Politicians and pundits alike decry that 'this election should be about the issues'. Yet personalities intrude. In the four-sided tetrahedron that drives my model of voting behaviour, 'values' count for most, as roughly 80% of the public have their mind made up before any election is called, and most of them don't change the habits of a lifetime, in the aggregate.
The answers to three questions included on the MORI survey being published in The Times tomorrow reveal a good deal about the public attitudes to the state of the parties, and go some way to explaining the cavernous gap that still exists between the parties (and which, indeed, may even have widened slightly in the last week).
With three polls now in from Scotland, we can take a brief look at the electoral scene north of the border. (Not that you would know there have been any polls in Scotland from reading the London-based newspapers.) As the first post-devolution election, it will be fascinating to see how, if at all, the existence of the Scottish Parliament affects voting patterns, turnout, and the concerns which Scottish voters raise with their candidates.
Daily it seems we are confronted, confounded and sometimes infuriated by these phone(y) polls, fax polls, phooey polls and my collective name for them, 'Voodoo Polls'.
This is the most boring election in this century/decade/since the war/lately/whatever. How many elections is it that I've been hearing that? Nine is it? Every election news editors send some tyro journo out to stir up apathy, and prove once again that this is the most boring election since the year dot.
In Saturday's Guardian Yvonne Roberts report discussed the "gender gap" in voting, arguing that women are not served well by the political system, and quoting research by Harriet Harman and Deborah Mattinson.
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.
At the 1997 election, one of the most powerful forces behind Tony Blair's victory was "word of mouth" among ordinary voters. MORI tested the extent to which the general public were spreading the message of New Labour, and of the other main parties, as part of an adaptation of the Ipsos Excellence Model (MEM), originally designed to enable MORI's corporate clients to measure their relationships with their key stakeholders. We found that 10% of the adult population, more than four million people, said that they supported the Labour party so much that they would encourage others to vote for it without being asked; a further 21% would encourage others to vote Labour if asked for their opinion.
