The long-threatened launch of attacks on Afghanistan has done nothing to weaken British support for participation in military action, or to dent support for the way Tony Blair and George W Bush are handling the situation.
The British General Election of 2001 surprised few in its outcome, but almost everybody was surprised by the scale of the fall in turnout. While this is primarily of concern to those in the political world, it may also have wider lessons for companies in general as case study in apparent failure in marketing. In a paper delivered at the Research Show on 2 October 2001, Jessica Elgood and Roger Mortimore of MORI's Political Research team drew on a wide range of polling data surrounding the election to draw lessons from the election. Most of the data is set out, and discussed in detail, in Sir Robert Worcester and Roger Mortimore's newly published book on the election, Explaining Labour's Second Landslide (Politico's Publishing, 2001).
The first measurements of British public opinion on the terrorist attack on the USA, and the appropriate response to it, are now beginning to be published. MORI's poll for the News of the World [British Reaction To Attacks On America], conducted on Friday evening and published on Sunday, was (as far as we know) the first; ICM in the Guardian followed on Tuesday. There was a Gallup poll conducted in 30 countries over the same weekend, and a separate Gallup poll for the Telegraph, conducted on the 17th-18th September.
Older voters are the group least supportive of New Labour, and winning them over is perhaps Tony Blair's biggest remaining political challenge. For much of the time, far more attention is paid to attracting the support of young voters, especially first-time voters, than is paid to attracting the votes of those who have retired. There is a superficial attraction to this: after all, young voters are generally less strongly attached to their party allegiances - if, indeed, they have any at all - and ought to be easier to swing. If their loyalties can be captured at a young age, perhaps they will subsequently offer their party a lifetime of voting service.
The first question that everybody was asking themselves after the general election result came through was why the turnout was so low. There has been plenty of discussion of the question since, culminating last week in the publication of the Electoral Commission's first report on the election, which among other sources draws on two MORI surveys for the Commission. [Attitudes to Voting and the Political Process]
More and more it seems that Britain's green and pleasant land is being sacrificed to 'progress'. Here, Sir Robert Worcester tells of his hatred of the electricity pylons that scar our landscape.
The "gender gap" - the consistent tendency in British general elections for women to be more supportive of the Conservatives than men, and less supportive of Labour - almost disappeared in this year's general election.
Michael Portillo's exclusion from the Tory leadership race may have taken both his colleagues and the media by surprise, but it was following the trend of public opinion over the last few weeks which has seen him lose much ground.
