Sunday Polls - Tory leadership and Labour Sleaze
Two new polls in the Sunday papers - BPIX in the Mail on Sunday and ICM in the Sunday Telegraph. ICM asked a hypothetical voting intention poll with Davis/Cameron as Conservative leader vs Brown as the Labour leader. The poll showed that Brown would win relatively easily over both potential leaders, with Cameron doing only 1% better than Davis. Ironically the real difference is the level of Lib Dem support between the two scenarios, with the Lib Dems on 18% under Davis but only 16% under Cameron, suggesting that there is some churn going on beneath the surface.
Before any Lib Dem supporters reading this panic, I should point out that hypothetical polls like this aren't actually very good at predicting how people will vote. Respondents do understand the context they are being asked in and answer in that light, which means the Lib Dems are in the unfortunate position of being trapped between respondents saying Labour to indicate their preference of Brown over Blair and people saying Conservative to indicate preferences for Davis or Cameron. I suspect reality may not be so harsh for the Liberals.
The poll also asked which of the candidates would make the Tory party more attractive to "people like you" - 24% said Cameron while only 12% said Davis. 49% said it would make no difference either way. Bear in mind however, on this and the previous question, that the fieldwork on this poll was carried out prior to the Question Time debate on Thursday, so doesn't take into account any difference that may have made to public perceptions of the candidates.
Moving on to BPIX's poll, they also asked hypothetical voting intention questions for David Cameron as Tory leader (but not for David Davis, or at least, they weren't published if they were) against either Tony Blair or Gordon Brown - like a recent ICM poll, this suggests that Gordon Brown as leader might not actually be such a boost to Labour fortunes as we tend to assume - the level of Labour support when faced with Cameron is identical under Brown or Blair.
The rest of BPIX's poll deals with Labour's recent problems over David Blunkett. Only 17% of people thought that Tony Blair handled the Blunkett affair well, with 46% thinking he handled it badly. 61% of people though that Tony Blair had been wrong to bring David Blunkett back into the cabinet so soon after his original resignation.
Perhaps more important is the wider perception of 'sleaze' in the government. Asked if the government had lived up to it's promise to be 'purer than pure', a pitiful 2% thought it had, 28% thought Labour had done their best and 63% thought that Labour had not lived up to their promise. 33% of people thought that Labour were as sleazy as the last Tory government, 30% thought they were more sleazy.
There were also topline voting intention figures (the first published BPIX figures since the election, although previously unpublished figures from mid-October are given for comparison). After a bad week for Labour, their lead has fallen to only 2% - CON 35% LAB 37% LD 20%.
