interviewed a representative sample of 1,000 voters between 4-7 May 2001.

Capital's business executives rate PM and Chancellor above Shadow counterparts

Sixty-five per cent of London business executives rate Tony Blair as "competent" compared to the 25 and 19 per cent who do so for William Hague and Charles Kennedy respectively. They have an even higher regard for the performance of the Chancellor Gordon Brown: 83 per cent consider the Chancellor's performance competent, compared to 46 per cent of respondents who do so for Shadow Chancellor Michael Portillo.

Source: (London) Evening Standard, 9 May 2001 Technical details: Findings from IDA London Monitor on behalf of the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry in conjunction with the Evening Standard. Sample: 365 London executives of companies employing more than 250,000 workers across London. Data has been weighted

Pundits predict 143-seat majority

The Kalends panel of 66 leading political scientists and commentators predict an average 143-seat majority for Labour in their latest survey. 96% of the panel expect William Hague to lose his job after the election, and 66% think that the economy will be the most important issue of the election campaign.

Source: www.kalends.com, 9 June 2001

Voting Intentions in Scotland

Labour has 56% voting intention support in Scotland, ten points higher than its share of the vote in 1997, according to a poll for The Daily Record; the SNP has 20%, Conservatives 16% and Liberal Democrats 8%. The agency which conducted the poll was not reported, though the Daily Record and Sunday Mail have used Scottish Opinion Ltd in the recent past; sample size was not reported, but fieldwork was "on the eve of yesterday's announcement".

Source: Daily Record, 9 May 2001. Technical details: Not reported.

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