Wednesday 27 October 2010

October ITV poll update

Putting these figures into our forecaster puts the prediction at

Labour 31
Plaid 13
Tory 10
Lib Dems 5
UKIP 1

The major news really is the fact that Labour are in majority territory. UKIP are also polling TWICE what the Lib Dems are getting on the north Wales regional list and will therefore pick up Elenaor Burnhams old seat.

The tories will be back down to 1 constituency and their ranks will instead be filled with a 2nd list member for Mid and West and a 3rd list member for the North. It looks grim for Angela Burns, Paul Davies, Jonathan Morgan and Darren Millar.

October ITV Wales YouGov Poll

The figures for the ITV YouGov October Poll are just coming out.

Sample size = 1,012 people.

Headline figures are

Constituency Voting Intention


                Oct    (Sep)  Change
Lab          44%  (44%)          -
PC           21%  (19%)       +2%
Con          19%  (22%)       -3%
Lib Dem     9%  (11%)       -2%
Oth            8%    (5%)       +3%

List voting Intention

Lab          40%  (41%)        -1%
PC           23%  (19%)      +4%
Con          18%  (20%)      -2%
Lib Dem     9%  (12%)      -3%
Oth            11%  (8%)      +3%

Referendum

Yes         52%  (49%)       +3%
No          29%  (30%)       -1%
DK         20%  (20%)          -

Tuesday 26 October 2010

My 0.1%

As someone who has been on the yougov panel for over 3 years I have often wondered why I never get asked about Welsh voting intentions.

Yesterday that changed and I took part in the YouGov poll that will (probably) be released tomorrow. I can therefore comfortably prdict 0.1% of the answers on this months poll.

As well as their usual constituency, regional & referendum questions they also asked what department people think should be protected and, interestingly, a series of questios on S4C. Do people agree with S4C being funded through BBC, attitudes to S4C and Welsh language broadcasting.

Should be interesting...

Thursday 14 October 2010

AV referendum, the Lib Dems and Wales 2011

Latest polling from yougov shows that there is now a 5% lead for FPTP against AV.

A lot can change in the next 7 months but it is looking increasingly unlikely that Nick Clegg will be able to win this one. The referendum will be a chance to give the Coalition government a kicking (even if the Tories oppose AV it is symbolic of the Coalition) without actually risking anything that voters care about.

In the long term this referendum might hurt the Libs. But what effect will it have on the Assembly election? On a practical level the referendum will mean that Nick Clegg and the Libs will be on Network (UK wide) television a lot more during this Assembly election than would normally be the case. Secondly there is the impact of the electoral communications and PPBs for the referendum. The Yes and No campaigns will each have a substantial amount of money to spend on direct mail. They will also be given PPB slots on all channels. The Yes campaign will probably use Clegg and that will mean that the Libs will have a high profile in April/May next year.

All in all the panic around their current poor polling levels might be over stated. The Libs may well have an AV boost next May and that could really help them to appear relevant and hold their seats at the Assembly despite their current appaling polling.