YouGov and ICM polling on the future of the coalition

Anthony Wells

— 1 min read
Share

The Guardian have a new ICM poll on the coalition here. The YouGov/Sunday Times results are also up on the website now, covering the coalition and the Olympics - I'll leave people to look up the Olympic results themselves if they are interested.

In YouGov's poll, 45% of people think the coalition should end now, 40% should it continue. The majority of people who think it should end are, naturally enough, Labour supporters. About three-quarters of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats think the coalition should continue for the time-being, about one in five of both think it should end now.

Labour and Liberal Democrat supporters who want to see the coalition to end would like a new election, most of those 20% of Conservative supporters who'd like the coalition to end would prefer a minority Conservative government.

The overall results on the House of Lords reform and boundary changes are almost identical - 34% of people think Cameron was right to cancel the Lords reforms, 42% think he was wrong; 34% think Clegg is right to vote against the boundary changes, 41% think he is wrong. The cross-breaks are unsurprising - Conservatives think Cameron is in the right and Clegg in the wrong and Lib Dems think vice-versa.

Turning to ICM, they asked a question on how long people thought the coalition would last. The question is almost the same as a YouGov one asked last week, giving people pretty much the same answer opinions. When YouGov asked the question in July they found 54% thought the coalition would last most of the Parliment (30% until the election, 24% until just before). ICM a fortnight ago found very similar results, with 56% expecting the coalition to last the term (33% until the election, 23% until just before).

YouGov repeated the question just after Nick Clegg's statement on boundary changes, and found the proportion of people thinking the coalition will last the term had fallen to 47% (24% to the election, 23% until just before). ICM today find it even lower, with only 35% thinking the coalition will last (16% till the election, 19% just before). The difference between ICM and YouGov could be wording, but I suspect some is also the effect of asking two days later once people had had chance to see the news.

Read more