Conservative Support Firming Up

Expect the opinion polls to move tomorrow after I’ve detected a change in the last 24 hours.
Yesterday LibDem voters were being rude on the doorstep -- always a sign of piousness.
Whereas today (Sunday) even those people who have already voted LibDem (by post) were being pleasant, and wishing the Conservatives good luck -- rather odd, but symbolic I think.

Today’s LibDem Lie: Ed Davey, the man who has already claimed victory in his own constituency-wide leaflet, announced at lunchtime that "People dislike politicians because they don’t tell the truth".
This was after telling us that 80% of UK immigration comes from the European Union, when in fact it’s less than a third; and that the Conservatives stopped counting people out of the country, when it was in fact Labour who abolished exit controls in 1998.
Mr Davey also claimed his party’s amnesty would have no impact on future illegal immigration, when in fact all the evidence is to the contrary, from other countries which have tried it. Goodbye Mr Davey.

Opinion Polls

I now have a view on the opinion polls and make the following prediction.
If, as seems likely, they are distorting the intentions of those who will actually be voting (by including the views of many youngsters who tend not to vote), then they will be abolished during the next General Election campaign as in continental Europe.
You have to balance the freedom of the press against the artificial volatility caused by people’s herd instinct.
Let people make up their own mind, rather than be told what to think!

Today’s LibDem lie: At the start of the recession Nick Clegg sympathised with voters by saying he was changing his grocery supplier from Waitrose to Sainsbury’s as they were a lot cheaper. The same Nick Clegg MP who claimed £1,657.32 worth of food on his parliamentary expenses in one four-month period alone.

Opinion Polls

Whilst I wouldn’t go so far as to outlaw political opinion polls altogether, like they do in some countries, they should be taken off the front page and put near the back, alongside the horoscopes.
Their main purpose is cheap publicity for the market research companies who conduct them.
I have already questioned their methodology in this blog, which largely explains why they are all so inconsistent.
If you speak to people you find that a vast number -- who will be voting in three weeks time -- have simply not applied themselves to the question of which prime minister they’ll be better off with.
So as I wrote before, I will be waiting for the exit poll at 10pm on polling day.

Five More Years of Brown?

As I speak to people up and down the land (yesterday in north Manchester), the answer comes back the same:

We do not want five more years of Gordon Brown.

Funny thing is when you ask them if they’ll be voting for Cameron’s Conservatives they don’t seem quite so sure, as if there is some kind of third option for Prime Minister -- which they have to agree there isn’t.
A vote for any of the minor parties is a wasted vote when it comes to turfing out Gordon Brown.
That is the conundrum the opinion pollsters face, complicated by a serious flaw in their methodology.
You see, when you ask floating voters how they voted five years ago they genuinely can’t remember, and so make it up -- and say Conservative if they’re leaning that way now. So their opinion is excluded by the pollsters when they weight the raw data to match the actual result in 2005, skewing their prediction for 2010.
Best hang on for the exit poll at 10pm on May 6th.

Hung Parliament II

There’s been a lot of bunkum written about the prospects of a hung parliament, even on this blog.
The fact is no one knows the result of the General Election -- until the exit polls come out at 10pm on the day.
People say coalition governments work well in Europe, but Britain is not Europe, and for those old enough to remember, they never worked well under our adversarial system.
A further constitutional point is that Gordon Brown is not going to resign unless the Conservatives end up fewer than a dozen seats short of an overall majority. Otherwise he will cling on to power, dangling the carrot of proportional representation under the nose of Britain’s third party, something Ted Heath wasn’t prepared to do in 1974.
So to all those thinking of voting UKIP, or any other minor party, the advice is don’t. Vote Labour instead, because the result will be the same, and at least your vote won’t have been wasted.

Opinion Poll Volatility

You can tell there’s an election in the offing, with numerous opinion polls published almost daily. But how do you explain the volatility?
Well it’s partly to do with differing methods used by each organisation to “weight” the raw data.
However I think it’s more to do with the credence given to minority parties such as the LibDems, BNP, SNP and UKIP.
No one honestly expects any one of their leaders to become Prime Minister next year, and yet people are confused.
Speaking to voters in the north of England such as Cheadle and Penistone & Stocksbridge, I find that a lot of people are still waivering between Brown and Cameron, and voting for some other party is seen as a middle way.
Soon it will be time to decide.