Tory lead over 8% in poll of polls

"RECORD TORY POLL LEAD, AND IT'S LIKELY TO GROW."

That's the headline in this morning's Times above a Populus opinion poll that puts the Conservatives in a 38% to 30% lead over Labour.  The LibDems are down 1% on 18%.

The Tory lead in the ConservativeHome poll of polls is now a record 8.25% with all polls pointing to a similar Conservative advantage.  With a uniform swing, Electoral Calculus give the Tories a 38 majority on these poll of polls numbers.  John Hutton and Ruth Kelly would be amongst the Labour casualties.

When the 'if Gordon Brown was leader' question is asked the Tory lead grows to 42% to 29%.  More reassuring for the Chancellor is that the Tory lead widens still further - 48% to 28% - if David Miliband was leader.  That these questions need to be taken with a large dose of salt is confirmed by the fact that, last month, Populus found that the Tory advantage over a Brown-led Labour party would be just 1%.  We are not going to know the impact of a Brown leadership until...

1. We have been through the Labour leadership contest in which there could be a negative impact on Labour's standing because of infighting and 'Blairite revenge' or a positive impact because of Labour winning lots of publicity (the Tories benefited from this 'oxygen of publicity factor' during the 2005 leadership race);
2. We have seen Brown installed as Prime Minister - he has made his first speech on the steps of Downing Street promising an array of changes, has reshuffled the Cabinet and announced new initiatives;
3. We have waited three months for everything to settle down and we have seen how the Tories and LibDems choose to attack him.
4. We know the outcome of the cash-for-honours investigation.  If prosecutions take place there may be more erosion of Labour's standing to come.

Comments

[Peter Hatchet]

All very good points.

Despite all that, I doubt whether Brown as PM could ever benefit Labour by more than 3-4% - but that is based on nothing more scientific than my gut feeling!

He is not like John Major was in 1990 - a fresh face with a welcome new style.

The hairs on my wooden leg tell me that although he could pump Labour up to 36/37% in the short term - I doubt he will maintain it.

If we get to 40%+ - and hold it - for the next few months, that demonstrates swing voters are ready to back us. Under those circumstances I think we'd end up the largest party in a hung parliament, at the very least.

[kingbongo]

the movement in the polls is becoming more marked. This Populus poll is actually even more dire than the headline figures. The highest lead for the tories ever recorded by Populus, a GB/DC question rewritten to be more friendly to Brown and a shift down in Labour support to the bottom of their 'box'

Bring on the local elections.

[Matt Wright]

Correct, we know from canvassing on the doors and by-elections in our area (North Wales) that swing voters are backing us. I think the polls are accurate. Furthermore your analysis of Brown is right in my view. He is not a new brush and does not have any appeal. In fact he is the primary architect of the failed policies - pensions, bureaucracy, welfare dependency etc that we now have. He was there with Blair from the start and did nothing to stop him on all the other major problems like Iraq. He is and looks the past not the future,

Matt

[anon]

Editor this is good news and bodes well for the future. However, would it be possible to get a breakdown of the percentage of respondents who don't know or won't vote? I don't want to go over old ground on the collation of polling data but it would be nice to ascertain whether our numbers are going up because we are attracting swing voters or whether it is just that our core vote is holding out better than Labours.

[Chevalier de la Foi]

Notable lack of UKIP trolls today. Have they finally given up?

[Soupy Twist]

I'm not convinced by the 'oxygen of publicity' factor -- Brown is already all too familiar. So unless he appears more attractive in the role of PM than in his current role, then I don't see how Labour can benefit.

Of course, with Miliband it could be very different... just as well that Brown would tear his party to pieces in the event of a genuine contest.

[Nigel Twocock]

09.33: "Notable lack of UKIP trolls today. Have they finally given up?"

No we haven't. This poll is a disaster for David Cameron. He should resign immediately.

[Tony]

3. We have waited three months for everything to settle down and we have seen how the Tories and LibDems choose to attack him.

Well, almost right. The Tories will be attacking him while the Lib Dems will be seeking common ground to give more weight to their desire for a Lib-Lab coalition. Ming may as well see if he can gather his band of MPs and sit on the other side of the House before the coalition.

[Jonathan M Scott]

Well, at long last www.electoralcalculus.co.uk does what it's supposed to do as we have good poll leads. Try the Miliband results on Electoral Calculus - Con 48%, Lab 28%, LD 17% and you end up with:

CON 470
LAB 346
LD 12

which is actually not inconceivable. There was a massive swing from Con to Lab in 1997 and Major wasn't even as unpopular as Blair/Brown are now!

It is particularly appealing if David Cameron can gain many of the Northern, Scots and Welsh seats on the predicted list. With 2 seats in Aberdeenshire, 2 in Ayrshire, 4 seats in Birmingham, all the seats in Bradford, all 4 in Bristol, 3 in Cardiff, 3 in Edinburgh, 2 in Leeds, 2 in Walsall and in Wolverhampton, it would mean Conservatism has really moved well out of the heartlands ......

[Peter Hatchet]

Jonathan: I think LAB 138 seats should be your figure?

This is the sort of thing we can only dream of I'm afraid. But very welcome nonetheless!

I'd like to make two further points:

(1) We still lack the infrastructure in Scotland/Wales/The North to convert the necessary seats
(2) Whilst Cameron is popular, I'm just not feeling the same "mood" for us as there was for Nulab in 96/97
(3) Voters are basing voting intentions at this moment on Cameron/Brown rather than Conservatives/Labour (remember Thatcher was less popular than Callaghan in 1979 when she won)

Essentially, whilst I doubt Brown will come close to overturning it, our lead is by no means secure.

I'm very cautious about getting too excited - we need to broaden the base of Camerons personal appeal and our position in the North to entrench it.

[Peter Hatchet]

To protect myself from the predatory pedants on this site, I meant *three* points, naturally!

[Andrew Woodman]

This is continued good news. With reference to Brown, what new initiatives will he have to bring in? The governement is already running out of steam and reduced to gimmicks (haircuts for the unemployed). He has already spent all our money so I don't see any change of direction within the treasury. The only move now is leftwards which will lose him middle England. Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic springs to mind.

[Richard Hyslop]

"It is particularly appealing if David Cameron can gain many of the Northern, Scots and Welsh seats on the predicted list. With 2 seats in Aberdeenshire, 2 in Ayrshire, 4 seats in Birmingham, all the seats in Bradford, all 4 in Bristol, 3 in Cardiff, 3 in Edinburgh, 2 in Leeds, 2 in Walsall and in Wolverhampton, it would mean Conservatism has really moved well out of the heartlands ......"

Steady on! While this opinion poll makes very enjoyable reading there is still an awful lot of work to do before we can be confident of winning some of the seats listed above.

The results of the local elections in England and the Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish elections will tell us how well the Conservatives are doing outside of the South of England.

[simon]

The poll is good news, but i tend to agree with Peter Hatchet. During the 1992-97 period we had an array of by-elections at Westminster to see how things could turn out at a General Election. We need a few more up till the next GE to truly see if the poll results are borne out by ACTUAL election results. Then i could start to believe the Times poll.

[Ted]

simon - so which MPs look a touch unhealthy? By-elections generally require the current MP to die so while I agree it would be useful to see real election results I think the Scots, Welsh & English locals should be god enough - by elections tend to have other factors (as we saw in Dunfermiline & Bromley)

[Charlie]

It's often said that some politicians are lucky. In my opinion, David Cameron has done almost everything right since deciding to run for leader but, boy, he's had two strokes of luck.

1) Unpreposessing sociopath Gordon Brown forcing election winning machine Tony Blair out of frontline politics in order to satisfy his crazed ambition.

2) Unimpressive old-man-in-a-hurry Ming Campbell misfiring at every turn and rounding it off by suggesting an all-Fife power grab alliance with the aforementioned Brown.

With opponents like these...

[Scotty]

"It is particularly appealing if David Cameron can gain many of the Northern, Scots and Welsh seats on the predicted list"
Jonathan M Scott, I don't know about the other seats but the ones you mention in Scotland would be our main targets over the next few years. They have in the past been tory heartlands, and I think that many of them have retained a working local association which has definitely helped to rebuild a base at local level.
Our problem is more the area's where we were never strong and don't even have associations which makes the task of even starting to build a presence on the local council difficult.
We have area's where people might want to vote conservative, but because of no visible association or campaigning presence we encourage the myth that a conservative vote is a wasted vote.
I would imagine that problem is equally true in area's of Wales and the North of England.
I would like to see the party investing more
in time and financial assistance to establishing a presence in some of these constituencies, with the hope that it would encourage more volunteers to come forward.
The initiative in the North of England highlighted on ConHom recently is really encouraging, but it needs to be replicated by the Scottish Conservatives more robustly.
We have the Holyrood elections coming in May, but we also have to be prepared for the next GE and to catch the tide of a real mood for change throughout the UK.

[Valedictoryan]

It's a shame that this poll pre-dates the Liberal Spring Conference. I'd like to have seen how being slipper-slapped affected Dave's standing.

[Richard]

Well what are we waiting for? Start printing the "Miliband for Labour Leader" T-shirts!

[Don Hoyle]

May's local elections will really tell us how we stand, although these poll results, together with what seems to be reactions on the doorstep (positive voting intention, agreeing to put up posters for election-time and even accepting membership forms [though I have personally not got signatures or cheques]) all bode well. I think a little bit of hand-rubbing IS in order!

As an activist I can point to even last year's reactions being a country mile away from the responses this year, and, then, we improved on our position in our local Council, with 4 gains.

[Don Hoyle]

Sorry, 5 gains.

[Peter Hatchet]

Andrew 10:21 "With reference to Brown, what new initiatives will he have to bring in? "

I'm almost convinced now he'll try some kind of tax cut.

Scotty 11:17 Agree 100%. I'd almost be inclinded to subsidise (or even pay) active supporters to set up and run Conservative Associations in these areas. And I'd encourage talented - but unlucky -Parliamentary Candidates to stand for councils in these areas. Maybe they could be given some sort of inducement in return?

The amount of money - and members - some Southern Associations have access to is staggering. They don't need the real help. We must put a lot more resources into the North - certainly not CCHQ!

[Scotty]

"Steady on! While this opinion poll makes very enjoyable reading there is still an awful lot of work to do before we can be confident of winning some of the seats listed above."
Richard, could not agree more with that assessment.
Take the rise in support of the SNP and in the past just how successful the Libdems have been in Scotland. Now I have no doubt that the wave the SNP are riding on has more to do with the fact that they are perceived as the main opposition in Scotland. People see voting SNP as the way to removing Labour from power rather than a vote for independence.
Both the SNP and the Libdems seem to have a very energised and mobile activist base which can be deployed where they are needed.
This kind of organised campaign strategy seems completely missing from the Scottish Conservatives. We need to be able to pull in activists to help with rural area's where we have been strong in the past, but equally in urban area's where we have no organised local association.

[Richard Woolley]

Encouraging news but I still think that the Tories need to record a lead of at least 10 per cent to be absolutely certain of victory.
I agree with the poster about Miliband. If he became PM we'd have even higher eco-taxes than under Brown and he'd be an electoral disaster for Labour. I think Miliband's a bit too 'geeky' to be PM.
When I type in CON 40 LABOUR 30 LIB DEM 20 on the electoral calculus the Tories have an overall majority of 42, similar to what they had when Thatcher was elected in 1979.

[601]

"This kind of organised campaign strategy seems completely missing from the Scottish Conservatives. We need to be able to pull in activists to help with rural area's where we have been strong in the past, but equally in urban area's where we have no organised local association"

Want to do well in Scotland? Then the only policy that will get us anywhere is FISCAL AUTONAMY.

[Yet Another Anon]

By elections and mid term opinion polls indicate very little - Labour in the 1980's through to 1992 was always prepared to sweep to victory on the basis of some such thing as were the Alliance, in 1992-97 supposedly the Conservative Party were on course to be wiped out and still got 9.6 million votes and 165 seats.

In 1950 the Labour government looked on it's way out, as a matter of fact it was, but only because of the electoral arithmetic of the time, in 1951 they actually won a higher proportion of those eligible to vote than any other party in any other General Election in the 20th century, this was after their vote had fallen sharply in 1950 and after a long spell in which there had been a honeymoon period in the late 1940's.

At this point in almost every parliament in the 20th century the opposition was supposedly leading or at least doing far better than before, 1945-50, 1959-64 and 1997- on were the few exceptions - the General Election is not until June 2009.

[Yet Another Anon]

Encouraging news but I still think that the Tories need to record a lead of at least 10 per cent to be absolutely certain of victory.
The only certainty of a particular result will be after the votes are counted and the result is known, an opposition can throw away a strong position at any time and support always tends to return to a government towards an election because people prefer to stick with what they know and are worried about the untried, very little actual policy has come out - the most that can be said is that the Conservative Party are virtually certain to have their best General Election performance since 1992, that Labour will not get as large a majority as in 1997 or 2001 and that the Liberal Democrats will have their worst result since 1997 at least and maybe in terms of votes a comparable result to that of the Liberal Party in 1979.

[Jonathan M Scott]

Peter, Richard, Scotty - absolutely agree with you all. It should say LAB 138 in my previous posting as 346 is their current number of seats! The key is how the Party converts good opinion poll results and focuses the votes in the constituencies we need to win -- rather than building up massive majorities in safe seats (or current Conservative held marginals).

The most dangerous man in Britain in my opinion is Sir Ming Campbell -- hinting at a coalition with Labour in return for "electoral reform" (which would be anti democratic, in that it could condemn us to a perpetual Lab/Lib coalition). Fortunately, Ming's coded signal that he would go into coalition with Gordon Brown will make a lot of potential (but Anti Labour) Lib Dem voters switch to the Conservatives. So he's shot himself in the foot.

[John F]

Jonathan, I agree with most of your comments however, if one the Aberdeenshire constituancies you mention is Gordon (my one) then I have a dilemma.
It is currently Lib Dem and I,m so keen to decapitate the incompetent Lab/Lib Dem mob that I have to consider the possibility of tactical voting.
Now the nearest challengers to the Lib Dems in Gordon are the Scots Nats (Alex Salmond)and I have no idea how close the Conservatives are, so, although I have voted Tory all my life, this time I,m going vote for the Nats, not because I like them, but as a means of smashing Labour and the Lib Dems because if Labour gets smashed in Scotland (their heartland) they will never hold power in the UK again.
Is my strategy the right one bearing in mind that if the Nats do achieve power at Hollyrood and hold a referendum on the Union I will vote for the Union and against the nationalists.

[Gareth]

JOhn F,

Given that there is a bybrid PR system in Scotland, ought you not to vote tory anyway on the basis that, even if the Libs win your first past the post seat, you'll help the tories pick up a list seat?

I confess though, my understanding of these elections is not in-depth!

[Robert McIlveen]

Gareth - Joihn could vote SNP in the constituency seat and Tory in the list - maximising his chances of getting rid of the incumbent and boosting Tory votes in the regional top-up.

[Jonathan M Scott]

JohnF, Gordon wasn't one of the seats that changes hands from LD to Con on Electoral Calculus, but it could still do due to local factors (as opposed to the national swing).

in 2005 general election in Gordon: LD 20,008; Lab 8,982; Con 7,892; SNP 7,098. (source: BBC)

In 2003 Scottish parliament election:
LD 10,963; Con 6,892; SNP 6501; Lab 2973. (source: Scottish Parliament)

As the candidate in Gordon in the Scottish parliamentary election is ALEX SALMOND, he will easily win the seat as he is well known. It is ironic that the seat that could make him First Minister has the same name as the pretender to the UK Premiership - Gordon.

[Dave Bartlett]

I can't help feeling that a PM Gordon Brown will not be able to face PMQs every week without revealing himself as arrogant and childish ON CAMERA. Can't wait.

[Paul D]

Jonathan M Scott - re: 2 in Leeds, the Tories would actually take five of the Leeds seats (I assume you're not local and thus unaware that Pudsey, Morley & Outwood and Elmet & Rothwell are all Leeds seats)

[CDM]

I'd vote for Salmond. He may not be a Tory, but he'd do incredible damage to Gordon Brown if he becomes First minister.

[kingbongo]

Since December the average movement in Populus polls for the Times is

CON +1.3 points
LAB -1 point
LD -0.33 points

the tories are therefore making progress against both other parties with evidence of people switching LAB CON

[changetowin]

Must treat all polls with caution BUT the trend since David Cameron became leader has been one of steady and marked improvement. Despite all the cynicism and back biting on this site, David Cameron has transformed not just our party, but also the terms of debate in Britain. Rather than being a useless debating club muttering in back rooms about Europe and gays, we are now leading debate on issues that really matter to people. By applying our principles to today's problems and articulating our ideas in a fresh way, David Cameron has given Britain a chance to choose an alternative way to the great clunking fist. On the environment, family breakdown, work-life balance, welfare etc it is centre-right ideas that are now driving the agenda. This did not happen by accident - it is down to the hard work and insight of those who saw that our party needed to change. Of course Labour has failed, but we needed to be in a position to benefit from their failure. In 2005, despite Labour's failure the public did not trust us enough to turn to us. We were failing in our duty to the public by not being an alternative government. David Cameron is changing that.

[Lord Cashcroft]

“Other parties” are now on 14 per cent, up two points on the month.

[kingbongo]

yes 'others' are up two points but without getting into a debate about switchers that accounts for 1 point off Labour and 1 off the LDs. In reality it might be two off Labour and none off the LDs or two off the tories who have replaced those votes from elsewhere a combination of all those things. These changes are all within the margin of error which is why the average movement is so important and the trend is the tories' friend at the moment

[Matt Wright]

Poll trend is reflected on the ground talking to people. All too often it is women in particular but either way significant numbers seem to be switching straight from Lab to Conservative,

Matt

[Michael Rutherford]

Doesn't that 14% also include those giving the answer "Don't know"?

[AlanT]

JohnF:
I would strongly recommend that you do NOT vote for Salmond or the SNP in any circumstances whatever.
The best result for the Scottish Tories would be for the SNP to misfire and for the Lab/Lib coalition to stumble on for another four years.
If Salmond doesn't win it is likely to end his political career and the SNP will go into decline. That then gives the Scottish Tories the opportunity to re-emerge as the main opposition to Labour in Scotland.
So vote for Nanette Milne in Gordon, vote Tory for the regional list and vote Tory in the local govt elections in Gordon as well!

[TomTom]

I'm almost convinced now he'll try some kind of tax cut.

With the state of public finances and Balance of Payments the BoE will punish that rather hard....10% Base Rates anyone ?

[Michael McGowan]

Changetowin says rightly that "Of course Labour has failed but we needed to be in a position to benefit from their failure". However, part of that process involves the Tories needing to show that they have an alternative to that failure....not just Butskellite tinkering with the failed social democrat monolith. Is Oliver Letwin listening?

[Yet Another Anon]

Doesn't that 14% also include those giving the answer "Don't know"?
No, it's Other not Don't Know, if you included the don't know's and won't vote I doubt either main party would even get 25% at the moment.

[Matt Davis]

"Is Oliver Letwin listening?"

He's listening Michael, it's just that he doesn't agree, but he's far too polite to say so.