Fifteen Weeks to go

Anthony Wells

— 3 min read
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Week three of the year and the regular cycle of opinion polling is back to full speed, with the first ComRes and ICM polls of the year. Almost all the regular polling companies have now reported figures from 2015 (we're only waiting for Survation and ComRes's telephone series).

ComRes/Independent on Sun. (15/1/15) - CON 33%, LAB 34%, LDEM 7%, UKIP 18%, GRN 3% YouGov/Sun on Sun. (15/1/15) - CON 31%, LAB 33%, LDEM 7%, UKIP 16%, GRN 7% Populus

(15/1/15) - CON 32%, LAB 35%, LDEM 9%, UKIP 14%, GRN 6% YouGov/S Times

(16/1/15) - CON 31%, LAB 32%, LDEM 7%, UKIP 18%, GRN 7% Opinium/Observer

(16/1/15) - CON 28%, LAB 33%, LDEM 7%, UKIP 20%, GRN 6% Ashcroft

(18/1/15) - CON 29%, LAB 28%, LDEM 9%, UKIP 15%, GRN 11% Populus

(18/1/15) - CON 35%, LAB 36%, LDEM 8%, UKIP 13%, GRN 4% TNS

(19/1/15) - CON 31%, LAB 31%, LDEM 8%, UKIP 16%, GRN 7% YouGov/Sun

(19/1/15) - CON 32%, LAB 32%, LDEM 8%, UKIP 15%, GRN 7% ICM/Guardian

(19/1/15) - CON 30%, LAB 33%, LDEM 11%, UKIP 11%, GRN 9% YouGov/Sun

(20/1/15) - CON 32%, LAB 30%, LDEM 8%, UKIP 15%, GRN 10% YouGov/Sun

(21/1/15) - CON 33%, LAB 34%, LDEM 6%, UKIP 14%, GRN 8% YouGov/Sun

(22/1/15) - CON 31%, LAB 33%, LDEM 7%, UKIP 17%, GRN 8% Populus

(22/1/15) - CON 32%, LAB 36%, LDEM 9%, UKIP 13%, GRN 6%

The horse race remains extremely tight between Labour and the Conservatives, with most polls showing them within a point or two of each other, generally with Labour marginally ahead of the Tories. The UKPR average now stands at CON 32%(-1), LAB 33%(nc), LDEM 8%(+1), UKIP 15%(nc), GRN 7%(nc). The Green party's rising support got a lot of attention this week because of their double digit figures from Ashcroft and YouGov, but there has not been a sudden step change in their level of support, it's been on a steady increase since last year.

Scottish polling

This week we also had two Scottish polls from Ipsos MORI and Survation. Both continued to show a solid lead for the SNP in Westminster voting intentions. MORI had SNP on 52%(unchanged) to Labour's 24%(up one). Survation had the SNP on 46% (down two) and Labour on 26% (up two). Both would still translate into an SNP landslide in Scotland come May.

Week Three

Every general election seems to start with the political parties putting out a flurry of announcements at the start of January, and then running out of steam a bit. This week's political news has been rather bitty.

  • The reporting of the Chilcot Inquiry has been put back until after the general election, we can expect to see some polling on that at the weekend.
  • Peter Mandleson criticised his own party's mansion tax proposals. Nationwide the idea of a mansion tax has extremely wide support - in September YouGov found 72% support for a tax on properties over £2million pounds. Criticism of it from within Labour tends to come from London, where it is less overwhelmingly popular, but still gets the thumbs up - YouGov London polling last August found 49% of people in London supported a "mansion tax", 18% were opposed. Amongst London's Labour voters 61% supported the idea.
  • The government announced that they would after all introduce legislation on plain packaging for cigarettes before the election, something that has previously been in and out of the long grass, and was seen as one of those policies that the Conservatives had put away as part of "cleaning the barnacles from the boat". Generally speaking there is public support for the proposal - YouGov polling for the Sunday Times in July in 2013 found 58% of people supported compulsory plain packs, 26% were opposed. YouGov polling for Ash in 2014 that included a picture of an example of a plain pack found 66% of people in support, 10% opposed.
  • Finally the debates debate rumbles on, with the broadcasters making a new proposal to include the Greens in the debates... but also to include the SNP and Plaid, so that the format becomes two debates between seven leaders, and one debate between just Cameron and Miliband. Including all seven leaders was actually the most popular single option in the YouGov/Sun on Sunday polling last weekend, chosen by 35% of people. Between them though 49% of people preferred one or another of the options including fewer leaders.

Projections

The latest forecasts from Election Forecast, May 2015 and Elections Etc are below. All are still predicting a hung Parliament. Note that Steve Fisher has made some substantial changes to his Elections Etc model in order to treat England and Scotland separately, and hence reflect the increase in SNP support in Scotland

Elections Etc - Hung Parliament, CON 283(nc), LAB 278(-3), LD 23(-3), SNP 41(+5), UKIP 3(nc) Election Forecast - Hung Parliament, CON 278(+1), LAB 286(-3), LD 28(+1), SNP 34(+2), UKIP 3(nc) May 2015 - Hung Parliament, CON 269(-4), LAB 289(+9), LD 27(+3), SNP 38(-8), UKIP 4(nc)

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