A different perspective on the polls

Ballots & Bullets is the blog produced by members of the School of Politics and International Relations at the University of Nottingham. They recently posted their 28th analysis of UK political opinion polling, Too Early to Tell Outside the Westminster Bubble. In essence, the point they are making is that whatever the “Westminster Village”, as they call the commentariat, may have been saying about the fortunes of the parties, there was no significant change in the poll data in August:

The shortcomings of “Westminster Village” groupthink have been amply on display this summer , The prevailing narrative of the summer was that Labour was divided and weakly led, and that this was harming them with the voters, a judgement which had little basis in the polling evidence. The Syrian crisis has produced a new rush to judgement in the Village, with journalists of differing political persuasions declaring it a death blow for David Cameron, Ed Miliband or both. But in reality it has not changed the political weather outside Westminster much, nor is it likely to. Most voters were against the Syrian intervention, and therefore happy that it is not proceeding. The average voter packing up her barbeque and preparing her kids for the new school year knows little, and cares less, about the obtuse arguments about motions, amendments and Parliamentary authority which have so excited the Villagers. Their judgement about the two leaders’ apparently disastrous performances has been an indifferent shrug of the shoulders. In the latest figures from the Polling Observatory, we have seen virtually no change since the start of August. …

And this is the chart, “pooling together all the available polling evidence” they published to illustrate their point:

I happened to be reading this post on my iPad, so selecting the chart enlarged it nicely to full-screen. Keeping the iPad horizontal and rotating it by 90 degrees anticlockwise, gave a perspective more like this, but better:

It looked to me as though there were two axes of near-symmetry: the brown one between the Lib Dem and Labour levels of support and the grey one between the Conservative and UKIP levels.  If so, it could be interpreted as Labour’s rise in the polls since 2010 being gained largely at the Lib Dem’s expense and similarly UKIP picking up mostly Tory votes. Of course, some people who voted Lib Dem or Labour may have moved to UKIP, and some Conservative voters to the Lib Dems, but I would be amazed if there were that many.

Perhaps it’s not so surprising that Ed Miliband wanted nothing to do with Syria, given the dislike among Lib Dems (erstwhile Labour voters possibly) of the UK’s previous involvement in Iraq. And the Tories have made no secret of their intention, with the encouragement of Lynton Crosby (reportedly no admirer of the commentariat) to go after UKIP.

I continue to think that a sustained economic recovery in the next couple of years is the biggest risk to Labour’s chances in 2015. But it will have to come in a form which encourages disillusioned 2010 Lib Dem voters to return to their fold – difficult, or UKIP enthusiasts to go back to the Tories – less so. Neither may be sufficient to produce the lead which the Tories require to form a majority.

It was Osborne’s inheritance tax proposal which wrecked Labour’s plan to call an election in 2007, as discussed here before (towards the end of this rather long post). I wouldn’t be surprised to see this particular carrot reappear before 2015 in view of its attractiveness to the UKIP age group. The headline to Kellner’s comment that UKIP voters are poorer than Tories derives from a smaller proportion having household income less than £40k per year. But for the age group (71% over 50, as opposed to 46% of all electors) many will be pensioners who have lower incomes but will have acquired capital, primarily in the form of housing.

Crosby and Messina

The amount of effort that the Tories are already putting into campaigning - a stream of media novelties (urging fracking and cycling on one day alone) - you would think that they are planning for an election earlier than 2015.

Last week there was a flurry of interest among the commentariat after the recruitment by the Conservatives of an American, Jim Messina, to join the Australian, Lynton Crosby who is already providing them with strategic campaign advice. In the Financial Times on 6 August, Janan Ganesh was dismissive of what he called “jet-setting political consultants” who reputedly believe “that that a foreign country is just like another swing state”:

The first law of politics is that almost nothing matters. Voters barely notice, much less are they moved by, the events, speeches, tactics, campaigns or even strategies that are ultimately aimed at them. Elections are largely determined by a few fundamentals: the economy, the political cycle, the basic appeal of the party leaders. The role of human agency is not trivial, but it is rarely decisive either.  

… As good as he is, Mr Crosby is not behind the Tories’ recent run of form. He is not yet physically present very much and will not work full-time for the party until much closer to the 2015 election. The economic recovery has changed politics more than any conscious act of strategy.  

… For all his psephological rigour, Mr Messina will not make an enormous difference either. His client, Mr Obama, was re-elected because he was up against a maladroit rival – Mitt Romney, who employed feted and costly strategists of his own – at a time of gently improving economic conditions.  

… the really important events of this parliament were April 25 2013, when the official statisticians revealed Britain had avoided another recession; and September 25 2010, when Labour elected Mr Miliband. Next to these moments, the recruitment of Mr Crosby and Mr Messina are neither here nor there.

Perhaps Ganesh, who seems to have lashed himself to the mast of the sinking ship of print journalism, is wondering whether he should have opted for another calling. Anne McElvoy, public policy editor of The Economist, writing in The Times the following day, was much less sceptical, but she has met Crosby:

Mr Crosby cannot change the fundamentals of the 2015 vote. He cannot make Mr Cameron sound less plummy nor make the economy grow any faster. Yet he is already providing a clearer framing to the contest. This is what able strategists do best and why Labour, stuffed full of chaps who think a sojourn studying political science on the US East Coast is an intro to street-fighting politics, is rightly worried about the Lynton effect.  

I remember my first journalistic date when he was busy master-minding Boris Johnson’s 2008 campaign. The venue was reassuringly expensive (I hope Dave can muster a decent wine budget). “I can’t think why I’m here,” was his encouraging opening gambit. He could see no point in the commentariat, he explained, considering us a distraction from the real business of targeting outer parts of London where the liberal intelligentsia did not dominate conversation.  

The bluff exterior conceals one of the sharpest political brains for hire. Mainly the talent is a simple but effective one. It lies in telling politicians when to shut up and what to emphasise.  

… I dare say Mr Crosby won’t be an easy prospect to live with if, like Mr Osborne and others in Camp Cameron, you have ideas of your own about how election campaigns should be run, but so far his basic recipe, “Get the barnacles off the boat”, looks sound. Goodbye to gay marriage, wind farms and the happiness index. A few core subjects such as the economy, welfare and education will be used to ram home contrasts with Labour and ask who has the more compelling answers to the big national questions. Team Miliband, meanwhile, should put as much effort into finding a strategist capable of crossing swords with Mr Crosby as it does into affecting outrage about him.

All I know about election strategists is what I glean from the media, people like these two pundits. Crosby seems to have the sort of forceful nature needed to keep large egos in line. But, as McElvoy points out, there are other big personalities around with their own ideas and who won’t like being told what to do. And what happens when Messina, having mastered the UK postcode system, Skypes from Washington with yet another view?

Messina’s speciality is supposed to lie in social media and voter targeting. One can’t help wondering how transferable his skills will prove. US Presidential politics is a two-stage process. Firstly, red and blue fight among themselves to choose their candidates, then red and blue fight it out in the swing states which determine the outcome of the Electoral College. The voters overall seem to split somewhere between 45/55 and 49/51, but it’s where those votes are cast that matters. In the UK, by contrast, it’s the outcomes in about 100 or so marginal constituencies (in over 600) that determine which party governs. But the UK no longer has an essentially red/blue two-party system, the rise of the Liberal Democrats and Scottish Nationalists keeping the maximum share of the vote accessible by the two main parties below 40%. The next election may see UKIP becoming a significant fourth element, complicating things further. Working out which barnacles to scrape off and which to keep becomes a multi-dimensional problem, particularly for the Tories who have to fight on two fronts, to their left or right depending on the particular marginal involved.

It will be fascinating to see how hiring this high-priced help works out for the Tories – in so far as we get told about it by the media. And, of course, as Messina is no doubt aware, the media’s structure in the UK is rather different from that in the US, being national and having the BBC as an influential component.