Voting Intention under Clarke and Davis

There are more details from Populus’s latest poll in today’s Times. The fun bit

is a question that asked people how they would vote in a General Election if Labour was led by Gordon Brown, and the Conservatives were led by either Ken Clarke, or David Davis.

With Clarke as Conservative leader people would vote CON 37%, LAB 39%, LD 19%.

With Davis as Conservative leader people would vote CON 33%, LAB 43%, LD 18%.

The same caveats about yesterday’s figures apply here - people’s responses are based on what their idea of a Clarke/Davis leadership and a Brown premiership would be like, the reality may well be different. However, unlike the ICM “are you more likely to vote Tory” questions, where we must wonder of those people would have voted Tory anyway, the Populus questions are dealing directly with net voting intention.

Anyway, caveats aside it is obviously a further boost for Clarke - his election as leader would give the Conservatives a good boost in the polls (possibly more than this poll suggests, since the Conservatives are likely to have a new leader before Labour do). It also tells us something about the other two parties - Brown’s leadership looks likely to give Labour a good boost in the polls at the expense of the Liberal Democrats, regardless of who becomes Conservative leader.

(I know you are wondering. On a uniform swing, and taking account of boundary changes, this means against Clarke Labour would manage a majority of 40 (Labour losses to the Conservatives would be made up by gains from the Lib Dems), while against Davis they would increase their majority to 134. It is important to realise that, not only is such an election years away, and the shares of the vote therefore meaningless, but that respondents aren’t stupid- they know what these questions are about and to an extent do use them to express their preference for a candidate, rather than give a straightforward voting intention. Treat it therefore, as Peter Snow would say, as just a bit of fun.)

UPDATE: Thanks to Andrew Cooper for the normal voting intention figures without Clarke, Davis or Brown - CON 35%(+7), LAB 37%(-3), LDEM 20%(-2). Clearly there are large changes since Populus’s last poll, which was back in July, but voting intention means little at this point, especially with the leadership in flux.

UPDATE 2: Tables for
target="_blank">this and the
target="_blank" >ICM/Newsnight poll are now up on the respective websites.

I don’t think the Times reported the breakdown for favourite leader amongst swing voters, arguably the most important group - there Clarke led Davis by 44% to 8%. The ICM/Newsnight figures were sadly not broken down by voting intention or party ID.