An Interview With Bob Worcester - Chairman of MORI

Question: The Lib Dems have been polling around 25 per cent consistently for the past year and closely challenging for or winning in by-elections. How well do you think they can do in the general election?

Bob Worcester: I guess they will put on about 20 seats, but I'm afraid the way the British electoral system works they are just a sideshow.

Charles Kennedy is making much of being the only party leader with more people satisfied than dissatisfied with his leadership of the Liberal Democrats.

But when people are asked which person would make the best prime minister, Blair is still well in front on 30 per cent with Kennedy a poor third with 15 per cent.

When you ask people which party has the best policies on the issues they personally think are important to them the Lib Dems run a poor third on everything apart from the environment.

Question: In your experience when a party gets bigger, as is the case with the Lib Dems, do policy contradictions and closer scrutiny inevitably lead to problems and a drop in support?

Bob Worcester: That's very possible and that would be consistent with the fact they are doing more poorly in areas where they have control of local councils.

Question: Has your polling suggested that UKIP can take seats at the general election or are they just a protest vote aired at local, European and by-elections?

Bob Worcester: They've done very well but I certainly don't believe they can translate that into success at the general election, the system will always defeat them.

Each level of election in this country has a different dynamic. The general election is real and people think hard about it.

In 1997 people tended either to vote tactically to ensure the Tories were chucked out or they voted for a socialist government and were bitterly disappointed and stayed at home in 2001.

More people are voting for fringe parties today, including the Liberal Democrats, as dissatisfaction with the performance of the prime minister and the leaders of the opposition over the last seven years grows.

But the European elections enable someone who really doesn't care about Europe to send a message to Number 10 and that applies to whichever party is in power.

In local elections people do tend to vote on the local candidates but they have a different perspective.

The least representative are by-elections. They are meaningless when you have a majority of 160 and only important when you have a majority of three as Mr Callaghan had at one point.

Since Blair's election in 1997 there have been relatively few by-elections and those that there have been have been incredibly meaningless in terms of who's going to win the general election.

Question: The Tories are not doing any better under Michael Howard than they were under Ian Duncan Smith. Has your polling suggested any solution to the Conservative's difficulties?

Bob Worcester: The Labour Party had a very substantial lead going into the 2001 election on which party had the best policies on the main issues.

On virtually every issue the current Tory frontbench have eaten into the Labour lead. It is an important development because issues represent about 40 per cent of the determinant of which way floating voters vote. Image is about 60 per cent split between the image of the leader and the image of the party.

There's no easy answer to the Tory's problems but having said that the in-roads they are making into Labour's lead on policy is bound to have resonance.

I say that because those people on the margins, the floating voters, say those policies will attract them and that's where elections are won.

Question: The polls suggest that Blair has lost a lot of trust - is he still an electoral asset?

Bob Worcester: He's certainly Labour's biggest electoral asset but nothing like he was in 1997 and 2001.

When you do a trial heat and you ask voters how they would vote if Gordon Brown were the leader he puts on three to six points additional.

That translates as up to 60 extra seats for the Labour Party. The idea that Tory central office had of saying "vote Blair you'll get Brown" was actually playing into the hands of Labour because a lot of voters said "oh, good". Another daft idea coming out of central office.

Question: What could substantially change or influence the outcome of the general election?

Bob Worcester: I think the announcement on Thursday night could substantially affect the outcome.

If between now and the general election the knives of Tony Blair's rivals are out and the leadership contest intensifies more than it already has then it will divide the party.

Divided parties do not win elections and if Labour is locked in dissension and the Conservative party give the impression of unity then this could dramatically affect the current poll standings.

The interesting thing about my most recent data is that it shows that it would be reasonably easy to knock Blair into a very difficult position if he was re-elected.

If he has a small majority, which is fairly likely, he then has to realise that the enemy is behind him with the 40 or 50 hard left MPs who have always been dissatisfied with his performance as leader and the policies of New Labour.

He can count on them to be awkward, he can count on them to demand a much bigger say than they've had in the past because he's just dismissed them with disdain in the past.

These guys have very safe seats and he will have lost a lot of his allies in marginal seats. He's going to have to count votes that his New Labour whips have forgotten how to count.

Blair had no choice about making the statement he did on Thursday because the speculation about his health and the succession would have overwhelmed him.

Question: Can the government win the referenda on the EU constitution and the Euro?

Bob Worcester: It will be very difficult. There was a 22 per cent swing between January 1975 and June 1975 and Europe is and was then a fairly low salience issue.

Most people thought: "I don't care much about it; it's just a means by which foreign trade can be more easily handled."

You also had all the major unions behind it, all the major newspapers and all three parties fairly united in support of Britain staying in the common market.

That's not the case now and you have a very unpopular Euro and an even more unpopular constitution.

I've argued it can only be won with a united Brown and Blair attack on Europe saying that the European constitution is a limiting constitution and will limit European in-roads into British sovereignty.

That would undercut the anti-Europe brigade who argue that they've gone too far. Well you can argue that but then it becomes an argument over shades of grey than black and white.

What is essential is the timing of the referendum. If they go too early and there is no domino effect he'll lose it.

If there's already been five or six referenda in other countries, particularly in France and they've won them with thumping majorities then they will very likely be able to argue: "Do we really want to be the odd one out. Already 300 million Europeans have voted for a constitution we should not be left out."

If they lost them I doubt it would cripple the government but it would cripple their negotiations with Europe that's for sure. Would it hurt them electorally? I doubt it. It would depend on them losing with grace.

Question: All the research shows that the way a question is phrased has a big impact on the outcome. Is it possible to formulate an objective question?

Bob Worcester: I don't think the phrasing of the question is meaningful, because people will know which side their going to vote if they turn out. You are going to get a reasonably big turn out.

Question: Polling is said to have unfairly distorted and influenced results. How do you minimise that risk?

Bob Worcester: Multiple polls are the most effective way. Someone had the idea that you should only have one poll in an election and I said "What if that poll is wrong?"

That was at the market research society after the 1992 election and some idiot got up and suggested that all pollsters got together and produced just one poll. That is the worst possible thing because what you don't want is someone who says the UKIP is going to get 21 per cent when they only got 16 or that the mayoral race is neck and neck, which was the Evening Standard headline when the outcome was nothing like that.

Question: Do you think people overstate the importance and influence of polls?

Bob Worcester: I don't know, I don't take them so seriously myself. I feel a huge responsibility to provide the only systematic and objective measure of the public mood and I say that because the newspapers, with one or two exceptions, are all ridiculously partisan and the politicians make a habit of lying to people about the parties' standings.

There was a Scotsman piece, that I treasure, saying that when you added up all the claims of the parties in a particular by-election it looked like the final total would add up to 140 per cent. So I get a bit cynical of calls for banning polls from politicians and even from a few journalists when they are the ones who lie to people.

Question: Barry Sheerman has called for closer regulation of the polling industry or at least better self-regulation to minimise those risks. What's your view?

Bob Worcester: Barry and I have no disagreement, the only disagreement we had he quickly came over to my side. He called for a parliamentary investigation and I said: "Oh no I'm not going to leave it to the politicians, they lie about the polls all the time, let's move it to the Electoral Commission." So I met Sam Younger and he supported that idea and Barry was supportive and Chris Leslie thought it was a good idea too.