Can you trust ConservativeHome's surveys?

The ConservativeHome Members’ Panel is increasingly being quoted in the media as the best guide to opinion within the Conservative Party.  On Wednesday night – at the party leadership’s request – I gave a short presentation on recent Panel findings at the Built To Last roadshow event.

Earlier this week a few visitors to this website (on this thread and on Guido’s blog) questioned the representative nature of the Panel.  Many of the attacks focused on the fact that many comments on this blog are hostile to aspects of the Cameron project.  I make no claims for the representative nature of the comments on this site.  I do believe, however, that the opinions of the Panel can be trusted and offer reassurance on three levels:

Track record. Last December 69% of the first 848 first members of the Panel said that they would like David Cameron to be the next Tory leader and 31% said that they hoped David Davis would become Tory leader.  The actual result was 68% to 32%.  This group of 848 people continue to be the bedrock of the Panel.  Nearly all continue to participate on a monthly basis and I believe that they are a good guide to Tory opinion.

Weighting.  We compare the first question of the poll (which is always the same) in the previous and current surveys and take as our reading the actual change within that group (the matched group is about 95% of all respondents). We also match current respondents to the original 848 respondents as a control. Having weighted the first question, we then weight all subsequent questions to that first question. So far, weighting has never required more than a 1% adjustment, as the panel is in fact very stable, with new respondents closely resembling the profile of the earlier respondents. (Supporters of neither candidate in last year’s leadership race are proving to be disproportionately slack or enthusiastic at participating.)

Recruitment.  My reason for believing that the Panel members represent the membership is the routes via which we have been recruiting members.  The Cameron and Davis campaigns both emailed their supporters in order to alert them to the existence of the survey, and party organisations like the Conservative Christian Fellowship, Conservative Way Forward, Conservative Friends of Israel, Tory Reform Group and Women2Win were invited to alert their supporters to the surveys.  Since then I have emailed Tory Associations and leafleted Conservative events.  As I leafleted the Spring Forum in Manchester it was striking how many of the people I invited to join the Panel said that they were already signed-up. One possible criticism which I do accept is that the Panel represents activists rather than the full range of the non-activist membership. However, there is no evidence that non-activist (or non-participatory) members are essentially different in their views from activists. Any evidence about this is virtually impossible to obtain. It would therefore be wrong, and indeed meaningless, to attempt to draw any conclusions about the views of non-participatory members.

I do not pretend that the online survey of the kind being run by ConservativeHome is perfect.  There are probably some people who vote in the surveys who are not paid-up Tory members and there may be some infiltrators from other parties.  But the three reassurances above will, I hope, offer readers of the survey a sense of the Panel’s overall reliability.  Over time I hope to add one or two more security measures.

While we are on the subject of the Panel it might also be helpful for me to restate why ConservativeHome runs it at all.  The survey results don’t always make comfortable reading for the Tory leadership or for individual shadow cabinet members.  Some of the visitors to this site who are most loyal to the current party leadership believe that the survey provides ammunition to the party’s opponents and I am not insensitive to their concerns.  I, for example, delayed publication of the April dip in satisfaction with David Cameron because I did not want to encourage other parties’ council candidates on the eve of May 4th’s local elections.

The reason why ConservativeHome will continue to survey the Tory grassroots/ webroots, however, is our fundamental belief that the party is not owned by the current leadership or any leadership. Gone are the days when CCO can purport to speak on behalf of members to the press without fear of contradiction.  ConservativeHome believes that the leadership deserves loyalty and respect from the grassroots but loyalty and respect is a two-way thing.  The party must listen to the grassroots.  We are the people who raise the party’s funds and deliver the leaflets.  ConservativeHome’s first campaign was the successful championing of the membership's right to a vote in the leadership election and, much more recently, the membership’s right to be able to inspect the candidates’ A-list from which the next generation of Tory MPs will be drawn. ConservativeHome’s mission involves helping to build a more open, democratic and participative Conservative Party.  The voice that the Members’ Panel gives to the grassroots is a fundamental part of that mission.

***
Recent Panel findings: David Davis tops satisfaction league table, state funding of political parties rejected by 81% of Conservative members and 54% of Tory members say the war in Iraq was a mistake.

Comments

[Jason]

I am sick of the Conservative Party of which I used to be a proud member and supporter. I suspect Cameron to be in the same club as Blair. It's all very depressing.

[roy smith]

Why is it no body will talk about asylum seekers this is a big issue with most of the people lets hope it is on agenda soon .I have been writing to Mr Blair since 04/03/2001 every thing i have wrote obout have come true.

[philip]

As for possible coalition/co-operation with the Lib Dems, we can never compromise our Euroscepticism, our opposition to PR, and our willingness to repeal the justice-perverting HRA (and hopefully leave the human rights convention if necessary).

As for PR, I cannot think of anything more anti-democratic and more likely to increase peoples' sense of powerlessness, giving hugely disproportionate power to minority parties and leading to stitch-ups between parties remote from voters.

But at least the Lib Dems are anti ID cards, which would impinge on the freedom of the law-abiding, while having little proven impact against crime and terrorism.

[George Lawson]

The success of the party at the recent local elections should not be put down solely to the credit of the current Conservative leadership. It was mainly due to the failings of the present government. e.g. The fiasco at the Home Office, Cash loans for peerages, Iraq, Deputy Prime Minister and many other incompetent actions of the government under the Blair leadership. It is not due to watching ice melt in Norway, preferential selection of candidates, cycling to the office or even not wearing a tie on occasions when decent traditional standards demand a tie. Whilst the times of Thatcher have changed, Thatcherite principles have not, which means having the courage to face up to the real problems facing the country with conviction and with policies which may be initially unpopular but sound for the Country, such as health, education, law and order, the EEC and many other issues which effect our everyday lives. At the moment I feel we are gaining due to the failings of the Government and not through positive attractions that we are putting forward to voters.

[John Wiseman]

David Cameron is fast forgetting what the conservative Party stands for. He seems determined to place the Party in the middle of the road. Remember if you stand in the middle of the road you are going to get run over.

[David Saunders]

Mr Cameron has said he is comfortable with Britain as it is today. Since the point of changing governments is to bring in new ideas, how would Mr Cameron make a difference if he is satisfied with things as they are now?

[Ray Lee]

Keep sneering at the BNP at your peril.
Absurd denials, delusions and wails of "racist" are exactly why people are turning to the BNP. When you understand the reasons for that you will be in a position to leave all this useless blogophilia behind, ditch the chi-chi toff Cameron and approach those people you currently neither care for nor understand.
The EU and Jean Monet is well understood by BNP supporters. Get off your high horses and put your ears to the ground.

[Christian Mason]

I can't understand the sniping from bitter anti-Cameroons within the Conservative Party. The notion that lurching to the Right is going to be a vote winner is fanciful in the extreme. However one looks at the political landscape, 50% or more of the electorate vote Labour and the Lib Dems. 68% of Tories opted for Cameron as Leader knowing full well which direction he was going to take the Party. Now by my books that makes roughly 78% of the electorate happy to vote for the middle ground or Left. Cameron must stick to his rebranding exercise and ignore the attacks from the fruitcakes and Tebbit fans, unless we all fancy Gordon Brown running the country until 2015.

[Graham Eardley]

Please can you include UKIP in your Poll results?

Thanks

[Edward Thomas]

There is a Conservatives Abroad association here in Luxembourg - largely populated by UK expats who are not allowed to vote in UK elections (although expected to pay the usual taxes punctiliously) who work for the EU Parliament or Commission and therefore, being hogs with their snouts deep in the EU trough, are very pro-European and pretty PC to boot. Not this bunny. Where are the days of old when the petit-bourgeois values of right-wing Thatcherism ruled the roost with the effective assistance of a wildly swinging handbag ? The Cameron project with its recent limited success in trying to ape Blair in fooling most of the lumpen Social-Welfarist British pooblick with its Lib-Demoism masquerading as "compassionate Conservatism" makes me heartily sick. After Maggie, is there not another man with real balls in the whole of "mud island" to stand up and be counted with real hard-backed-pull yerself-together Conservatism?

[Richard Ramsey]

Lots of interesting postings here.
Just a thought: Are 'traditional Conservative values' and the desire to encompass environmental issues, 'inclusiveness' and so on, mutually exclusive?

[Mrs Marilyn Warburton]

OUR TWO MOST UNDERUSED HONEST IN TOUCH CHARISMATIC CONSERVATIVE ELECTION WINNERS ARE BORIS JOHNSON AND SAYEEDA? DEPUTY CHAIRMAN IF WE HAD MORE LIKE THEM WE WOULD ROMP HOME!! HUGE INTELLIGENCE HONEST IN- TOUCH VIEWS WE DON'T SEE ENOUGH OF EITHER

[Mrs Marilyn Warburton]

KEEP GOING WITH ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES AND OFFER FINANCIAL HELP FOR ROOF WINDMILLS AND ADDRESS PROBLEM OF NON-BIODEGRADABLE OVER PACKAGING

[Neville Price]

Right now the government is getting into a bigger mess every day and getting deeper it self into the financial black hole it has gug for itself.
The Lib Dem leadership is almost none existent and they must have another dirty leadership battle soon.
The conservative leadership must all work twice as hard to get the full benifit out of the mess the opposition are in.

[Neville Price]

Right now the government is getting into a bigger mess every day and getting deeper it self into the financial black hole it has gug for itself.
The Lib Dem leadership is almost none existent and they must have another dirty leadership battle soon.
The conservative leadership must all work twice as hard to get the full benifit out of the mess the opposition are in.

[Victor Cowen]

The one major complaint we all hear is the 'lack of policies' emanating from the party. I know we are probably years away from a general election so there is no need to rush into unsustainable commitments but the public judge the party by it's alternatives to the appaling mess nu. labour are undoubtedly in and will undoubtedly leave. This latest ethos of 'incompetence' is a real tough one for you to attack as you will be in the hands of the same time-serving civil servants. That will require the most earth moving shake up - promise it, not the usual waffle but root and branch re-organisation- you will truly be up against unions which will make the miners look like kids stuff.
The next GE may be closer than you think.

[Joe A Smith]

I'm a party activist in a Northwest constituency. I am concerned that David Cameron's concentration on the political centre ground (probably an attempt to woo the Liberals in the event of a hung parliament) has left open space to our right which far right parties are happy to annexe. We had high hopes of ousting Labour from overall control of Jack Straw's Blackburn. We needed to gain only 2 Council seats. In the event we failed to gain our target seats and lost two seats. The far right parties gained votes from us wherevever they stood and a new local party, "England First" made up of disaffected Tories won two seats. Cameron may be appealing to the South East but his policies have little relavance to electors in the North.

[Keith Williams]

I am a former member who lapsed and await the policy encouragement to rejoin. I remain a supporter probably a little to the so-called "right" of current directions but I am honest and complete in my responses to surveys. Occasionally I differ significantly from the majority and read this as a healthy sign of the value of the surveys. Under no circumstance would I vote against the party - but the party could persuade me to abstain.