Mori Scottish poll

I've been away from the computer for a few days and have therefore missed quite a few polls. In general Labour seem to be doing very well despite the attacks on David Milliband. The Liberal Democrats are still having a very bad time of it. Yougov are consistently showing them between 11% and 9% and the over pollsters are starting to follow suit with Com Res today showing them at 12% (the lowest they've had since the election).

Elsewhere Mori had a poll from Scotland which showed

Constituency (2007 result)
Labour 41% (32.2%)
SNP 31% (32.9%)
Tory 13% (16.6%)
Lib Dem 11% (16.2%)

Regional
Labour 36% (29.2%)
SNP 32%(31.0%)
Tory 12%(13.9%)
Lib Dem 9%(11.3%)

Fundamentally Labour have taken a bit from the SNP but the main losers are the Lib Dems who are in serious trouble.

Seems like things are looking good for Labour in Wales and Scotland.

ITV Yougov analysis

Firstly I just want to make clear how thankful I am that ITV Wales is paying thousands of pounds to commission opinion polls in Wales. Without them we would have no information at all on what Welsh voters think.

But how are they working out their predicted AMs?

Last night ITV predicted that these yougov figures would deliver

Labour 28
Plaid 13
Tory 13
Lib Dem 6

I'm sorry but I simply can't agree with this. In 2007 the Lib Dems got 15% in constituencies and 12% in regions. Now they are on 9% in both.

To get a list seat in the North the Lib Dems needed a minimum of 6.4%. In 2007 they got 7.8%. Since they are now 3% down on what they got in 2007 that puts them on 4.8%. I haven't seen the local breakdown yet but last time they were doing even worse than the national swing in the north. They are also in a similar problem in the South East (though not quite so desperate).

I just can't see how this poll puts them on 6 seats.

update

the poll figures are available here
Things to note are that the Lib dems are on 6% in the north and 4% in South East. This is in line with them losing at least one of the seats. (Although these regional samples are small, unweighted and vary an awful lot).

Also worth noting that the Greens are up to 10% in SWC and the Lib Dems are only getting 6% in the Mid and West constituencies. Obviously this is all on very small samples but is worth keeping an eye on.

Yougov November ITV Poll

Yougov Figures are

Constituency
Labour 44%
Plaid 21%
Tory 21%
Lib Dem 9%
Other 6%

Regional
Labour 41%
Plaid 20%
Tory 20%
Lib Dem 9%
Ukip 4%

Our predictor puts it at

Labour 29 seats
Plaid 14
Tory 13
Lib Dems 4

Good for Labour, Ok for Plaid and Tories, disaster for the Lib Dems.

Update
I've updated the graphs and predictor with the new figures.

Yougov Wales poll tomorrow

We're already at that time of the month when another Welsh Yougov poll is on its way (as long as their keeping to the last wed of the month system). Its amazing how exciting I still find these but the novelty definitely hasn't worn off yet. ITV Wales really deserve our thanks for commisioning these polls.

Out of interest here is how ICM and Yougov's UK polls have changed this month

ICM 21st November compared with ICM 24th October
Labour 38% (+2%)
Conservative 36% (-3%)
Lib Dem 14% (-2%)

Yougov 22nd of November compared with 21st of October
Labour 38% (+2%)
Conservative 41% (no change)
Lib Dem 11% (+1%)

All in all there's not much change this month in the UK so no reason to expect any massive changes in Wales...

Irish polling

After hearing today's latest headlines I thought I'd have a look at Irish opinion polls again. There are two issues at stake here. The first is the Donegal South West By-election which takes place on Wednesday. The press association is calling this for Sinn Fein after a 500 person survey conducted by Red C (on Behalf of bookmakers Paddy Power). This is FF heartland so a bad loss here will be extremely traumatic for the party.

The same pollsters have also produced a poll for tomorrows papers with the latest Eire wide figures of

Fianna Fáil 17% (41.6% last time)
Fine Gael 33% (27.3%)
Labour 27% (10.1%)
Greens 3% (4.7%)
Sinn Féin 11% (6.9%)

If the election is held in the next few months we will see the end of an intire political class in Ireland as the largest party in the countries history is dumped into a miserable third place fight with Sinn Fein.

Interesting times...

Yougov Polls

I've added a page with the most up to date figures from Yougov. Hopefully they'll be of some use.

Stats Rant continued

This is probably very boring to nearly everyone reading this but having another look at the employment statistics I noticed a great graph



This shows the 95% confidence levels for employment in Wales since Jul-Sep 2008.

Below I've coloured in the area of the graph that has always been within the confidence levels.






What this means is that it is well within the realms of probability that employment in Wales has been at a constant of anything between 67% and 68.5%. It is quite likely that it hasn't changed at all and if it has changed there is no way for us to know if it has gone up or down. These figures are based on relatively small samples (when you get down to the "regional" level) and there accuracy is not great.

During this time though the BBC has announced:
31,000 fewer Welsh jobs available
Unemployment in Wales falls to lowest level in a year
Unemployment total drops by 2,000 in Wales
Unemployment in Wales rises to 125,000
Unemployment falls only in Wales

Not one report mentions the massive innacuracy of the figures they are quoting and reports the "rise" or "fall" as being an accurate picture of what's happening in Wales.

I am not trying to have a go simply at thee beeb. On the whole thier news coverage of Wales is considerably better than anyone else. But surely they have someone with enough of a grasp of figures to do better reports than this. It is pretty lazy journalism.

Bad-Stats Rant

Just read Betsan Powys's blog and realised quite how misleading and annoying stats reporting is in Wales.

Betsan is looking at various politicians responses to the "drop" in unemployment. This seems to make sense. The figures clearly say that there are 12,000 less people unemployed in Wales. Everyone rejoice at these amazing cuts. Depending on your affiliation either the Con-Dem cuts are working or One Wales is delivering despite London's efforts.

What no one looks at is page 8 of the statistics which clearly say how accurate these figures are. The truth is that the change in Unemployment is anything between a drop of 35,000 or an increase of 10,000. And there's a 5% chance that the change could be better than a 35,000 drop or worse than a 10,000 increase.

Every month we get these same stories (Wales does worse than the rest of UK. First Minister welcomes Unemployment drop. Wales failing as unemployment rises). But the truth is that all of these stories are b******t. There based on figures that simply aren't accurate to the level there being reported. If even the BBC don't understand this then we have a serious problem.

Across the Irish sea

Today's news on the Republic's financial woes led me to have a look what the polling figures are like there at the moment.

A quick search led to this poll by Millward Brown Lansdowne

The Topline figures are (2007 results in brackets)
Fianna Fail 22% (41.6%)
Fine Gael 30% (27.3%)
Labour 35% (10.1%)
Green Party 2% (4.7%)
Sinn Fein 4% (6.9%)
Independents/Others 8% (7%)

The main story is how the Labour party has gone from the also ran party to a clear lead. This could really be the end of Fianna Fail/Fine Gael dominance in Dublin. It also goes to show that in turbulent times party fortunes can change incredibly quickly.

Yougov UK

Yougov has announced a 5% lead for Labour in the UK polls (C37%,Lab42%,LD10%). This is their biggest lead for Labour in a long time. When the last ITV Yougov poll of Wales was taken the Tories were still ahead at a UK level (C40%,L38%,LD12%). That means a change on the month of C-3%, L+4%, LD-2%.

Now these are nearly all within the margin of error, but Labour definitely seem to be dong better than they were a month ago. Labour could realistically be doing even better than the Constituency 44%, Regional 40% that they had last month.

Labour list poll of members

Ask and it shall be delivered...

Thanks to Ryan for providing a link to LabourList's survey of members.

Firstly a couple of health warnings, 1st I don't know how big this sample is and 2nd like with the Lib Dem Voice these people are only representative of hardcore activists.

But there are two or three interesting findings. The first is that a plurality (42% to 33%) will vote against AV. This is probably a hint that Labour will play absoloutely no part in the Yes campaign. Secondly these activists seem to favour a primary system. This is counterintuative as most activists tend to prefer a system where members pick candidates. Finally Peter Hain beats the magic "50% know who I am" test but only by 3%. The only Labour politician getting a negative rating is Shaun Woodwood. This is probably becuase Labour List are the most die-hard and tribalist Labour supporters and Shaun Woodwood is a famous defector. Never forget and never forgive...

Lib Dem Poll of members

Just seen this interesting link on Freedom Central to a poll of Lib Dem members.

It seems that amongst Lib Dems Kirsty has a rating of +27%

below are Kirsty's results in full (no other Welsh Lib made the list).

Kirsty Williams, Leader of the Welsh Liberal Democrats
Very effective 12%
Quite effective 24%
Quite ineffective 7%
Very ineffective 2%
Don’t know / No opinion 55%
Net effectiveness +27% (+18%)

You may notice that 55% of the Lib Dem Voice members only forum (the Libs Praetorian Guard of activists) don't seem to know who Kirsty is (or at least don't have an opinion on her).

This makes her slightly more well known than Alistair Carmichael, Deputy Chief Whip to the House of Commons (65% don't know) but less well known than Andrew Stunell, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State to the Department for Communities and Local Government (39%) or Paul Burstow, Minister of State for the Department of Health(45%).

I'm sure by next month she'll cross that psychological "50% of key activists know who I am" barrier. I will keep everyone updated.

PS I'd like to apologise to any Lib Dems readers. I don't mean to pick on you and will happily have a go at any other party who openly publish polls of members. It just seems that your the only people who are as obsessive as us about polling and stats.

Wales on Sunday poll

There's a new poll in the Wales on Sunday today which is looking at peoples reaction to the budget cuts. Its an interesting read.

The main findings seem to be that people want to see education and health spending spared with sport and art taking more of a hit. With the Welsh draft budget expected soon this is reinforcing the idea that protecting "core" services is likely to be a very important factor.

Its also interesting to see that people seem to trust the Welsh Assembly Government to cut fairly. I think there is a growing perception that Labour/Plaid is fairer than Tories/Lib Dems. Looking forward to see if this is reflected in more Welsh polls.

Another bad yougov poll for the libs

The Lib Dems for the second day running are on 10% with yougov. I really think that they have been hit hard by last weeks protests and still expect them to be in single figures sometime this week.

Mike Smithson has a really good article on Nick Clegg's position. The question Nick has to answer is "what difference have the Lib Dems actually made to Tory policy?". If they can get a good answer to this I think they will be fine. If they can't things look very bad, especially for the 2011 and 2012 election.

Predictor goes LIVE

I have finally worked out how to embed our predictor into a webpage so now by simply clicking here or on the tab above you can make predictions on how the Welsh election will turn out. It's not quite electoral calculus yet, but hopefully we're on our way.

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

S4C yougov poll

The S4C figures are now up on yougov's site and have some pretty interesting findings.

Firstly as the earlier news reports made clear, there is serious ground for concern for S4C continuing as a Welsh language only channel. Even Plaid voters came out in favour of the channel shoiwng English Language programming (40% to 34%) whilst Labour supporters strongly agreed (57% to 16%). Personally I think that a bilingual channel would be very impractical and would be bad for the language, but expect Chris Bryant to be jumping up and down with these figures over the next few years.

Secondly I find the lingusitic breakdown of support quite interesting. Despite their poor performance in West Wales more Welsh speakers support Labour than Plaid (42% - 30%). This is a Westminster poll but still the idea that Welsh speakers all vote for Plaid is simply not true.

How will yesterday effect the polls?

The new Yougov daily polling means that we can get an idea of how the news impacts opinion within 48hrs of an event. Therefore tomorrow morning we will probably find out what effect yesterday's protests (and riot) have had on the polls.

There will hardly be anyone left in the country who doesn't know about the Lib Dem U-turn on tuition fees and they will definitely have lost their USP of being the "nice" party. Their vote amongst students will obviously have been hit hard. On the other hand people don't like riots and disorder and that could definitely benefit Clegg. Also he's had a lot of coverage and that usually helps. My personal guess is that we will see the Lib-Dem below 10% again at least once by the end of next week. But then again my predictions are notoriously bad.

Yougov Woolas and immigration

I'm a bit late blogging on this but Yougov had a very interesting poll on Woolas and Immigration

The first finding is that everyone agrees that Woolas had to go. Even 65% of Labour supporters wanted rid of him. The Labour backbenches really need to let this go.

Secondly I was really interested to see the responses on controlled immigration. The survey asked if people thought different occupations should be exempt from an immigration ban.

What was interesting was that only 21% thought there should be no exemptions. And this figure was pretty much the same amongst the well off (ABC1 21%) less well off (C2DE 22%), Young (18-24 24%), Older (60+ 18%), Tories (20%), Labour (20%), Lib Dems (15%). There's something reassuring that the number of people who don't like foreignes is so low and it's interesting to see that these people are mixed amongst every single part of society.

S4C Yougov poll finally revealed

I was not lying, ITV Wales / Yougov did ask about attitudes to s4c and their findings will be on Byd ar Bedwar tonight with an article by Martin Shipton in todays Western Mail.

Basically it does not look good for the defenders of the channel. Haven't seen the data tables yet but the majority seem to agree with Chris Bryant and want English language programming on S4C. Not exactly sure where this would leave BBC Wales or how exactly S4C would market itself. When would S4C broadcast in English and how would you let non-Welsh speakers know that an English programme was on. Also where would the money come from?

Anyway will update when the tables are out.

Not all doom and gloom for Lib Dems

Looking back over the last few weeks I've realised that there's a lot of doom and gloom on this site for Lib Dems so I thought I should take the opportunity to raise the spirits over at Freedom Central.

Firstly - The latest Yougov poll has them back up at 12% (the midweek 9% was obviously a rogue poll). Since Yougov is consistently 3% or 4% lower than the telephone pollsters things might not be all that bad and could pick up by next May.

Secondly - I have it from a good source that there will not be a by-election in Montgomeryshire. Even if Mick stands down we are close enough to the next Assembly election not to need a by-election.

All in all things aren't that bad and although they are probably giving up hope of winning in Swansea or Newport I really can't see them falling below 6 (although they've got a close fight up north). Not quite the 31 that Kirsty talked about when she was elected but... There biggest potential problem is not 2011 but the council elections in 2012, there they really do have a lot to lose and that could be a bad night for Kirsty, Nick et al.

First Westminster By-Election

Phil Woolas seems to have got exactly what he deserves. We've all seen leaflets that "bend" the truth a bit but what Woolas seems to have been doing was bringing politics into disrepute. It will be a very interesting by-election as its a three way marginal. Given the circumstances of a re-run election you'd fancy the second place party to pick it up. But since that's the Lib Dems then the race is completely open. Should be very interesting.

Looking at the Assembly there's still an outside chance that we could have a by-election if Mick Bates loses his court case and is persuaded to do the decent thing and stand down. It would be an interesting fight between the Libs and Tories. If people are angry at the coalition who would they vote for? Could be a big swing to someone, just don't know who.

YouGov S4C questions

Yougov have now published their ITV poll but their is still no mention of the missing S4C questions. There is a rally on the weekend about this so possibly they are holding it back to do a piece tomorrow night. But if they don't use it tomorrow when will they? The data is getting old guys...

Lib Dems in single figures

Following on from the Welsh Lib Dems dropping to 8% with yougov, the daily tracker has today got them down in single figures for the first time that I can remember (9%). They definitely haven't been this low since prior to 1997.

Now there are a lot of possible reasons for this. Firstly as many lib dems have pointed out, yougov is giving particularly low Lib-Dem scores and most phone pollsters have them at least 5% higher. Secondly this is nearly certainly an outlier. The Lib Dems seem to be polling 11-13% with yougov, if you keep polling every day random error will in the end see the vote go below 10%. There are also some possible issues with Yougovs methodology which Mike Smithson has raised on political betting .

But whatever the excuses things are not looking good for the Lib Dems. A lot of the polling for this poll would have taken place before people watched the footage on tuition fees and this subject really is not going to go down well with Lib Dem supporters. Mike Smithson, a former Lib Dem candidate, had this to say "So they’ve got a bit of embarrassment now - well tough shit. They should have asked questions before making such public commitments." Couldn't agree more.

American Election (and great ads)

Well the pollsters seem to have called most seats well and there were very few shocks (which is impressive considering the number of seats up for grabs). I can't say that I completely understand American politics. The issues that get people excited are completely different to Wales and the way that campaigns are run also seems very different. All candidates seem to concentrate on selling the "sizzle" as opposed to the "Beef", as Walter Mondale might have put it.

Anyway my favourite part of the campaign has been checking out American campaign ads. If you haven't seen any then have a look at this top ten from adweek Their number one is below. (hat-tip to Benedict Pringle whose Political Advertising blog is one of my favourites on the web)

AV poll

Today's been a pretty heavy day for blogging but I've just spotted Anthony Wells' blog on the latest AV polling and thought it was worth a mention.

The original data is available here but basically the news is that FPTP is beating AV by 43% to 32%. In all honesty I couldn't care less about this small change in voting methods but the narrative of this campaign could play an important role in the Welsh Assembly election. If Clegg is on the way to victory (or at least a close fight) then the extra coverager should help the Libs. If he is looking at certain defeat then the narrative may be about the decline of the Libs and that won't be so helpful.

YouGov poll - Update

The YouGov poll in the Western Mail is now out and I was wrong, it does have voting intentions (though only for Westminster).

Labour 46% (36% at May 2010 election)
Conservatives 29% (26%)
Plaid 11% (11%)
Lib Dems 8% (20%)

This is disasterous for The Lib Dems. This is there worst Welsh poll so far and with their vote more than halving they would be looking at wipeout in Wales. The Labour score is very strong with neither Plaid or the Tories moving much.

Bad news for Labour and Plaid though is that most people support cutting the number of MPs in Wales (41% to 24%).

Another interesting question is on identity.

People feeling more Welsh than British 35%
People feeling equally Welsh and British 30%
People feeling more British than Welsh 28%

By some distance the lowest figure for "more Welsh than British" was the north with only 21%.

Yougov Researchers poll

A new poll in the Westen Mail today gives us a clue about how the people in Wales are responding to the cuts.

The main headlines seem to be that 56% think the cuts are too fast and that unlike in England more Welsh people blame the Con - Lib coalition for the cuts than blame Labour. (34% - 32%).

Its also interesting to note that Lib Dem voters (like everybody else) think that Wales is facing bigger cuts than the rest of the UK. How damaging this is for the yellow party can be seen from there response in the WM article. What they say is fine, blaming Lab-PC spin for leading the Welsh public astray, what's interesting is that whilst Carwyn Jones, Nick Ramsay and Nerys Evans were all willing to put their names to quotes the Lib Dems had to rely on a "spokesman". This is always a sure sign of who is hurt most by an article.

So far we haven't had the data set for this poll so we can't say if they did voting intentions or not (I'm guessing not). I'll keep an eye on yougov today and update when its available.

Where did the ITV S4C questions go?

When I posted ahead of the ITV poll I mentioned the fact that I actually got to take part in this months panel. In the excitement of getting fresh data I didn't really take much interest in the supplementary questions. But looking back I answered about 5 questions on S4C, what I think of the channel and what I think of proposals to fund the channel through the BBC. These questions and the results have not been made public by ITV.

I am pretty confident that ITV are simply holding them back to get a second story out of them. Maybe by releasing them ahead of this weekends S4C rally in Cardiff, but if they don't release them then it will put ITV in an awkward position. Why aren't they releasing data which could boost/damage the cause of S4C. As a supplier of S4C programming and (in some ways) a rival broadcaster ITV Wales are potentially in a tricky position here.

Lets hope they release in the next few days.