Labour are in third place in key marginals

A Crosby Textor survey of 1,054 voters in the Tories' top thirty target seats reveals that the Conservative lead may well be larger than in national polls.

The poll, commissioned by Flying Matters and published in tomorrow's Sunday Telegraph, finds Tories 24% ahead of Labour and Labour 1% behind the LibDems.

The poll will pile the pressure on an already embattled Gordon Brown.  Over at CentreRight Louise Bagshawe can't believe that the PM will last until the election.  Peter Franklin blogs that he'll carry on until the bitter end.

Comments

[DavidRHayes]

This is fantastic news, Labour will need a miracle to win the next General Election.

[Empedocles]

It's not fantastic if it means that we are piling up votes in the most marginal seats at the expense of seats further down the target list which we need to get an overall majority....

[Malcolm Dunn]

The behaviour of many Labour parliamentarioans has been truly lamentable in recent weeks. They've obviously learned nothing from the ill discipline of the Conservative Party 1995-97. What has become clear is that arguments over policy have no appeal for this Labour administration,policy has hardly been mentioned at all. It indicates to me that they are almost entirely bankrupt of ideas and that Brown, his supporters and his critics within the Labour Party are just hoping for either Cameron to make a huge mistake or 'for something to turn up' to improve their chances. I hope and believe they'll be waiting in vain.

[Stevey]

This explains that backdoor "Amnesty" by McLabour......let them all stay and get them on the electoral role as soon as possible so they can vote McLabour!.

Broon must stay!, but if McLabour MP's grow some b*lls and do oust the buffoon then they will lose even bigger at the next General election as they are ALL abysmally inept and treasonous, your damned if you do McLabour, and your damned if you dont!.

McLabour OUT!!!.

[Paul Cummins, Manchester]

Is there a list of the seats, polled?

[Alex Swanson]

They've obviously learned nothing from the ill discipline of the Conservative Party 1995-97

Why should they? Nobody in the Conservative Party did!

[Maggie Thatcher Fan]

Marginal seats for Labour list..

http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/guide/conservative-target-seats

[Mark Senior]

What figures are we actually comparing ?
The figures given only total 76% , how much of the remaining 24$ are Others and how many don't knows/wont votes .
The actual vote share in these 30 seats in 2005 according to Anthony Wells notional figures was
Con 38.0%
Lab 30.8%
LD 24.7%
Oth 6.5%
assuming a small rise in Others to 7.0% and redistributing the remainder of the missing % would give something like
Con 50 Lab 21 LD 22 Oth 7

The swing from Lab to Con is around 11% equating to roughly a national lead of around 19% . The LibDem figure is down by just under 3% but it may well be that it is down rather more because of 3rd party squeeze in the Lab/Con marginals and not down at all and even marginally up in the LD/Con marginals , there is insufficient data available to be certain .
Presumably Crosby Textor are not members of the BPC and are not therefore obliged to publish the full data but I hope they can be persuaded to do so .

[Louise Bagshawe]

I would hope to see the full data as well as Mr. Senior, in due course. The enormous "others" figure is puzzling.

It's an encouraging poll (my constituency is on that list) but won't make the slightest bit of difference as to how we campaign in the marginals. We were out delivering today and we go out again twice next week.

[Jimbob]

Mark Senior - how can the notional tory figure be higher than the notional labour figure for the 2005 vote in the tory target seats?

[Mark Senior]

Jimbob , simple , the Conservatives were a very close 2nd in all 30 seats , Labour had a very narrow lead over the Conservatives in 20 of them but were well behind the Conservatives in the 9 LibDem and 1 SNP seats , aggregating the total votes for all 30 seats gave the % shares as stated above .

[McTory]

Stewey shouts "McLabour Out". No wonder the Tories poll so badly north of the border with such a Little Englander outlook! Idiotic wee numpty with his head up his smelly ar$e!

[Jon H]

According to the map accompanying the article, the tories will take plymouth moor view, tynemouth and both brighton seats, but labour will hold staffordshire moorlands and what looks like dartford and gillingham. Bizarre!

[Morus]

This is a junk poll for a number of reasons.

1,054 is a decent sample if polling nationally, but equates to less than 40 people per constituency sampled. The constituencies don't necessarily share any other demographic features other than they happen to be marginals (which could be for any number of reasons) so the weighting can only be complete junk.

24% for other is just absurd, and undermines all the other figures. Is this weighted by certainty to vote? If not, then that 24% could be the 'unlikely to vote', but then sample is reduced by 250, increasing MoE, and suggests that of remaining voters, the Tories will win over 55% in these seats, which is well above national average and cause for suspicion anyway.

The most obvious reason that this is a useless poll is that the current estimations are that the Tories will pick up 100-150 seats, so what do we learn by finding that they are ahead in the easiest 30 to win? Nothing, because we can't even extrapolate the weightings to a national figure.

I know Lynton Crosby is considered something of a campaigning hero, but this poll goes one step further to undermine BPC control of the polling industry, and makes polls little more than a campaign tool, ruining the credibility of the whole industry.

[For Conservatives] that tactic from Crosby would make sense if the Conservatives were behind, but when genuinely ahead by 22% or so, I wouldn't want to give Labour the option of discrediting polls that are putting them under so much pressure.

No more MRUK, BPIX, PSO, UrbanLife, CrosbyTextor nonsense. There are credible pollsters who are recognised because they operate to high and transparent standards, and by doing so are admitted to the BPC (British Polling Council). Activists and politicians on all sides should be shouting down this sort of deliberately misinformative junk polling for the harm it does to politics and the cynicism it inevitably engenders.

[Dave B]

UK Polling Report have done a short piece on this poll.

[Megov]

Methinks Morus has a vested interest.

[Manterik]

I thought Morus made a very good point.

[Yet Another Anon]

I'm a sceptic regarding the usefulness of opinion polls on party political voting intention "if there were a General Election tommorrow", especially in what is still the later stages of mid-term, however if they want a snapshot of opinion in seats that could make a difference - why 30 when Labour could fail to win every single one of these seats, win no others and yet still come out with a majority, what about the next 30 targets after those? Only 20 of these seats are actually Labour seats or nominal Labour seats.

[Yet Another Anon]

win no others
As in gain no others, obviously win others that are Labour seats actually or nominally.

[Ben Surtees]

It’s worth point out that the map in the Telegraph does seem to take into account either the potential for SNP gains in Scotland or for Conservative gains against the LibDems – in fact the map doesn’t seem to show a single Conservative gain from the LibDems, which seems a little odd, as (at the very least) some 'churn' between the parties is almost a given.

[Votedave]

I have often predicted the swings will be higher in the marginals next time, as they usually are when a change of government is seen as a strong possibility, as in 1992 and 1997. To some extent this will counteract the pro-Labour bias of the constituency boundaries.
If the whole country had followed the national swing in 1992, John Major would have been back with a majority of 61, not 21.

[Morus]

MeGov - No, I am strictly non-partisan, as those who read politicalbetting.com will attest. If you meant commercial, I have never worked for a pollster, and have no financial interest in any of them either.

What I do care about is the high quality of polling, and that it not become just another form of Lib Dem bar charts. This is important to me because it is about having some non-partisan integrity in politics. Polling is a last bastion, and I intend t defend it.

My point was addressed to Conservatives - why would you want to discredit polling when you are doing so well in legitimate polls?

Junk polling is pernicious, and should be rejected by all sides.

[Stewart Geddes]

If we are so far ahead in the key marginals we should now be looking further down the list and putting some serious resources into these. This will reinforce the marginals and boost us in the others.

[Gloy Plopwell]

This is fabulous news for the Lib Dems, becos we are still above where we were when we had to decapitate our leader again last year. Even when the Tories are ahead we are still poised to overtake both the other parties in the next two years. We have kept up our stupendous momemtnum!!!

My prediction? Lib Dem overall majority of 69,
with Windsor, Richmond (Yorks), Bracknell, all the Hull seats, Wolverhampton North East, Basildon and Dover among the winners.

[Sally Roberts]

"when we had to decapitate our leader again last year."

Makes it sound like you have one leader who is either like a hydra with many heads or like a worm which regenerates when you chop it in half - either way, the mind boggles! I do love your optimism though Gloy, long may it continue! ;-)

[Yet Another Anon]

Most likely at the General Election - Labour and the Liberal Democrats will lose every single seat in the South of England outside London and Labour will pickup seats from the Liberal Democrats in the rest of England, and will probably mostly hold their position in Scotland and Wales leaving a Conservative parliamentary party in the House of Commons with a similar number of seats to those Labour had in 1987 and Labour with a similar majority to now, and Nick Clegg probably just hanging on as leader because there is no obvious replacement.

[blue moon]

The poll shows we are making good progress in the North and likely to make some big gains in Yorkshire and in West Yorkshire, the only down side is that the poll shows we will not retake Elmete in Leeds, but we have an hopeless candidate in my view in any case but overall its positive and we must keep working hard in all these seats.