Level Pegging

The Sunday polls sweepstakes have the three horses at the starting gate, and ... off they go. At the first furlong they are neck and neck, with NOP running on the pages of the Sunday Times at 49% for the favourites, Labour, 32% for the also rans, the Tory Party; ICM in The Observer (handicapped) is nearly level, with 48% for Labour, 32 (again) for the Tories, while MORI is running somewhat stronger for Labour at 51%, with the Tories at 31%. NOP and MORI show the Liberal Democrats lagging at 13% while ICM, as usual, has them up two, at 15%. They were also at 13% in the starting race last week in the first and before this morning only measure of form, MORI in the Times on Wednesday, with fieldwork entirely taken after the Prime Minister fired the starting gun last week.

The good news for William Hague in the findings, the only good news, is that the Tories 'certainty of voting' figure has caught up to Labour's in the MORI poll. The implications for this are profound. Without wanting to get into projection systems in detail (later), the magnitude of 'certainty' is illustrated by the fact that the straight projection of the 'headline' figures from MORI, 51%, 31% and 13% would project (NOT 'predict') to a Labour majority of 253. If however, the projection is from the 47%/34%/14% 'certain' 60%, a 181 figure drops out, labour up just one seat, the Tories up 16 seats and the Liberal Democrats losing 16 seats from their 1997 46-seat surprise.

Less helpful is that after what was widely seen as a strong start by Hague on tax, only 16% of the MORI sample still name taxation as 'very' important to them in helping them to decide for whom to vote. Also sleeping at the moment is Europe, with only seven percent currently saying that Europe and the Euro are likely to ride high in their considerations.

What are running to form are the issues of health care and education. At the last election, the Labour Party's on-message message was health, education, law & order and jobs, which were the first four issues out of the 15 we were testing that the public told us they wanted to hear about. While Labour politicians focused on these, what did John Major talk about? Constitutional issues, 15th out of the 15 people told us they were interested in. And what did the Deputy Prime Minister talk about? Trade unions; 14th on the list. It looks like they're at it again.

But looking beyond the headline figures is what I should be doing in these analyses; you can read the 'top line' in the papers, where the papers' editors choose to publish them. Let me dig deeper, and tell you what I thought was interesting in the fine print.

What had me goggle eyed about the ICM poll in the Observer was their incredible finding that ABs, the one in five of the electorate who they found are intending to vote Labour by three to one, 59% to 17%. The reason I find this surprising (to say the least), is that checking it against the MORI tabulations for the 'phone poll done over 8-11 May (the same fieldwork dates as ICM, a more credible 39% Labour, 39% Tory was found. I also checked this discrepancy against the results from the analysis for the Times from face-to-face interviewing on 8 May, the start of ICM's fieldwork period. There the ABs split 40% for Labour, 40% for the Conservatives. Another independent sample was MORI April Omnibus analysis, done face-to-face with 2,017 people between 29th March and 3rd April, which found 40% for Labour and 39% for the Conservatives. A later Omnibus, the regular MORI survey for the Times with fieldwork 19th-24th April among 1,935 electors, found 40% for Labour and 42% for the Conservatives. So, over 6,000 interviews in five different polls over the past six weeks, done by telephone and face-to-face, have consistently found the ABs flat-lining at 40% Labour, 40% Tory, +/- 2%.

Setting that aside, the Observer's ICM poll came up with some interesting other findings that readers who have read to here will find of interest (at least I did):

• At the last election when asked if the (Conservative) government had made things better or worse, John Major's Tories rated -6, 36% saying 'better' and 42% saying 'worse'. After four years of a Labour administration, 65% say that their government policies have made things 'better', and only 25% say 'worse', a net rating of +40!
• When this is followed up, asked if the Conservatives win this time, 40% think their policies would make things better and 47% worse, a -7 this time.
• When offered four choices instead of two on the Euro, ICM found a much more receptive balance of opinion on the Euro, 43% saying that Britain should join at some point, and 52% should not.

The Sunday Times' NOP poll's interesting (to me anyway) fine print findings include:

• More people say they would prefer to watch neither of the main party leaders (42%) than either Tony Blair (38%) or William Hague (17%)
• Six in ten of the electorate says that the Conservatives can only win a future election by changing William Hague as their leader. Still, a wise man once said 'a week is a long time in politics'.
• Public service delivery will play an important part in this election in my view (see detailed findings on public perception on public service delivery on the open.gov web site from the MORI People's Panel survey done for the Cabinet Office). When asked by NOP whether people expect public services to improve under Labour/Conservatives, Labour scores a net +28 while the Tories score a negative -15, only 21% saying they think the Tories would improve public services and 36% saying they would get worse.
• NOP find, still, a turnout advantage for the Labour Party, with 63% of their Labour intenders saying they are 'certain' to vote Labour, and fewer, 59%, of Tories certain. MORI's findings from a slightly different question now find the two parties' supporters level pegging at 65% 'certain to vote' for each party, as noted above.

25 days and counting.