Sunday, 16 August 2015

Two opinion polls/ two confusing messages.

 There are two interesting opinion polls covered by two of our weekend newspapers

The first in the Guardian  suggest that Jeremy Corbyn is most popular among voters from all parties,

 According to the Guardian

Jeremy Corbyn is more popular than the other Labour leadership candidates with the wider electorate and fares particularly well with Ukip supporters as well as those from his own party, a Survation poll suggests.
The survey of 1,000 people found that Corbyn scored the highest when they were asked about his personal qualities and which candidate would be the best at holding the government to account as the leader of the opposition.
Among Ukip voters, 39% of them liked him the most, higher than the 38% of Labour voters who said so. But just 22% of Conservatives liked Corbyn, compared with 25% who preferred Andy Burnham.
When asked who would make the best prime minister, Burnham was narrowly ahead with 25%, against 24% for Corbyn, and the two men were tied on 26% on who would be the most likely to win the next general election as Labour leader.
The two other candidates, Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendall, were trailing the others on the majority of questions asked.
Survation said that, on the face of it, the results did not bear out arguments from senior Labour figures that either Corbyn or his policies would be deeply unpopular with the country.
 The polling was commissioned by the Transport Salaried Staffs’ Association and carried out this week, but Survation said it was completely independent and followed the same online methodology as on previous occasions when it has conducted polls on the Labour leadership for the Mail on Sunday.

And yet in the Independent a pool commissioned by them  suggests that another a victory for Jeremy Corbyn in the Labour leadership race will reduce the party's chances of winning the next election,


The ComRes poll finds 31 per cent of voters think that Mr Corbyn would worsen Labour’s chances if he became leader, as against 21 per cent who say he would improve them, an overall score of -10. Out of the leadership candidates, Andy Burnham is best placed to improve Labour’s chances, on +5, followed by Yvette Cooper on -3 and Ms Kendall on -6. But the potential leader with the best rating is David Miliband, who quit British politics two years ago, with an overall score of +11.
The poll finds that more than twice as many British adults think that Mr Corbyn as Prime Minister would make the state of the British economy worse rather than better (36 per cent versus 14 per cent); while three times as many think he would make Britain’s standing around the world worse rather than better (37 per cent to 11 per cent).
The only aspect that voters think would be improved under a Corbyn premiership is the railways, with 23 per cent thinking they would be better compared to with 22 per cent who think they would be worse.
 It just goes to show that when poling moves on from simply YES or NO or simple voting intentions .

Trying to figure out the mood of the electorate or why they are supporting a political party may be futile.

The 39% of them of Ukip voters my well suggest that a fair number of Ukip votes in May came from from people disillusioned with the major Parties rather than opposing Europe or Immigration.

But that's only a hopeful analysis by me. From the two polls reported on it would take a better man than me to try and interpreter them.

 

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