Sunday round up
The full tables for the YouGov/Sunday Times poll are now up here. On the leader ratings David Cameron is back down to a rather more typical minus 6 (from minus 1 last week), Ed Miliband is on minus 45 (from minus 48 last week) and Nick Clegg's rating declines again to minus 47 (after rising to minus 38 last week). The rest of the questions covered the treatment of bankers and education, amongst other things.
Two-thirds of people supported the decision to strip Fred Goodwin of his knighthood, and a similar proportion (63%) would support stripping other senior executives of those banks that needed bailing out of their honours. There was also high support (72%) for Stephen Hester being pressurised into forgoeing his bonus. Relatively few people agreed with the arguments that stripping bankers of honours and stopping their bonuses was damaging the business environment (25% agreed), or was detering foriegn companies from coming to Britain (17%).
On education, there are divided opinions - on whether academies will improve school standards marginally more people think they'll make things better (27%), than think they will make things worse (24%). 29% think they'll make more difference. On free schools the balance is in the other direction, with significantly more (33%) thinking they'll make things worse than make things better (23%), with 23% thinking they'll make no difference. In a separate question 44% of people said they were opposed to private companies being commissioned to manage free schools.
One other question that's worth noting. YouGov asked if the current historically low interest rates were good or bad for respondents' own finances. 23% said good, but 36% said bad (with 31% saying they made no difference). As one might expect there was a heavy age skew here - people between the ages of 25 and 59, that is, people most likely to be taking out mortgages, were most likely to be positive about low interest rates. People over the age of 60, that is, people most likely to be living off savings income, were most likely to be negative about low interest rates. None of this is surprising and we've seen results like this before, but it's good to have a reminder that low interest rates are not a good thing for a large chunk of the electorate.
There was also a Panelbase Scottish survey in the Sunday Times. On the referendum question 37% supported independence, 42% opposed it and 21% were undecided. The Sunday Times's website doesn't appear to show voting intention figures, but I have seen them reported elsewhere as having shown CON 14%, LAB 29%, LD ??%, SNP 50% for the Holyrood regional vote and CON 13%, LAB 29%, LD ??, SNP 48% for Holyrood regional vote. I haven't had them conformed at all.
Finally, alongside the normal swingometer on the site, I have now added a version using the provisional recommendations of the Boundary Commissions for the new boundaries here. Note that the seat projection based on the average polls is still based on the current boundaries, since those are the ones that would be used if there actually was the proverbial "general election tomorrow".
