The pollsters on polling: When will be a good time to start taking the headline polls seriously again?

We've asked three of Britain's leading opinion pollsters, Stephan Shakespeare of YouGov, Andrew Hawkins of CommunicateResearch and Ben Page of Ipsos Mori, five questions on polling:

1. Blair is still in office.  The public have yet to see Brown in Downing Street.  Then there's the silly and party conference seasons.  When will be a good time to start taking the headline polls seriously again?
2. The traditional view is that governments are most unpopular in the middle of their terms and their popularity generally increases closer to elections.  In this era of constant electioneering does that historical pattern still hold true?
3. What do you think of Robert Worcester's belief that economic competence, party unity and leader image are principal determinants of a party's success?
4. Do you think that public opinion moves more quickly or more slowly than in the past?
5. Are Liberal Democrat voters a largely Conservative or Labour-leaning group?

Each day over the next five days we shall be posting our experts answers to one of the questions. So to start watch what they say about question 1 below. In summary: Stephan Shakespeare says we should always take the polls seriously because they always tell you something but they will only mean something for the next election after conference, Ben Page agrees that we need to wait until after the conferences, and Andrew Hawkins says we should take them seriously now. 

Comments

[Simon Denis]

Surely people have seen enough of Brown. It is Cameron who is the unknown quantity. The trouble is, the more exposure he gets, the more nebulous and empty he appears. His performance at questions was appalling by most accounts. See today's Times.

[Pisaboy]

Well done on getting them together. Surprised you bothered with Mori though.

[Tory T]

Tim, Sam and all should know that Anthony Wells has an invaluable brand new "polling report" out on each constituency. This replaces the old one. A veritable feast for amateur psephologists and political anoraks of all kinds.

http://www.ukpollingreport.co.uk/guide/

[malcolm]

Link doesn't work Tory T.

[Tory T]

The a href stuff has stopped working for me. It previews as a link, but then when you click on it, doesn't work.

Anyway, copy and paste here for the great new Anthony Wells guide

http://www.ukpollingreport.co.uk/guide/

[Yet Another Anon]

1. Surely the answer is that policy should not be driven by opinion polls or mid-term results either positive or negative, it has to be part of a long term strategy and that having a clear long term strategy rather than reacting will both gain the respect of the public and will be more successful if implimented and there will be nothing more likely to destroy credibility in public opinion than an incoherent poorly implemented programme that fails to achieve results.

2. When really hasn't there been constant electioneering, governments and oppositions have always both looked to time unpopular announcements and legislation in order to minimise their electoral damage to them and maximise it to their opponents.

3. Most people will not vote for a political party if they think that they will be worse in terms of economic, security or criminal justice terms than the government they would replace. A divided party obviously has more difficulties in passing legislation, then again there is perhaps more of a desire among people than there had been for politicians to actually prioritise policy formulation rather than simply holding to a line formulated either by PR research or partisan ideology out of some notional sense of party unity. The leader obviously has the most scope for determining party direction, people are a bit sick of the amount of focus on focus groups to create false images of party leaders - people such as Winston Churchill, Clement Attlee and indeed Margaret Thatcher all achieved a great deal while very much being themselves.

4. The support of the 2 main parties has been more fickle - the Conservatives especially since 1992 and Labour since about 2000, think there has been a bit of hardening of support, but that David Cameron seems to be bidding for the support of people without really very clear views at all, image based politics tends to result in rather fickle support and more unpredictability.

5. Liberal Democrat voters had been Conservative leaning until about 1992 after which if anything they seemed to switch more to favouring Labour, since 1997 and more so since 2001 the odd thing is that former Labour supporters who have become hostile to the Labour government went over significantly to the Liberal Democrats and so perhaps there is a larger element who is hostile to Labour because they are seen as having become too much like the Conservative Party. Signs are that a lot of this support has been drifting back to Labour slowly since 2004 or so.