Waiting for the verdict
The "email smear" story is all over the media for a fifth day. What we don't yet know is how the public will react. We might normally expect an ICM poll around now, but pollsters do not normally conduct polls over the Easter bank holiday weekend in case it skews their sample. YouGov's poll for the Sunday Times would also normally be mid-month, but it was done early in April. The next scheduled poll we can expect is ComRes in the Independent on Sunday, which I would expect to see this coming Sunday, though if we are lucky a newspaper will have taken the opportunity to commission an ad hoc survey to find how the public have reacted to the scandal.
What should we expect? Well, given the level of media coverage it's reasonable to expect that this will have a large effect, but it is not a certainty. Damian Green's arrest, for example, was given huge media play for a few days, before the polls received it had no effect whatsover - it was a Westminister village story people didn't care about. Similarly the Jacqui Smith expenses row didn't seem to have much effect, perhaps because it was cancelled out by a successful G20 summit, or perhaps because the public assumed that politicians from all parties were on the take.
That may be the vital factor in how the public respond to the story - will it be seen as the Labour party making up lies to smear their opponents, or will it be seen as politicians in general making up lies to smear their opponents. If the former, then one would expect it to damage Labour, if the latter and people think all the other parties are probably just as bad, then perhaps not.
Even if people aren't unduly worried by the story itself, it may have a wider affect upon the party standings anyway, since it will build into the image of a dying government, interested only in arguing with itself and smearing opponents. Currently Labour's defecit in the poll is around 10 to 13 points, compared to 20+ points last Summer. Despite (or perhaps because of) the economic crisis Labour are doing better than they were a year ago - apart from the economy the difference is that back then Labour were horribly divided, fighting one another over the leadership. If this story moves public perceptions of the Labour government back towards seeing them as divided and incompetent then we'll see their figures drop. We'll know by Sunday (and hopefully before!)
