Politics

As we wait to discover whether the election will indeed be held on the apparently pre-ordained date of 3 May, or whether the ravages of Foot and Mouth disease will eventually force a postponement, a bit of electoral trivia in answer to a question that I was asked last week. Which is the most typical constituency in the country?

So now we know - or do we? The referendum on joining the Euro, according to some newspapers' interpretations of the Prime Minister's answer to a question in the Commons, will be held in the first two years of the next Parliament. That wasn't what he said.

Annex 1 - HeadTeachers' Views of LEAs

Education and Employment Secretary David Blunkett said today that it was important for Government to strike a balance between local autonomy and Government intervention - particularly in school reform.

MORI interviewed a representative quota sample of 2,040 adults aged 18+ at 193 sampling points across Great Britain.
Fieldwork was conducted face-to-face on 1-5 February 2001.
Data are weighted to match the profile of the population.
Survey designed to test responses to the hypothesis presented at QLD1 and QLD2
Because this is a nationwide poll, it is not able to provide us with information for any individual constituency

The spread of foot-and-mouth disease through the rural areas has brought the rural vote back to the top of the election agenda - although, at the same time, it has thrown into some doubt whether there will be an election at all when we have all been confidently expecting it, on 3 May. I have already written [Rural Voters - 20 October 2000] about how much smaller and less influential the rural vote is than almost everybody supposes. But even some of those rural areas are simply rural in the sense of not being urban; they are not full of farmers. The genuinely agricultural vote is smaller still.

Q1 How would you vote if there were a General Election tomorrow?
[If undecided or refused at Q1]
Q2 Which party are you most inclined to support?
Base: 1,900

Parliamentary Monitor 'VOX POP'

The 2001 National Customer Satisfaction Survey is the second survey conducted among owners of newly built homes; the first was conducted in 2000.