Making sense of the polls
James Forsyth 12:52pmIf you’re struggling to come to terms with the slew of polling data that is currently circulating take a look at Tim Hames’s column in The Times that does a good job of putting these numbers into perspective.
This point is particularly worth paying attention to: “what has been missed,, though, is the extent to which Labour under Mr Brown has been running its own core vote strategy by stealth. For while the shift from the Blair to Brown era has seen the average Labour vote share increase by 6.5 per cent, that improvement has been strikingly more pronounced among working-class voters (the DEs) than the affluent ABs. To put it crudely, antiBlair old-Labour backers who had defected or abstained have returned to their historic allegiances.”
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Tiberius
September 4th, 2007 1:13pm Report this commentThat's a revealing statistic, but how does one tell the DEs that Winston Smith would have loved the opportunity to be anti anything?
This was always predictable but actual voting is always lowest amongst DEs. Far more important as Brown knows and Dave and Hilton appeared to have ignored are the C2s. To them both Margaret Thatcher and Blair owed their triumphs and for them hoodie hugging, civil rights for terrorist suspects and green taxes are massive turn offs (they want cheaper petrol and cheaper flights.) All of which makes Dave's obsession with the Independent reader and the Waitrose shopper all the more bizzare/stupid. Somebody should tell him that outside Notting Hill and South Oxfordshire an awful lot more people shop with Ken Morrison than John Lewis.
Hoi Polloi
September 4th, 2007 7:22pm Report this commentThis was always predictable but actual voting is always lowest amongst DEs. Far more important as Brown knows and Dave and Hilton have chosen to ignore are the C2s. To them both Margaret Thatcher and Blair owed their triumphs and for them hoodie hugging, civil rights for terrorist suspects and green taxes are massive turn offs (they want cheaper petrol and cheaper flights.) All of which makes Dave's obsession with the Independent reader and the Waitrose shopper all the more bizzare/stupid. Somebody should tell him that outside Notting Hill and South Oxfordshire an awful lot more people shop with Ken Morrison than John Lewis.
Perry
September 4th, 2007 8:19pm Report this commentI thought there was also a penchant (among the Leaders of the Limpid Opposition) for Grouniad readers / writers?
Cogito Ergosum
September 4th, 2007 8:46pm Report this commentAs one who canvassed for the Conservatives in the 2005 election, I met a lot of voters who told me what they thought of Mr. Blair, but were not willing to vote Conservative. I expect they will vote for Brown in due course.
Lee Jakeman
September 5th, 2007 5:16am Report this commentThe Tory party has not stood up for the rights of English people. Scotland and Wales have their own assemblies and the Tory party is a joke in both countries. The Labour party taxes English people and uses the money to subsidise Scottish nurses, prison officers and students. It also corruptly keeps itself in power in England by relying on Scottish and Welsh MP's at Westminster. The Tory party should take the bold step of defending England and the English. This will re-establish the Tory party in the North of England, displacing the half-hearted Labour support that is still there. Then it would have a large enough majority in England to topple the Labour party in the next general election. But the Tory party won't do this, because they are a "unionist" party. They have yet to grasp that English voters, unlike the Tory party itself, don't have the same "unity at any price" mentality. This is the real reason for the sudden rise and proliferation of English nationalist parties, some democratic and some extreme. The English have been constitutionally abandoned. Many of them looked to the Tory party to redress the balance - and all have been gravely disappointed, resulting in the Tory party becoming a joke even in England itself.
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